PurposeThe paper investigates firms' optimal pricing policies and green strategies in a dynamic green supply chain with consideration of different retail service strategies. The purpose of the paper is to address the following research questions: (1) What are the optimal pricing policies and green strategies of the dynamic decentralized supply chain with the competitive or supportive retail service? (2) How does the dynamic consumer's perception of green product affect these equilibrium solutions?Design/methodology/approachThe paper establishes the dynamic game models and then derives a firm's instantaneous and steady-state feedback equilibrium solutions in three scenarios as follows: (1) the integrated supply chain; (2) the decentralized supply chain with competitive retail service and (3) the decentralized supply chain with supportive retail service. Finally, we conduct numerical analyses to compare the firm's instantaneous and steady-state equilibrium solutions and profit in the three scenarios.FindingsThe theoretical and numerical analysis results suggest that the supportive retail service is less inefficient than the competitive retail service in the decentralized supply chain and that the types of retail service have no influence on the green strategy. Moreover, a firm's myopia leads to lowering the greenness degree, retail service level and severe price competition, resulting in economic losses. Consumers’ initial perception of greenness degree determines whether the retailer should adopt the skimming pricing strategy or penetration pricing strategy. Furthermore, only when consumers’ perception of greenness degree is higher than a threshold, will the manufacturer produce green product with positive greenness degree.Originality/valueThis is one of few studies on the effect of different types of retail service on horizontal competition in green supply chain. The extension of the static study by adopting differential game approaches provides researchers with a deeper understanding of the application of retail service in green supply chain.

Purpose With an increasingly fierce competition of the shipbuilding industry, advanced technologies and excellent management philosophies in the manufacturing industry are gradually introduced to domestic shipyards. The purpose of this study is to promote the lean management of Chinese ship outfitting plants by lean production strategy. Design/methodology/approach To promote the lean implementation of Chinese shipyards, the lean practice of ship-pipe part production is highlighted by lot-sizing optimization and strategic CONWIP (constant work-in-process) control. A nonlinear programming model is formulated to minimize the total cost of ship-pipe part manufacturing and the particle swarm optimization (PSO)-based algorithm is designed to resolve the established model. Besides, the pull-from-the-bottleneck (PFB) strategy is used to control ship-pipe part production, verified by Simulink simulation. Findings Results show that the proposed lean strategy of the programming model and strategic PFB control could assist Chinese ship outfitting plants to leverage competitive advantage by waste reduction and lean achievement. Specifically, the PFB double-loop control strategy shows better performance when there is high productivity and the PFB single-loop control outperforms at lower productivity scenarios. Practical implications To verify the effectiveness of the proposed lean strategy, a case study is performed to validate the formulated model. Also, simulation experiments realized by FlexSim software are conducted to testify results obtained by the constructed programming model. Originality/value Lean production management practice of the shipyard building industry is performed by the proposed lean production strategy through lot-sizing optimization and strategic PFB control in terms of ship-pipe part manufacturing.

PurposeAs the number of joined service providers (SPs) in knowledge-intensive crowdsourcing (KI-C) continues to rise, there is an information overload problem for KI-C platforms and consumers to identify qualified SPs to complete tasks. To this end, this paper aims to propose a quality of service (QoS) evaluation framework for SPs in KI-C to effectively and comprehensively characterize the QoS of SPs, which can aid the efficient selection of qualified SPs.Design/methodology/approachBy literature summary and discussion with the expert team, a QoS evaluation indicator system for SPs in KI-C based on the SERVQUAL model is constructed. In addition, the Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method is used to obtain evaluation indicators' weights. The SPs are evaluated and graded by the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and rank–sum ratio (RSR), respectively.FindingsA QoS evaluation indicator system for SPs in KI-C incorporating 13 indicators based on SERVQUAL has been constructed, and a hybrid methodology combining DEMATEL, TOPSIS and RSR is applied to quantify and visualize the QoS of SPs.Originality/valueThe QoS evaluation framework for SPs in KI-C proposed in this paper can quantify and visualize the QoS of SPs, which can help the crowdsourcing platform to realize differentiated management for SPs and assist SPs to improve their shortcomings in a targeted manner. And this is the first paper to evaluate SPs in KI-C from the prospect of QoS.

Rainfall is the main factor leading to the landslide of expansive soil slope. To deeply understand the instability mechanism of expansive soil slope under rainfall conditions, it is necessary to clarify the strength attenuation mechanism of expansive soil caused by water absorption and swelling. Therefore, the improved constant volume direct shear test was used in this study to compare with the conventional test, focusing on the variation of effective shear strength parameters with dry density (volume). The micromechanism of expansive soil strength attenuation is further studied, and the influence of expansive soil on slope stability is analyzed by numerical calculation. The results show that the improved direct shear apparatus and method can keep the volume of expansive soil specimens unchanged before and after shear and obtain the real effective shear strength parameter of soil. Under the same conditions, the shear strength parameter of the improved direct shear test is lower than that of the conventional direct shear test. The rapid thickening of the lamellar structure of montmorillonite in expansive soil will lead to the fragmentation and dispersion of clay particles, which is one of the fundamental reasons for the strength difference between expansive soil and ordinary clay. In slope stability analysis, the effect of swelling on the shear strength of slope cannot be ignored and should be considered in engineering design.

Pavement vibration monitoring under vehicle loads can be used to acquire traffic information and assess the health of pavement structures, which contributes to smart road construction. However, the effectiveness of monitoring is closely related to sensor performance. In order to select the suitable acceleration sensor for pavement vibration monitoring, a printed circuit board (PCB) with three MEMS (micro-electromechanical) accelerometer chips (VS1002, MS9001, and ADXL355) is developed in this paper, and the circuit design and software development of the PCB are completed. The experimental design and comparative testing of the sensing performance of the three MEMS accelerometer chips, in terms of sensitivity, linearity, noise, resolution, frequency response, and temperature drift, were conducted. The results show that the dynamic and static calibration methods of the sensitivity test had similar results. The influence of gravitational acceleration should be considered when selecting the range of the accelerometer to avoid the phenomenon of over-range. The VS1002 has the highest sensitivity and resolution under 3.3 V standard voltage supply, as well as the best overall performance. The ADXL355 is virtually temperature-independent in the temperature range from −20 °C to 60 °C, while the voltage reference values output by the VS1002 and MS9001 vary linearly with temperature. This research contributes to the development of acceleration sensors with high precision and long life for pavement vibration monitoring.