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In recent years, the demand for garments has significantly increased, requiring manufacturers to speed up their production to attract customers. Cut order planning (COP) is one of the most important processes in the apparel manufacturing industry. The appropriate stencil arrangement can reduce costs and fabric waste. The COP problem focuses on determining the size combination for a pattern, which is determined by the length of the cutting table, width, demand order, and height of the cutting equipment.

This study proposes new heuristics: genetic algorithm (GA), symbiotic organism search, and divide-and-search-based Lite heuristic and a One-by-One (ObO) heuristic to address the COP problem. The objective of the COP problem is to determine the optimal combination of stencils to meet demand requirements and minimize the total fabric length.

A comparison between our proposed heuristics and other simulated annealing and GA-based heuristics, and a hybrid approach (conventional algorithm + GA) was conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed heuristics. The test results show that the ObO heuristic can significantly improve the solution efficiency and find the near optimal solution for extreme demands.

This paper proposes a new heuristic, the One-by-One (ObO) heuristic, to solve the COP problem. The results show that the proposed approaches overcome the long operation time required to determine the fitting arrangement of stencils. In particular, our proposed ObO heuristic can significantly improve the solution efficiency, i.e. finding the near optimal solution for extreme demands within a very short time.

Vaccination is widely conceded as a pivotal measure to achieve community immunization and eradicate COVID-19. The purpose of this paper is to understand vaccination behavior based on the association between the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and health belief model (HBM).

A self-administered questionnaire was designed to collect data from 438 participants through social media in Vietnam and later analyzed using SPSS and AMOS to examine the research model.

The results indicated that attitude toward vaccination is positively influenced by perceived risk and perceived benefits. Additionally, background constructs of TPB (i.e. social norms, attitude and perceived behavioral control) and HBM (i.e. perceived risk, response efficacy, perceived benefits and knowledge about COVID-19) are underlying motivations for individual intention to receive vaccine. Moreover, age is a demographic predictor of vaccination intention. Finally, vaccination intention facilitates COVID-19 vaccination.

The findings will assist health-care bodies and authorities to understand public perceptions, attitude and behaviors and encourage their participation in vaccination campaigns.

To date, this is the first investigation of how disease knowledge and perceived benefits drive vaccination intention in Vietnam. Moreover, this study may be initially successful in adding current health-care behavior literature by combining TPB with HBM. With most studies on vaccination intention at the early stage of COVID-19 outbreak in developed nations, this work provides new insights by testing vaccination behavior in the fourth wave of COVID-19 outbreak and in a developing nation.

This study aims to examine the effect of political connection on operational efficiencies in the case of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and to discover the channel through which political ties affect a firm's decision-making process.

Following the scope of the study, panel fixed effect has been adopted to explore the impact of political connection on a firm's operational efficiencies. The data were collected every two years from 2005 to 2015 from SMEs in Vietnam under the collaboration of the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM), the Institute of Labor Science and Social Affairs (ILSSA) and the Development Economics Research Group (DERG) of the University of Copenhagen (Denmark).

The results suggest that political connection has a significantly negative effect on both investment efficiencies and employee productivity. Significantly, the impact of political connections on employment decisions is more significant than it is on investment decisions. Furthermore, the findings also indicate that high-growth firms experience the interference of political connection in the decision-making process less often than their low-growth peers.

This paper provides some empirical evidence of the negative impact of political connections on a firm's operational efficiencies. It analyzes the channels through which political connection influences a firm's operational efficiencies. Providing empirical evidence demonstrates a dimension to capture the negative side of the political link to small and medium enterprises in developing economies.