M/G/C/C state dependent queuing networks consider service rates as a function of the number of residing entities (e.g., pedestrians, vehicles, and products). However, modeling such dynamic rates is not supported in modern Discrete Simulation System (DES) software. We designed an approach to cater this limitation and used it to construct the M/G/C/C state-dependent queuing model in Arena software. Using the model, we have evaluated and analyzed the impacts of various arrival rates to the throughput, the blocking probability, the expected service time and the expected number of entities in a complex network topology. Results indicated that there is a range of arrival rates for each network where the simulation results fluctuate drastically across replications and this causes the simulation results and analytical results exhibit discrepancies. Detail results that show how tally the simulation results and the analytical results in both abstract and graphical forms and some scientific justifications for these have been documented and discussed.

Long wait times and crowding are major issues affecting outpatient service delivery, but it is unclear how these affect patients in dual practice settings. This study aims to evaluate the effects of changing consultation start time and patient arrival on wait times and crowding in an outpatient clinic with a dual practice system. A discrete event simulation (DES) model was developed based on real-world data from an Obstetrics and Gynaecology (O&G) clinic in a public hospital. Data on patient flow, resource availability, and time taken for registration and clinic processes for public and private patients were sourced from stakeholder discussion and time-motion study (TMS), while arrival times were sourced from the hospital’s information system database. Probability distributions were used to fit these input data in the model. Scenario analyses involved configurations on consultation start time/staggered patient arrival. The median registration and clinic turnaround times (TT) were significantly different between public and private patients (p < 0.01). Public patients have longer wait times than private patients in this study’s dual practice setting. Scenario analyses showed that early consultation start time that matches patient arrival time and staggered arrival could reduce the overall TT for public and private patients by 40% and 21%, respectively. Similarly, the number of patients waiting at the clinic per hour could be reduced by 10–21% during clinic peak hours. Matching consultation start time with staggered patient arrival can potentially reduce wait times and crowding, especially for public patients, without incurring additional resource needs and help narrow the wait time gap between public and private patients. Healthcare managers and policymakers can consider simulation approaches for the monitoring and improvement of healthcare operational efficiency to meet rising healthcare demand and costs.

The construct of employees’ job satisfaction has been gaining an increasing scholarly attention as one of the crucial determinants of organizational effectiveness and success. Specifically, it has been very much acknowledged by both researchers and academics that employees are the most valuable assets of an organization and play the crucial role in achieving its overall objectives. These arguments justify the attention given to studying the psychological characteristics of employees and what determine their job satisfaction that impacts the organizational performance. In addition to that, transformational leadership has been proven to have a significant effect on the employees’ job satisfaction through enhancing the employees’ perception of empowerment. Despite this fact, the dynamic role of transformational style on enhancing the level of satisfaction among the empowered individuals has been greatly neglected. It has been, also, proven in the literature that employees’ satisfaction directly affects the customers’ satisfaction and subsequently the overall organizational performance. In Yemen, as it the case on many developing countries, employees of an organization should be satisfied as the first step to achieve a better organizational performance associated with customers’ satisfaction. The poor performance of Yemeni banks, as customer-oriented business, can be, somehow, attributed to the low level of employees’ job satisfaction. This paper, however, aims to examine the joint effect of employees’ psychological empowerment and transformational leadership on the employees’ job satisfaction. To achieve this purpose, responses of a sample of 160 employees from the Yemeni Islamic banks have been examined. The findings of this study confirmed the direct effect of employees’ psychological empowerment and transformational leadership on the employees’ job satisfaction. On the other hand, the moderating effect of transformational leadership on the relationship between employees’ psychological empowerment and the employees’ job satisfaction was not supported. These findings were, finally, discussed in the lights of the limitations of the study and future research directions were offered.

In recent years, there are numerous studies on chaotic systems with special equilibrium curves having various shapes such as circle, butterfly, heart and apple. This paper describes a new 3-D chaotic dynamical system with a capsule-shaped equilibrium curve. The proposed chaotic system has two quadratic, two cubic and two quartic nonlinear terms. It is noted that the proposed chaotic system has a hidden attractor since it has an infinite number of equilibrium points. It is also established that the proposed chaotic system exhibits multi-stability with two coexisting chaotic attractors for the same parameter values but differential initial states. A detailed bifurcation analysis with respect to variations in the system parameters is portrayed for the new chaotic system with capsule equilibrium curve. We have shown MATLAB plots to illustrate the capsule equilibrium curve, phase orbits of the new chaotic system, bifurcation diagrams and multi-stability. As an engineering application, we have proposed a speech cryptosystem with a numerical algorithm, which is based on our novel 3-D chaotic system with a capsule-shaped equilibrium curve. The proposed speech cryptosystem follows its security evolution and implementation on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) platform. Experimental results show that the proposed encryption system utilizes 33% of the FPGA, while the maximum clock frequency is 178.28 MHz.

Sustainable manufacturing is regarded as the most complex manufacturing paradigm to date as it holds the widest scope of requirements. In addition, its three major pillars of economic, environment and society though distinct, have some overlapping among each of its elements. Even though the concept of sustainability is not new, the development of the performance indicator still needs a lot of improvement due to its multifaceted nature, which requires integrated approach to solve the problem. This paper proposed the best combination of criteria en route a robust sustainable manufacturing performance indicator formation via Analytic Network Process (ANP). The integrated lean, green and sustainable ANP model can be used to comprehend the complex decision system of the sustainability assessment. The finding shows that green manufacturing is more sustainable than lean manufacturing. It also illustrates that procurement practice is the most important criteria in the sustainable manufacturing performance indicator.