A redesign of a road traffic accident reporting system using business process simulation

Business process simulation (BPS) is used to evaluate the effect of the redesign of a police road traffic accident (RTA) reporting system. The new system aims to provide timely statistical analysis of traffic behaviour to government bodies and to enable more effective utilisation of traffic police personnel. The simulation method is demonstrated in the context of assisting process change enabled by the use of information systems in an organisation in which there had been a historically mixed pattern of success in this activity.

The evolving role of information specialists:change agents in process redesign

The research investigates the past, present and potential future role of Information Specialists (ISps) in process oriented companies. It tests the proposition that ISps in companies that have undertaken formal process reengineering exercises are likely to become more proactive and more business oriented (as opposed to technically oriented) than they had previously been when their organisations were organised along traditional, functional lines. A review of existing literature in the area of Business Process Reengineering and Information Management reveals a lack of consensus amongst researchers concerning the appropriate role for ISps during and after BPR. Opinion is divided as to whether IS professionals should reactively support BPR or whether IT/IS developments should be driving these initiatives. A questionnaire based ‘Descriptive Survey’ with 60 respondents is used as a first stage of primary data gathering. This is followed by follow-up interviews with 20 of the participating organisations to gather further information on their experiences. The final stage of data collection consists of further in-depth interview with four case study companies to provide an even richer picture of their experiences. The results of the questionnaire are analysed and displayed in the form of simple means, frequencies and bar graphs. The ‘NU-DIST’ computer based discourse analysis package was tried in relation to summarising the interview findings, but this proved cumbersome and a visual collation method is preferred. Overall, the researcher contends that the supposition outlined above is proven, and she concludes the research by suggesting the implications of these findings. In particular she offers a ‘Framework for Understanding and Action’ which is deemed to be relevant to both practitioners and future researchers.

The development and optimisation of a fast pyrolysis process for bio-oil production

A two-tier study is presented in this thesis. The first involves the commissioning of an extant but at the time, unproven bubbling fluidised bed fast pyrolysis unit. The unit was designed for an intended nominal throughput of 300 g/h of biomass. The unit came complete with solids separation, pyrolysis vapour quenching and oil collection systems. Modifications were carried out on various sections of the system including the reactor heating, quenching and liquid collection systems. The modifications allowed for fast pyrolysis experiments to be carried out at the appropriate temperatures. Bio-oil was generated using conventional biomass feedstocks including Willow, beechwood, Pine and Miscanthus. Results from this phase of the research showed however, that although the rig was capable of processing biomass to bio-oil, it was characterised by low mass balance closures and recurrent operational problems. The problems included blockages, poor reactor hydrodynamics and reduced organic liquid yields. The less than optimal performance of individual sections, particularly the feed and reactor systems of the rig, culminated in a poor overall performance of the system. The second phase of this research involved the redesign of two key components of the unit. An alternative feeding system was commissioned for the unit. The feed system included an off the shelf gravimetric system for accurate metering and efficient delivery of biomass. Similarly, a new bubbling fluidised bed reactor with an intended nominal throughput of 500g/h of biomass was designed and constructed. The design leveraged on experience from the initial commissioning phase with proven kinetic and hydrodynamic studies. These units were commissioned as part of the optimisation phase of the study. Also as part of this study, two varieties each, of previously unreported feedstocks namely Jatropha curcas and Moringa olifiera oil seed press cakes were characterised to determine their suitability as feedstocks for liquid fuel production via fast pyrolysis. Consequently, the feedstocks were used for the production of pyrolysis liquids. The quality of the pyrolysis liquids from the feedstocks were then investigated via a number of analytical techniques. The oils from the press cakes showed high levels of stability and reduced pH values. The improvements to the design of the fast pyrolysis unit led to higher mass balance closures and increased organic liquid yields. The maximum liquid yield obtained from the press cakes was from African Jatropha press cake at 66 wt% on a dry basis.

Operations management

Operations management deals with the management of the creation of goods and the delivery of services to the customer. It plays an essential role in the success of any organization. In this book, Andrew Greasley provides a clear and accessible introduction to this important area of study, focusing on all key areas of operations in both manufacturing and service industries. Operations Management, Second Edition covers the main areas of operations strategy, the design of the operations system and the management of operations over time. Yet, its concise nature of the text means students are not overwhelmed by the amount of material presented. This new edition also features: New content in such areas such as the quality gap model, enterprise systems and business process management. Expanded case studies, to include more global and European cases and longer cases at the end of each chapter. Greater clarity in chapter material organization. Worked Examples providing a step–by–step guide to the procedure to solve quantitative problems. Visual redesign in full colour. More support material for students and lecturers, including an interactive WileyPLUS course. All lecturers can access supporting resources on the companion website at www.wiley.com/college/greasley including an Instructor’s Manual with suggested solutions for all case study questions and end of chapter exercises, a Test Bank and PowerPoint slides for each chapter. Students will find multiple–choice test quizzes, web–links and an online glossary. Operations Management is essential reading for all students studying operations management, whether on undergraduate, postgraduate or continuing professional development courses.

Improvement of bio-oil stability in wood pyrolysis process

Pyrolysis is one of several thermochemical technologies that convert solid biomass into more useful and valuable bio-fuels. Pyrolysis is thermal degradation in the complete or partial absence of oxygen. Under carefully controlled conditions, solid biomass can be converted to a liquid known as bie-oil in 75% yield on dry feed. Bio-oil can be used as a fuel but has the drawback of having a high level of oxygen due to the presence of a complex mixture of molecular fragments of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin polymers. Also, bio-oil has a number of problems in use including high initial viscosity, instability resulting in increased viscosity or phase separation and high solids content. Much effort has been spent on upgrading bio-oil into a more usable liquid fuel, either by modifying the liquid or by major chemical and catalytic conversion to hydrocarbons. The overall primary objective was to improve oil stability by exploring different ways. The first was to detennine the effect of feed moisture content on bio-oil stability. The second method was to try to improve bio-oil stability by partially oxygenated pyrolysis. The third one was to improve stability by co-pyrolysis with methanol. The project was carried out on an existing laboratory pyrolysis reactor system, which works well with this project without redesign or modification too much. During the finishing stages of this project, it was found that the temperature of the condenser in the product collection system had a marked impact on pyrolysis liquid stability. This was discussed in this work and further recommendation given. The quantity of water coming from the feedstock and the pyrolysis reaction is important to liquid stability. In the present work the feedstock moisture content was varied and pyrolysis experiments were carried out over a range of temperatures. The quality of the bio-oil produced was measured as water content, initial viscosity and stability. The result showed that moderate (7.3-12.8 % moisture) feedstock moisture led to more stable bio-oil. One of drawbacks of bio-oil was its instability due to containing unstable oxygenated chemicals. Catalytic hydrotreatment of the oil and zeolite cracking of pyrolysis vapour were discllssed by many researchers, the processes were intended to eliminate oxygen in the bio-oil. In this work an alternative way oxygenated pyrolysis was introduced in order to reduce oil instability, which was intended to oxidise unstable oxygenated chemicals in the bio-oil. The results showed that liquid stability was improved by oxygen addition during the pyrolysis of beech wood at an optimum air factor of about 0.09-0.15. Methanol as a postproduction additive to bio-oil has been studied by many researchers and the most effective result came from adding methanol to oil just after production. Co-pyrolysis of spruce wood with methanol was undertaken in the present work and it was found that methanol improved liquid stability as a co-pyrolysis solvent but was no more effective than when used as a postproduction additive.

Computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) and the principle of business control

In response to the increasing international competitiveness, many manufacturing businesses are rethinking their management strategies and philosophies towards achieving a computer integrated environment. The explosive growth in Advanced Manufacturing Technology (AMI) has resulted in the formation of functional "Islands of Automation" such as Computer Aided Design (CAD), Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM), Computer Aided Process Planning (CAPP) and Manufacturing Resources Planning (MRPII). This has resulted in an environment which has focussed areas of excellence and poor overall efficiency, co-ordination and control. The main role of Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) is to integrate these islands of automation and develop a totally integrated and controlled environment. However, the various perceptions of CIM, although developing, remain focussed on a very narrow integration scope and have consequently resulted in mere linked islands of automation with little improvement in overall co-ordination and control. This thesis, that is the research described within, develops and examines a more holistic view of CIM, which is based on the integration of various business elements. One particular business element, namely control, has been shown to have a multi-facetted and underpinning relationship with the CIM philosophy. This relationship impacts various CIM system design aspects including the CIM business analysis and modelling technique, the specification of systems integration requirements, the CIM system architectural form and the degree of business redesign. The research findings show that fundamental changes to CIM system design are required; these are incorporated in a generic CIM design methodology. The affect and influence of this holistic view of CIM on a manufacturing business has been evaluated through various industrial case study applications. Based on the evidence obtained, it has been concluded that this holistic, control based approach to CIM can provide a greatly improved means of achieving a totally integrated and controlled business environment. This generic CIM methodology will therefore make a significant contribution to the planning, modelling, design and development of future CIM systems.

Simulation of robot manipulator control strategies

The high capital cost of robots prohibit their economic application. One method of making their application more economic is to increase their operating speed. This can be done in a number of ways e.g. redesign of robot geometry, improving actuators and improving control system design. In this thesis the control system design is considered. It is identified in the literature review that two aspects in relation to robot control system design have not been addressed in any great detail by previous researchers. These are: how significant are the coupling terms in the dynamic equations of the robot and what is the effect of the coupling terms on the performance of a number of typical independent axis control schemes?. The work in this thesis addresses these two questions in detail. A program was designed to automatically calculate the path and trajectory and to calculate the significance of the coupling terms in an example application of a robot manipulator tracking a part on a moving conveyor. The inertial and velocity coupling terms have been shown to be of significance when the manipulator was considered to be directly driven. A simulation of the robot manipulator following the planned trajectory has been established in order to assess the performance of the independent axis control strategies. The inertial coupling was shown to reinforce the control torque at the corner points of the trajectory, where there was an abrupt demand in acceleration in each axis but of opposite sign. This reduced the tracking error however, this effect was not controllable. A second effect was due to the velocity coupling terms. At high trajectory speeds it was shown, by means of a root locus analysis, that the velocity coupling terms caused the system to become unstable.

Lead time reduction for new products

The research, which was given the terms of reference, "To cut the lead time for getting new products into volume production", was sponsored by a company which develops and manufactures telecommunications equipment. The research described was based on studies made of the development of two processors which were designed to control telephone exchanges in the public network. It was shown that for each of these products, which were large electronic systems containing both hardware and software, most of their lead time was taken up with development. About half of this time was consumed by activities associated with redesign resulting from changes found to be necessary after the original design had been built. Analysing the causes of design changes showed the most significant to be Design Faults. The reasons why these predominated were investigated by seeking the collective opinion from design staff and their management using a questionnaire. Using the results from these studies to build upon the works of other authors, a model of the development process of large hierarchical systems is derived. An important feature of this model is its representation of iterative loops due to design changes. In order to reduce the development time, two closely related philosophies are proposed: By spending more time at the early stages of development (detecting and remedying faults in the design) even greater savings can be made later on, The collective performance of the development organisation would be improved by increasing the amount and speed of feedback about that performance. A trial was performed to test these philosophies using readily available techniques for design verification. It showed that about an 11 per cent saving would be made on the development time and that the philosophies might be equally successfully applied to other products and techniques.

The Library of Birmingham project:lifelong learning for the digital age

The Library of Birmingham (LoB) is a £193million project designed to provide a new space for lifelong learning and knowledge growth, a physical and virtual portal for Birmingham's citizens to the wider world. In cooperation with a range of private, public, and third-sector bodies, as well as individual citizens, the library, due to open in June 2013, will articulate a continuing process of organic growth and emergence. Key delivery themes focus on: arts and creativity, citizenship and community, enterprise and innovation, learning and skills and the new media ecology. A landmark design in the heart of the cultural district of the city, the LoB aims to stimulate sustainable economic growth, urban regeneration and social inclusion by offering a wide range of new digital learning services, real and virtual community spaces, and new opportunities for interpreting and exploiting internationally significant collections of documentary archives, photography, moving image, and rare printed books. Additionally, the LoB will offer physical space for creative, cultural, enterprise, and knowledge development. This paper outlines the cultural and educational thinking that informs the project and the challenges experienced in developing innovative service redesign.

Advanced manufacturing technology, work design, and performance:a change study

Two alternative work designs are identified for operators of stand-alone advanced manufacturing technology (AMT). In the case of specialist control, operators are limited to running and monitoring the technology, with operating problems handled by specialists, such as engineers. In the case of operator control, operators are given much broader responsibilities and deal directly with the majority of operating problems encountered. The hypothesis that operator control would promote better performance and psychological well-being than would specialist control (which is more prevalent) was tested in a longitudinal field study involving work redesign for operators of computer-controlled assembly machines. Change from specialist to operator control reduced downtime, especially for high-variance systems, and was associated with greater intrinsic job satisfaction and less perceived work pressure. The implications of these findings for both small and large-scale applications of AMT are discussed.

Agile or adaptable? Finding a paradigm for an uncertain world

This paper looks at the way in which, over recent years, paradigms for manufacturing management have evolved as a result of changing economic and environmental circumstances. The lean production concept, devised during the 1980s, proved robust only until the end of the bubble economy in Japan caused firms to re-examine the underlying principles of the lean production paradigm and redesign their production systems to suit the changing circumstances they were facing. Since that time a plethora of new concepts have emerged, most of which have been based on improving the way that firms are able to respond to the uncertainties of the new environment in which they have found themselves operating. The main question today is whether firms should be agile or adaptable. Both concepts imply a measure of responsiveness, but recent changes in the nature of the uncertainties have heightened the debate about what strategies should be adopted in the future.

Public libraries and the right to the [smart] city

The future of public libraries has been threatened by funding cuts and new digital technologies which have led many people to question their traditional role and purpose. However, freedom of information, ready access to knowledge and information literacy in all its digital and analog guises are more important than ever. Thus, public libraries remain significant spaces and places where people can socially interact and learn. In many countries public libraries are reinventing themselves and part of this process has been the redesign of library services and the design and construction of new library building and facilities that articulate the values, purpose and role of what has been termed 'the next library'. Following discussion of new library developments in London, Birmingham and Worcester in the UK, Aarhus in Denmark and Helsinki in Finland, the article concludes that public libraries are now both social and media spaces as well as being important physical places that can help city dwellers decide what type of urban world they want to see.

Collaborative design of assessment criteria to improve undergraduate student engagement and performance

Student engagement is vital in enhancing the student experience and encouraging deeper learning. Involving students in the design of assessment criteria is one way in which to increase student engagement. In 2011, a marking matrix was used at Aston University (UK) for logbook assessment (Group One) in a project-based learning module. The next cohort of students in 2012 (Group Two) were asked to collaboratively redesign the matrix and were given a questionnaire about the exercise. Group Two initially scored a lower average logbook mark than Group One. However, Group Two showed the greatest improvement between assessments, and the quality of, and commitment to, logbooks was noticeably improved. Student input resulted in a more defined, tougher mark scheme. However, this provided an improved feedback system that gave more scope for self-improvement. The majority of students found the exercise incorporated their ideas, enhanced their understanding, and was useful in itself.