Analisi delle preferenze per le diverse categorie di pomodoro trasformato nel food service

Il pomodoro è una delle colture principali del panorama agro-alimentare italiano e rappresenta un ingrediente base della tradizione culinaria nazionale. Il pomodoro lavorato dall’industria conserviera può essere trasformato in diverse tipologie merceologiche, che si differenziano in base alla tecniche di lavorazione impiegate ed alle caratteristiche del prodotto finito. la percentuale di spesa totale destinata all’acquisto di cibo fuori casa è in aumento a livello globale e l’interesse dell’industria alimentare nei confronti di questo canale di vendita è quindi crescente. Mentre sono numerose le indagine in letteratura che studiano i processi di acquisto dei consumatori finali, non ci sono evidenze di studi simili condotti sugli operatori del Food Service. Obiettivo principale della ricerca è quello di valutare le preferenze dei responsabili acquisti del settore Food Service per diverse tipologie di pomodoro trasformato, in relazione ad una gamma di attributi rilevanti del prodotto e di caratteristiche del cliente. La raccolta dei dati è avvenuta attraverso un esperimento di scelta ipotetico realizzato in Italia e alcuni mercati esteri. Dai risultati ottenuti dall’indagine emerge che i Pelati sono la categoria di pomodoro trasformato preferita dai responsabili degli acquisti del settore Food Service intervistati, con il 35% delle preferenze dichiarate nell'insieme dei contesti di scelta proposti, seguita dalla Polpa (25%), dalla Passata (20%) e dal Concentrato (15%). Dai risultati ottenuti dalla stima del modello econometrico Logit a parametri randomizzati è emerso che alcuni attributi qualitativi di fiducia (credence), spesso impiegati nelle strategie di differenziazione e posizionamento da parte dell’industria alimentare nel mercato Retail, possono rivestire un ruolo importante anche nell’influenzare le preferenze degli operatori del Food Service. Questo potrebbe quindi essere un interessante filone di ricerca da sviluppare nel futuro, possibilmente con l'impiego congiunto di metodologie di analisi basate su esperimenti di scelta ipotetici e non ipotetici.

An assessment of the business value of traceability practices in the italian fishery processing industry

Traceability is often perceived by food industry executives as an additional cost of doing business, one to be avoided if possible. However, a traceability system can in fact comply the regulatory requirements, increase food safety and recall performance, improving marketing performances and, as well as, improving supply chain management. Thus, traceability affects business performances of firms in terms of costs and benefits determined by traceability practices. Costs and benefits affect factors such as, firms’ characteristics, level of traceability and ,lastly, costs and benefits perceived prior to traceability implementation. This thesis was undertaken to understand how these factors are linked to affect the outcome of costs and benefits. Analysis of the results of a plant level survey of the Italian ichthyic processing industry revealed that processors generally adopt various level of traceability while government support appears to increase the level of traceability and the expectations and actual costs and benefits. None of the firms’ characteristics, with the exception of government support, influences costs and level of traceability. Only size of firms and level of QMS certifications are linked with benefits while precision of traceability increases benefits without affecting costs. Finally, traceability practices appear due to the request from “external“ stakeholders such as government, authority and customers rather than “internal” factors (e.g. improving the firm management) while the traceability system does not provide any added value from the market in terms of price premium or market share increase.

Modulation Techniques for Multi-Phase Converters and Control Strategies for Multi-Phase Electric Drives

The ever-increasing spread of automation in industry puts the electrical engineer in a central role as a promoter of technological development in a sector such as the use of electricity, which is the basis of all the machinery and productive processes. Moreover the spread of drives for motor control and static converters with structures ever more complex, places the electrical engineer to face new challenges whose solution has as critical elements in the implementation of digital control techniques with the requirements of inexpensiveness and efficiency of the final product. The successfully application of solutions using non-conventional static converters awake an increasing interest in science and industry due to the promising opportunities. However, in the same time, new problems emerge whose solution is still under study and debate in the scientific community During the Ph.D. course several themes have been developed that, while obtaining the recent and growing interest of scientific community, have much space for the development of research activity and for industrial applications. The first area of research is related to the control of three phase induction motors with high dynamic performance and the sensorless control in the high speed range. The management of the operation of induction machine without position or speed sensors awakes interest in the industrial world due to the increased reliability and robustness of this solution combined with a lower cost of production and purchase of this technology compared to the others available in the market. During this dissertation control techniques will be proposed which are able to exploit the total dc link voltage and at the same time capable to exploit the maximum torque capability in whole speed range with good dynamic performance. The proposed solution preserves the simplicity of tuning of the regulators. Furthermore, in order to validate the effectiveness of presented solution, it is assessed in terms of performance and complexity and compared to two other algorithm presented in literature. The feasibility of the proposed algorithm is also tested on induction motor drive fed by a matrix converter. Another important research area is connected to the development of technology for vehicular applications. In this field the dynamic performances and the low power consumption is one of most important goals for an effective algorithm. Towards this direction, a control scheme for induction motor that integrates within a coherent solution some of the features that are commonly required to an electric vehicle drive is presented. The main features of the proposed control scheme are the capability to exploit the maximum torque in the whole speed range, a weak dependence on the motor parameters, a good robustness against the variations of the dc-link voltage and, whenever possible, the maximum efficiency. The second part of this dissertation is dedicated to the multi-phase systems. This technology, in fact, is characterized by a number of issues worthy of investigation that make it competitive with other technologies already on the market. Multiphase systems, allow to redistribute power at a higher number of phases, thus making possible the construction of electronic converters which otherwise would be very difficult to achieve due to the limits of present power electronics. Multiphase drives have an intrinsic reliability given by the possibility that a fault of a phase, caused by the possible failure of a component of the converter, can be solved without inefficiency of the machine or application of a pulsating torque. The control of the magnetic field spatial harmonics in the air-gap with order higher than one allows to reduce torque noise and to obtain high torque density motor and multi-motor applications. In one of the next chapters a control scheme able to increase the motor torque by adding a third harmonic component to the air-gap magnetic field will be presented. Above the base speed the control system reduces the motor flux in such a way to ensure the maximum torque capability. The presented analysis considers the drive constrains and shows how these limits modify the motor performance. The multi-motor applications are described by a well-defined number of multiphase machines, having series connected stator windings, with an opportune permutation of the phases these machines can be independently controlled with a single multi-phase inverter. In this dissertation this solution will be presented and an electric drive consisting of two five-phase PM tubular actuators fed by a single five-phase inverter will be presented. Finally the modulation strategies for a multi-phase inverter will be illustrated. The problem of the space vector modulation of multiphase inverters with an odd number of phases is solved in different way. An algorithmic approach and a look-up table solution will be proposed. The inverter output voltage capability will be investigated, showing that the proposed modulation strategy is able to fully exploit the dc input voltage either in sinusoidal or non-sinusoidal operating conditions. All this aspects are considered in the next chapters. In particular, Chapter 1 summarizes the mathematical model of induction motor. The Chapter 2 is a brief state of art on three-phase inverter. Chapter 3 proposes a stator flux vector control for a three- phase induction machine and compares this solution with two other algorithms presented in literature. Furthermore, in the same chapter, a complete electric drive based on matrix converter is presented. In Chapter 4 a control strategy suitable for electric vehicles is illustrated. Chapter 5 describes the mathematical model of multi-phase induction machines whereas chapter 6 analyzes the multi-phase inverter and its modulation strategies. Chapter 7 discusses the minimization of the power losses in IGBT multi-phase inverters with carrier-based pulse width modulation. In Chapter 8 an extended stator flux vector control for a seven-phase induction motor is presented. Chapter 9 concerns the high torque density applications and in Chapter 10 different fault tolerant control strategies are analyzed. Finally, the last chapter presents a positioning multi-motor drive consisting of two PM tubular five-phase actuators fed by a single five-phase inverter.

The influence of career histories on team perfomance in new product development: a study of the video game industry

The purpose of this research is to contribute to the literature on organizational demography and new product development by investigating how diverse individual career histories impact team performance. Moreover we highlighted the importance of considering also the institutional context and the specific labour market arrangements in which a team is embedded, in order to interpret correctly the effect of career-related diversity measures on performance. The empirical setting of the study is the videogame industry, and the teams in charge of the development of new game titles. Video games development teams are the ideal setting to investigate the influence of career histories on team performance, since the development of videogames is performed by multidisciplinary teams composed by specialists with a wide variety of technical and artistic backgrounds, who execute a significant amounts of creative thinking. We investigate our research question both with quantitative methods and with a case study on the Japanese videogame industry: one of the most innovative in this sector. Our results show how career histories in terms of occupational diversity, prior functional diversity and prior product diversity, usually have a positive influence on team performance. However, when the moderating effect of the institutional setting is taken in to account, career diversity has different or even opposite effect on team performance, according to the specific national context in which a team operates.

International Agricultural Trade under Regulatory Asymmetry: An Economic Analysis of SME Export Behavior

Over the last three decades, international agricultural trade has grown significantly. Technological advances in transportation logistics and storage have created opportunities to ship anything almost anywhere. Bilateral and multilateral trade agreements have also opened new pathways to an increasingly global market place. Yet, international agricultural trade is often constrained by differences in regulatory regimes. The impact of “regulatory asymmetry” is particularly acute for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) that lack resources and expertise to successfully operate in markets that have substantially different regulatory structures. As governments seek to encourage the development of SMEs, policy makers often confront the critical question of what ultimately motivates SME export behavior. Specifically, there is considerable interest in understanding how SMEs confront the challenges of regulatory asymmetry. Neoclassical models of the firm generally emphasize expected profit maximization under uncertainty, however these approaches do not adequately explain the entrepreneurial decision under regulatory asymmetry. Behavioral theories of the firm offer a far richer understanding of decision making by taking into account aspirations and adaptive performance in risky environments. This paper develops an analytical framework for decision making of a single agent. Considering risk, uncertainty and opportunity cost, the analysis focuses on the export behavior response of an SME in a situation of regulatory asymmetry. Drawing on the experience of fruit processor in Muzaffarpur, India, who must consider different regulatory environments when shipping fruit treated with sulfur dioxide, the study dissects the firm-level decision using @Risk, a Monte Carlo computational tool.

Export Supply Chain Organization and Food Safety and Quality Standards: a case study of the Moroccan Fruit and Vegetable Sector

Agri-food supply chains extend beyond national boundaries, partially facilitated by a policy environment that encourages more liberal international trade. Rising concentration within the downstream sector has driven a shift towards “buyer-driven” global value chains (GVCs) extending internationally with global sourcing and the emergence of multinational key economic players that compete with increase emphasis on product quality attributes. Agri-food systems are thus increasingly governed by a range of inter-related public and private standards, both of which are becoming a priori mandatory, especially in supply chains for high-value and quality-differentiated agri-food products and tend to strongly affect upstream agricultural practices, firms’ internal organization and strategic behaviour and to shape the food chain organization. Notably, increasing attention has been given to the impact of SPS measures on agri-food trade and notably on developing countries’ export performance. Food and agricultural trade is the vital link in the mutual dependency of the global trade system and developing countries. Hence, developing countries derive a substantial portion of their income from food and agricultural trade. In Morocco, fruit and vegetable (especially fresh) are the primary agricultural export. Because of the labor intensity, this sector (especially citrus and tomato) is particularly important in terms of income and employment generation, especially for the female laborers hired in the farms and packing houses. Hence, the emergence of agricultural and agrifood product safety issues and the subsequent tightening of market requirements have challenged mutual gains due to the lack of technical and financial capacities of most developing countries.