This paper deals with Flow-shop Sequence-Dependent Group Scheduling and worker assignment problem. Flow-shop allows the process of a set of families of products applying the group technology concept to reduce setup costs, lead times, and work-in-process inventory costs. The worker assignment problem deals with assigning workers to workstations considering their different abilities and learning effect. The proposed model in this paper considers different objectives. The decision problems in this cellular manufacturing system are the jobs scheduling within of own group, the group scheduling and the workers assignment to the machines. The aim of this paper is to consider a more realistic profile of heterogeneous workers introducing the learning effect in the joint group scheduling and workers assignment problem. A mathematical model and an evolutionary procedure has been developed to solve this problem. A benchmark of test cases having different numbers of machines, groups, jobs, worker skills and learning index, has been taken into account to compare the efficiency of the proposed algorithm with two well known procedures.

Skill management is a key factor in improving effectiveness of industrial companies, notably their maintenance services. The problem considered in this paper concerns scheduling of maintenance tasks under resource (maintenance teams) constraints. This problem is generally known as unrelated parallel machine scheduling. We consider the problem with a both objectives of minimizing total weighted tardiness (TWT) and number of tardiness tasks. Our interest is focused particularly on solving this problem under skill constraints, which each resource has a skill level. So, we propose a new efficient heuristic to obtain an approximate solution for this NP-hard problem and demonstrate his effectiveness through computational experiments. This heuristic is designed for implementation in a static maintenance scheduling problem (with unequal release dates, processing times and resource skills), while minimizing objective functions aforementioned.

Over the past number of years, competence management has become a key issue for companies. Similarly, to the importance of knowledge management, competence management considers an individual’s performance, based on his or her knowledge. Thus, knowledge management becomes an important aspect for companies to manage resources, through the ability of characterizing key competences and evaluating how they are improved through past experiences and roles, thus selecting project team members according to the respective existing skills. This paper focuses on the coordination of design activities in order to propose a tool dedicated to operation-level project managers to help prepare their technical teams based on the required skills. The goal is to enhance the effectiveness of the teams, as well as their performance in the short-term, as well as the long-term, while coordinating with the human resources department. This work is based on the results of the Aides et assisTances pour la conception, la conduite et leur coupLage par les connAissanceS – Help and support for design, coordination and their coupling by knowledge (ATLAS, 2008 - 2011). This project studies the coupling between systems design and management. We propose an initial tool to manage skills in a design project.

The Indigenous Ghanaian woman entrepreneur, this study found exhibits many similarities with their counterparts in other countries in terms of their personality traits. However, they differed in other aspects such as their educational backgrounds and modes of entrepreneurial skills acquisition. Through their entrepreneurial activities the women have made substantial contributions to the economic growth of Ghana in terms of innovation, job creation, and reduction in poverty and unemployment. Using a survey methodology, this study concludes that to succeed as a female entrepreneur in Ghana, one requires some specific knowledge, skills and attitudes.