An examination of alternative beef handling systems for retail firms
The current trend to boxed beef is supported by this study of 10 different retail beef handling systems when both costs and returns are considered. However, on a purely cost basis the least costly system was for the retailer to centrally cut beef at his|her warehouse. The highest ranking system on a total returns basis was a special type of boxed beef called tray-ready beef. In this new system the packer trims and retail cuts the beef, but reassembles it and ships it as boxed beef. The retailer has only to package it for retail sale.
Measurement of the Economic Efficiency of Central-Fabrication-versus Carcass-Meat-Handling Systems
Relative economic efficiency is measured for a selected sample of retail meat departments using the UOP (unit output price) profit model developed by Lau and Yotopoulos. The analysis suggests that central fabrication is currently more efficient for some, but not all, independent retail meat departments. The analysis also suggests that the relatively new UOP profit model is superior to the more traditional Farrell linear programming technique for evaluating relative efficiency.
Point-to-point and point-to-multipoint communications
A network, such as wired and/or wireless LAN, is configured to have both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint connections. The point-to-multipoint connection(s) is used to communicate information between a plurality of the stations (or modem, or transceivers) in the network, whereas the point-to-point connection(s) are used to communicate information between only 2 stations in the network with the ability to, for example, maximize performance (rate/reach/BER/latency/etc) between those two stations. A master station allocates one or more frequency bands to the various point-to-multipoint and point-to-point connections.