Purpose: – Maintenance and its management has moved from being considered a “necessary evil” to being of strategic importance for most competitive organisations around the world. In terms of the identification and use of organisational-wide maintenance management models the picture is not clears from both a literature and practical perspective. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the various models and their use in real-world applications, and in doing so, explores the gap between academic research and practice. Design/methodology/approach: – For this paper two comprehensive reviews of the literature were undertaken, first, to identify and categorise the various maintenance management models, and second, to determine the depth of empirical evidence for the popular models in real-world applications. Descriptive analysis of both the practical examples and empirical evidence rates (EER) for maintenance related journals is provided. Findings: – Within the literature 37 maintenance management models were identified and categorised. From these, three models were found to be popular: total productive maintenance (TPM), condition based maintenance, and reliability centred maintenance. While several thousand papers discussed these three models, only 82 articles were found to provide empirical evidence. Research limitations/implications: – While providing a sound foundation for future research the outcomes are based solely on academic literature. Analysis of EER outside the field of maintenance is needed to make comparisons. Practical implications: – The paper offers practitioners a detailed contemporary overview of maintenance management models along with tabulated results of practical examples to present day organisations. Such practical-focused papers are very limited within academic literature. Social implications: – With EER as low as 1.5 per cent for some journals this paper acts as a reminder to researchers that they have an obligation to society to spend taxpayer funded research on addressing social needs and real-world problems. Originality/value: – This paper makes a concerted attempt to link academic research with management and operational practitioners. While the paper is critical of the current academic imbalance between theory and practice, a number of suggestions to improve EER are offered in the conclusions.

Purpose: – A major role of facilities management is ensuring the useability, reliability, and safety of the asset being managed. To achieve this management must use a system to control the maintenance function. The purpose of the paper is to identify and describe the various maintenance management models and systems available for facilities managers to consider. Design/methodology/approach: – Two comprehensive reviews of the literature were undertaken to categorise the various maintenance management models and identify popular models in practice. Findings: – The review identified 37 maintenance management models. From these, four were found to be popular: total productive maintenance (TPM), condition-based maintenance (CBM), reliability-centred maintenance (RCM), and condition monitoring (CM). While many thousands of papers can be found of these four models, the support in the literature for the remaining 33 models is very limited. Research limitations/implications: – While providing a sound foundation for future research, the papers findings are based solely on reviewing literature. Practical implications: – For facilities managers seeking to expand their knowledge of a particular model or maintenance management systems in general, the paper provides a practical understanding. Originality/value: – Papers focused solely on identifying and describing maintenance management models are scarce and this paper makes a concerted attempt to link academic research with management practitioners.

The consequences of acquired brain injury are profound and debilitating. People who sustain these injuries experience alterations to the physical, cognitive, behavioural, and psychosocial aspects of their life. These changes are often difficult to understand and consequently, many of these people are unable to successfully reintegrate into their community. This article reviews the literature and provides the reader with an understanding of the repercussions of acquired brain injury with a view to promote community acceptance and successful community reintegration. While the review identified many factors that could impede successful reintegration the empirical support for a number of these areas is lacking. Therefore, opportunities for further research abound.

Purpose: – The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of lean principles to drive operational improvements in intermodal container facilities. Intermodal terminals have an important role in today’s globally complex supply networks. In the case of bottleneck-derived terminalization, operational issues such as achieving effective material flow remains a significant and common challenge. To assist with such challenges, the paper develops a conceptual framework built on the principles of lean. Design/methodology/approach: – In this paper, a theory-building approach is adopted and a lean terminalization framework developed by combining aspects of lean- and intermodal transport theory with practical insights. The framework was developed in conjunction with two intermodal container facilities within the Scandinavian region. Findings: – The conceptual framework demonstrates how lean approaches can be used to identify improvement areas, as well as to develop solutions for improved material flow in the context of intermodal transport operations. The framework can be used to guide the lean implementation process in small to medium intermodal container facilities. Research limitations/implications: – The development of the framework represents the first stage of a two-stage project. The second stage will involve implementing and empirically testing the framework in the practical settings of the two-case facilities. Practical implications: – Lean is a philosophical approach that consists of a set of principles that drive organizations to continually add value to their operations. The application of lean practices enhances necessary process steps and eliminates those that fail to add value, thereby improving material flow and performance. Social implications: – Improving the operational efficiency and effectiveness of container terminals out not only assists the profitability of the facilities but also has flow-on benefits for stakeholders, external customers, consumers and the environment. Originality/value: – Lean has been successfully applied in manufacturing because the 1990s, and though it has also found relevance in a number of other industries, applications of lean within the intermodal transport sector is limited.

Tissue and organ regeneration via transplantation of cell bodies in-situ has become an interesting strategy in regenerative medicine. Developments of cell carriers to systematically deliver cell bodies in the damage site have fall shorten on effectively meet this purpose due to inappropriate release control. Thus, there is still need of novel substrate to achieve targeted cell delivery with appropriate vehicles. In the present study, silicon based photovoltaic (PV) devices are used as a cell culturing substrate for the expansion of myoblast mouse cell (C2C12 cells) that offers an atmosphere for regular cell growth in vitro. The adherence, viability and proliferation of the cells on the silicon surface were examined by direct cell counting and fluorescence microscopy.

Many within and outside of academia argue that research conducted in our universities should have impact on society, especially research from the applied fields. One discipline attracting disproportional criticism over the relevance of its research is business schools. While anecdotal evidence surrounding the practical usefulness of business schools research is growing, empirical support for the problem is limited. This study explores the issue from the perspective of accounting practitioners by examining their sources of information, including the use of articles from academic accounting research journals. The issue is further examined by comparing accountants with practitioners from two other applied disciplines, engineering and medicine. A survey of 560 practitioners was undertaken and the data analysed using both descriptive and regression methods. The study found that accounting practitioners’ perception of academia and use of academic research is very low, and when compared with engineers and medical practitioners, the differences were found to be statistically significant. Due to a disconnect from the real-world of practice, academic business researchers and business schools become increasingly vulnerable to adverse research funding decisions in the future.