In today’s rapidly changing business environment, franchisees’ market responsiveness is a way to create a sustainable competitive advantage. Drawing on the resource-based view, dynamic capability perspective and relational view, this study examines the relationships between franchisor resources, relational capital, market responsiveness, and franchisee performance. Based on data collected from 152 franchisees in a convenience store chain in Taiwan, the analysis revealed that market responsiveness, franchisor resources and relational capital are all positively related to franchisee performance. Franchisor resources and relational capital positively affect franchisee performance both directly and indirectly through market responsiveness. Furthermore, relational capital has the strongest effect on franchisee performance.

In this charge we designated a Hilbert-Johnson process by coupling of heterocyclic N-silylated with benzyl chloride at 100°C using the calcined red algae (CRA) doped with ammonium sulfate (AS), AS@CRA as a heterogeneous catalyst. The resulting examination systems, which included atomic absorption, BET methodology and X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM/EDX), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), were employed to describe these catalysts. The effect of catalyst and alkylated agent were extensively studied. This catalyst can also be recycled several times in this condensation, and lastly, we suggested a probable answer mechanism for this process. Moreover, our molecular docking investigation revealed the anti-tuberculosis potential of the synthesized compounds. Notably, the drug isoniazid exhibited higher binding energies compared to the products 2a, 2b, and 2c. Additionally, the ADME study suggests that highly efficacious synthetic compounds may possess anti-tuberculosis properties.

The maximum tardiness reflects the worst level of service associated with customer needs; thus, the principle that seru production reduces the maximum tardiness is investigated, and a model to minimize the maximum tardiness of the seru production system is established. In order to obtain the exact solution, the non-linear seru production model with minimizing the maximum tardiness is split into a seru formation model and a linear seru scheduling model. We propose an efficient cooperative algorithm using a genetic algorithm and an innovative reinforcement learning algorithm (CAGARL) for large-scale problems. Specifically, the GA is designed for the seru formation problem. Moreover, the QL-seru algorithm (QLSA) is designed for the seru scheduling problem by combining the features of meta-heuristics and reinforcement learning. In the QLSA, we design an innovative QL-seru table and two state trimming rules to save computational time. After extensive experiments, compared with the previous algorithm, CAGARL improved by an average of 56.6%. Finally, several managerial insights on reducing maximum tardiness are proposed.

A preparatively convenient method is proposed for the synthesis of new 1-oxo-3,4-dihydro-1H-pyrrolo[2,1-с][1,4]oxazine-8- 4a-e and 4-oxo-4H-pyrrolo[2,1-c][1,4]benzoxazine-3-carboxylic acids 5a-f that is based on the interaction of methyl (2-oxomorpholin-3-ylidene)ethanoates 1a-e and methyl (2-oxo-2H-1,4-benzoxazine-3(4H)-ylidene)ethanoates 2a-f with 2-bromo-1,1-diethoxyethane. Obtained acids were transformed into the corresponding tert-butyl carbamates 6a-e, 7a-f and N-alkyl(aryl)carboxamides 11a-i, 12a-d. By treating tert-butyl carbamates 6a-e, 7a-f with hydrogen chloride, 8-amino-3,4-dihydro-1H-pyrrolo[2,1-c][1,4]oxazin-1-ones 8a-e and 3-amino-4H-pyrrolo[2,1-c][1,4]benzoxazin-4-ones 9a-f were obtained. By acylation of amines 8a-e, 9a-f with acetic anhydride, benzoyl chloride, methanesulfonyl chloride, and p-toluenesulfonyl chloride, corresponding N-acetamides 13a,b, 14, N-benzamides 15, 16, N-methanesulfonamides 17, 18, and N-p-toluenesulfonamides 19, 20 were synthesized. In total, 30 new derivatives of 1-oxo-3,4-dihydro-1H-pyrrolo[2,1-c][1,4]oxazinones and 27 new 4-oxo-4H-pyrrolo[2,1-c][1,4]benzoxazinones were obtained.

Diabetes mellitus is a serious health disease that affects people all over the world. The number of persons identified with diabetes mellitus rises each year. α -Glucosidase is a digestive enzyme used to control diabetes mellitus. The searching for new potent α-glucosidase inhibitors capable of delaying carbohydrate digestion in the human body is an important strategy towards control of diabetes mellitus. In this work, a series of quinoline-based Schiff base derivatives already identified as α-glucosidase inhibitory activity was studied by using 2D/3D-QSAR approach. The best HQSAR/A-B-C-H-Ch-DA and CoMSIA/SEDA models were constructed using thirteen molecules in the training set, resulting in favorable values of Q2 (0.834 and 0.607), and high values of R2 (0.985 and 0.912), respectively. The generated HQSAR/A-B-C-H-Ch-DA and CoMSIA/SEDA contour plots were precious for designing and enhancing the α-glucosidase inhibitory activity of quinoline-based Schiff base molecules. Considering these results, two novel α-glucosidase compounds were designed to possess significant activity. The newly suggested molecules showed good outcomes in the preliminary in silico ADME/Tox evaluations. Molecular docking results revealed that the new designed inhibitors have a good stability in the active pocket of the studied receptor compared to voglibose, clinically used as an α-glucosidase inhibitor. MD simulation and MM-GBSA results confirmed the molecular docking outcomes. Finally, DFT analysis was useful in determining the most electrophilic and nucleophilic centers of the two designed α-glucosidase inhibitors.

Production management operating in recent competitive marketplaces must satisfy the client desired quality and shorter order lead-time and avoid internal fabricating disruption caused by inevitable defects and stochastic equipment failures. Achieving these operational tasks without undesirable quality goods, missing due dates, and fabrication interruption help the management minimize operating expenditures. Motivated by assisting manufacturing firms in the situations mentioned this study explores a manufacturing system that features quality reassurances through reworking or removal of defectives, correction of probabilistic failures, and partial overtime and outsourcing options for reducing uptime. This study finds the function of system operating expenditures through model building, mathematical formulations, optimization approaches, and algorithm proposition, shows its convexity, and derives the optimal batch time for the studied manufacturing model. Finally, this study offers numerical illustrations to confirm our work’s applicability and disclose its capability to provide various profound crucial system information that helps the management make strategic operating decisions.

This research focuses on production releasing and routing allocation problems in re-entrant mixed-flow shops. Since re-entrant mixed flow shops are complex and dynamic, many studies evaluate release plans by developing discrete event simulation models and selecting the optimal solution according to the estimation results. However, a high-accurate discrete event simulation model requires a lot of computation time. In this research, we develop an effective multi-fidelity optimization method to address product release planning problems for re-entrant mixed-flow shops. The proposed method combines the advantages of rapid evaluation of analytical models and accurate evaluation of simulation models. It conducts iterative optimization using a low-fidelity mathematical estimation model to find good solutions and searches for the optimal solution via a high-fidelity simulation estimation model. Computational results of large-scale production releasing and routing allocation problems illustrate that the proposed approach is good at addressing large-scale problems in re-entrant mixed-flow shops.

A number of 3-aryl-5,6-dihydroimidazo[2,1-b][1,3]thiazoles were synthesized by cyclocondensation of imidazolidine-2-thione with phenacyl bromides, and their antimicrobial and antioxidant activity was evaluated. Bioscreening confirmed the moderate antibacterial activity against the reference strains of bacteria Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli and Proteus vulgaris and excellent antifungal activity against Candida albicans. It was found that 3-(4-chlorophenyl)-5,6-dihydroimidazo[2,1-b]thiazole 4h (MIC = 15.625 μg/ml) has twice the antifungal effect compared to the control drug Furacilin. The study of the antioxidant activity of the synthesized compounds proved their ability to inhibit 60–97% of DPPH radicals. The best antiradical effect was found for 4-(5,6-dihydroimidazo[2,1-b]thiazol-3-yl)phenol 4e (I = 97%). A probable mechanism of its action was proposed involving the formation of a radical cation by the SET process. For the most active antioxidants 4e-g, reactivity and electrostatic surface potential were evaluated using the DFT method, and molecular docking was studied on the human peroxiredoxin 5 protein model.

This paper considers the general lot sizing and scheduling problem (GLSP) in single level capacitated environments with sequence dependent item changeovers. The proposed model simultaneously determines the production sequence of multiple items with capacity-constrained dynamic demand and lot size to minimize overall costs. First, a mixed-integer programming (MIP) model for the GLSP is developed in order to solve smaller size problems. Afterwards, a matheuristic algorithm that integrates Simulated Annealing (SA) algorithm and the proposed MIP model is devised for solving larger size problems. The proposed matheuristic approach decomposes the GLSP into sub-problems. The proposed SA algorithm plays the controller role. It guides the search process by determining values for some of the decision variables and calls the MIP model to identify the optimal values for the remaining decision variables at each iteration. Extensive numerical experiments on randomly generated test instances are performed in order to evaluate the performance of the proposed matheuristic method. It is observed that the proposed matheuristic based solution method outperforms the MIP and SA, if they are used alone for solving the present GLSP.

By the reaction of substituted benzaldehydes and indol-3-carbaldehydes (2E)-2-cyano-N-[5-(R-benzyl)-1,3-thiazol-2-yl]-3-(R1-phenyl)prop-2-enamides 3-(1-R¹-1H-indol-3-yl)-2-cyano-N-(5-(R-benzyl)-1,3-thiazol-2-yl)prop-2-enamides were synthesised. The antitumor activity of prepared compounds were investigated. 3-(1-Benzyl-¹H-indol-3-yl)-2-cyano-N-(5-(2-chlorobenzyl)-1,3-thiazol-2-yl)prop-2-enamide (7b) has been identified as hit compound with values of MG-MID GI50 = 3.903 µM, TGI = 29.10 µM, LC50 = 57.54 µM.