Patterns and Drivers of the Agri-Food Intra-Industry Trade of European Union Countries

This paper investigates the drivers of agri-food intra-industry trade (IIT) indices in the European Union (EU-27) member states during the period from 2000–2011. The increased proportion of IIT in matched two-way agri-food trade of the EU-27 member states is consistent with economic integration and economic growth. When export prices were at least 15% higher than the import prices, high-vertical IIT, increased for most member states. This finding suggests that quality improvements occurred when comparing agri-food exports to similar imports of agri-food products. The IIT indices for both horizontal and vertical IIT are positively associated with higher economic development levels, new EU membership and EU enlargement. Additionally, as higher levels of economic development decreases, the size of the economy and marginal IIT increases the effects of agri-food trade liberalization on the costs of the labor market adjustment. Understanding how improvements in agri-food trade quality impact agribusiness and managerial competitiveness reveal significant policy implications.

Take the "Con" Out of Consulting in the Food Service Industry

Consultants can help a food service operator with almost any problem which needs solving. Howeve6 the manager must "manage" the consultant. The author offers a design for planning for hiring and evaluating the work of anyone given the job of analyzing existing systems and diagnosing problems.

The Food Service Industry Environment: Market Volatility Analysis

In their dialogue entitled - The Food Service Industry Environment: Market Volatility Analysis - by Alex F. De Noble, Assistant Professor of Management, San Diego State University and Michael D. Olsen, Associate Professor and Director, Division of Hotel, Restaurant & Institutional Management at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, De Noble and Olson preface the discussion by saying: “Hospitality executives, as a whole, do not believe they exist in a volatile environment and spend little time or effort in assessing how current and future activity in the environment will affect their success or failure. The authors highlight potential differences that may exist between executives' perceptions and objective indicators of environmental volatility within the hospitality industry and suggest that executives change these perceptions by incorporating the assumption of a much more dynamic environment into their future strategic planning efforts. Objective, empirical evidence of the dynamic nature of the hospitality environment is presented and compared to several studies pertaining to environmental perceptions of the industry.” That weighty thesis statement presumes that hospitality executives/managers do not fully comprehend the environment in which they operate. The authors provide a contrast, which conventional wisdom would seem to support and satisfy. “Broadly speaking, the operating environment of an organization is represented by its task domain,” say the authors. “This task domain consists of such elements as a firm's customers, suppliers, competitors, and regulatory groups.” These are dynamic actors and the underpinnings of change, say the authors by way of citation. “The most difficult aspect for management in this regard tends to be the development of a proper definition of the environment of their particular firm. Being able to precisely define who the customers, competitors, suppliers, and regulatory groups are within the environment of the firm is no easy task, yet is imperative if proper planning is to occur,” De Noble and Olson further contribute to support their thesis statement. The article is bloated, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, with tables both survey and empirically driven, to illustrate market volatility. One such table is the Bates and Eldredge outline; Table-6 in the article. “This comprehensive outline…should prove to be useful to most executives in expanding their perception of the environment of their firm,” say De Noble and Olson. “It is, however, only a suggested outline,” they advise. “…risk should be incorporated into every investment decision, especially in a volatile environment,” say the authors. De Noble and Olson close with an intriguing formula to gauge volatility in an environment.

Growth of the Food Service Industry

The food service industry has come into its own recognition as a growing segment of the total food market. The author looks at the recent expansion of the industry in volume, diversification of restaurant types, and menu variety

Labor Cost Analysis for the Food Service Industry

There are many factors which can assist in controlling the cost of labor in the food service industry. The author discusses a number of these, including scheduling, establishing production standards, forecasting workloads, analyzing employee turnover, combating absenteeism, and controlling overtime.

The Food Service Industry: Beliefs Held by Academics

In his study - The Food Service Industry: Beliefs Held by Academics - by Jack Ninemeier, Associate Professor, School of Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management at Michigan State University, Associate Professor Ninemeier initially describes his study this way: “Those in the academic sector exert a great deal of influence on those they are training to enter the food service industry. One author surveyed educational institutions across the country to ascertain attitudes of teachers toward various segments of the industry.” Those essential segments of the industry serve as the underpinnings of this discussion and are four-fold. They are lodging, institutional, multi-unit, and single-unit properties. For each segment the analysis addressed factors relating to Marketing, management and operating concerns: Marketing, operations, fiscal management, innovation, future of the segment Employee-related concerns: quality of work life, training/education opportunities, career opportunities The study uses a survey of academicians as a guide; they point to segments of the food service industry students might be inclined to enter, or even ignore. The survey was done via a questionnaire sent from the campus of the School of Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management at Michigan State University to 1850 full-time faculty members in two and four-year hospitality programs in the United States. Through the survey, Ninemeier wishes to reasonably address specific problems now confronting the food service industry. Those problems include but are not limited to: reducing employee turnover, retaining staff, increasing productivity and revenue, and attracting new staff. “Teachers in these programs are, therefore, an important plank in industry's platform designed to recruit students with appropriate background knowledge and interest in their operations,” Ninemeier says. Your author actually illustrates the survey results, in table form. The importance to an employee, of tangibles and intangibles such as morale, ego/esteem, wages, and benefits are each explored through the survey. According to the study, an interesting dichotomy exists in the institutional property element. Although, beliefs the academics hold about the institutional element suggest that it offers low job stress, attractive working conditions, and non-demanding competitive pressures, the survey and Ninemeier also observe: “Academics do not believe that many of their graduates will enter the institutional segment.” “If academic beliefs are incorrect, an educational program to educate academics about management and employee opportunities in the segment may be in order,” Ninemeier waxes philosophically.

Fabrication of Dense Non-Circular Nanomagnetic Device Arrays Using Self-Limiting Low-Energy Glow-Discharge Processing

We describe a low-energy glow-discharge process using reactive ion etching system that enables non-circular device patterns, such as squares or hexagons, to be formed from a precursor array of uniform circular openings in polymethyl methacrylate, PMMA, defined by electron beam lithography. This technique is of a particular interest for bit-patterned magnetic recording medium fabrication, where close packed square magnetic bits may improve its recording performance. The process and results of generating close packed square patterns by self-limiting low-energy glow-discharge are investigated. Dense magnetic arrays formed by electrochemical deposition of nickel over self-limiting formed molds are demonstrated.

Development of hardware in the loop real-time control techniques for hybrid power systems involving distributed demands and sustainable energy sources

The future power grid will effectively utilize renewable energy resources and distributed generation to respond to energy demand while incorporating information technology and communication infrastructure for their optimum operation. This dissertation contributes to the development of real-time techniques, for wide-area monitoring and secure real-time control and operation of hybrid power systems. ^ To handle the increased level of real-time data exchange, this dissertation develops a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system that is equipped with a state estimation scheme from the real-time data. This system is verified on a specially developed laboratory-based test bed facility, as a hardware and software platform, to emulate the actual scenarios of a real hybrid power system with the highest level of similarities and capabilities to practical utility systems. It includes phasor measurements at hundreds of measurement points on the system. These measurements were obtained from especially developed laboratory based Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) that is utilized in addition to existing commercially based PMU’s. The developed PMU was used in conjunction with the interconnected system along with the commercial PMU’s. The tested studies included a new technique for detecting the partially islanded micro grids in addition to several real-time techniques for synchronization and parameter identifications of hybrid systems. ^ Moreover, due to numerous integration of renewable energy resources through DC microgrids, this dissertation performs several practical cases for improvement of interoperability of such systems. Moreover, increased number of small and dispersed generating stations and their need to connect fast and properly into the AC grids, urged this work to explore the challenges that arise in synchronization of generators to the grid and through introduction of a Dynamic Brake system to improve the process of connecting distributed generators to the power grid.^ Real time operation and control requires data communication security. A research effort in this dissertation was developed based on Trusted Sensing Base (TSB) process for data communication security. The innovative TSB approach improves the security aspect of the power grid as a cyber-physical system. It is based on available GPS synchronization technology and provides protection against confidentiality attacks in critical power system infrastructures. ^

Management of presenteeism. The effects on productivity of a food processing company

Presenteeism consists in going to work without conditions to produce, which can have a much higher impact than absenteeism on the productivity of an organisation. Presenteeism translates in both physical as psychological perturbations. It is a difficult to quantify reality, as is its translation into direct and indirect costs within the organisation. Our goal was to analyse the effects of presenteeism on the productivity of a company in the food-procession sector through a descriptive and transversal study of exploratory nature. The Stanford Presenteeism Scale SPS-6 (validated by Ferreira et al, 2010) and a semi-structured interview were used. Most of the workers referred having already gone to work feeling ill at least two days in the last year, mentioning that their health condition affected their performance, made them feel desperate and lacking pleasure from work. Management mentioned that presenteeism has a direct impact on productivity without, however, being able to quantify the true costs. Presenteeism is a reality in organisational scenarios, exceling in the educational and health sectors. We underline the importance of making organisations aware of the psychosocial risks and the importance of having healthy leaderships, work stress control and the presence of clinical psychologists and professional coaches.

Sustainable Energy Production in the United States: Life Cycle Assessment of Biofuels and Bioenergy

The United States of America is making great efforts to transform the renewable and abundant biomass resources into cost-competitive, high-performance biofuels, bioproducts, and biopower. This is the key to increase domestic production of transportation fuels and renewable energy, and reduce greenhouse gas and other pollutant emissions. This dissertation focuses specifically on assessing the life cycle environmental impacts of biofuels and bioenergy produced from renewable feedstocks, such as lignocellulosic biomass, renewable oils and fats. The first part of the dissertation presents the life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy demands of renewable diesel (RD) and hydroprocessed jet fuels (HRJ). The feedstocks include soybean, camelina, field pennycress, jatropha, algae, tallow and etc. Results show that RD and HRJ produced from these feedstocks reduce GHG emissions by over 50% compared to comparably performing petroleum fuels. Fossil energy requirements are also significantly reduced. The second part of this dissertation discusses the life cycle GHG emissions, energy demands and other environmental aspects of pyrolysis oil as well as pyrolysis oil derived biofuels and bioenergy. The feedstocks include waste materials such as sawmill residues, logging residues, sugarcane bagasse and corn stover, and short rotation forestry feedstocks such as hybrid poplar and willow. These LCA results show that as much as 98% GHG emission savings is possible relative to a petroleum heavy fuel oil. Life cycle GHG savings of 77 to 99% were estimated for power generation from pyrolysis oil combustion relative to fossil fuels combustion for electricity, depending on the biomass feedstock and combustion technologies used. Transportation fuels hydroprocessed from pyrolysis oil show over 60% of GHG reductions compared to petroleum gasoline and diesel. The energy required to produce pyrolysis oil and pyrolysis oil derived biofuels and bioelectricity are mainly from renewable biomass, as opposed to fossil energy. Other environmental benefits include human health, ecosystem quality and fossil resources. The third part of the dissertation addresses the direct land use change (dLUC) impact of forest based biofuels and bioenergy. An intensive harvest of aspen in Michigan is investigated to understand the GHG mitigation with biofuels and bioenergy production. The study shows that the intensive harvest of aspen in MI compared to business as usual (BAU) harvesting can produce 18.5 billion gallons of ethanol to blend with gasoline for the transport sector over the next 250 years, or 32.2 billion gallons of bio-oil by the fast pyrolysis process, which can be combusted to generate electricity or upgraded to gasoline and diesel. Intensive harvesting of these forests can result in carbon loss initially in the aspen forest, but eventually accumulates more carbon in the ecosystem, which translates to a CO2 credit from the dLUC impact. Time required for the forest-based biofuels to reach carbon neutrality is approximately 60 years. The last part of the dissertation describes the use of depolymerization model as a tool to understand the kinetic behavior of hemicellulose hydrolysis under dilute acid conditions. Experiments are carried out to measure the concentrations of xylose and xylooligomers during dilute acid hydrolysis of aspen. The experiment data are used to fine tune the parameters of the depolymerization model. The results show that the depolymerization model successfully predicts the xylose monomer profile in the reaction, however, it overestimates the concentrations of xylooligomers.

Examining Levels of Automation in the Wood Processing Industry - A case study

Companies operating in the wood processing industry need to increase their productivity by implementing automation technologies in their production systems. An increasing global competition and rising raw material prizes challenge their competitiveness. Yet, too extensive automation brings risks such as a deterioration in situation awareness and operator deskilling. The concept of Levels of Automation is generally seen as means to achieve a balanced task allocation between the operators’ skills and competences and the need for automation technology relieving the humans from repetitive or hazardous work activities. The aim of this thesis was to examine to what extent existing methods for assessing Levels of Automation in production processes are applicable in the wood processing industry when focusing on an improved competitiveness of production systems. This was done by answering the following research questions (RQ): RQ1: What method is most appropriate to be applied with measuring Levels of Automation in the wood processing industry? RQ2: How can the measurement of Levels of Automation contribute to an improved competitiveness of the wood processing industry’s production processes? Literature reviews were used to identify the main characteristics of the wood processing industry affecting its automation potential and appropriate assessment methods for Levels of Automation in order to answer RQ1. When selecting the most suitable method, factors like the relevance to the target industry, application complexity or operational level the method is penetrating were important. The DYNAMO++ method, which covers both a rather quantitative technical-physical and a more qualitative social-cognitive dimension, was seen as most appropriate when taking into account these factors. To answer RQ 2, a case study was undertaken at a major Swedish manufacturer of interior wood products to point out paths how the measurement of Levels of Automation contributes to an improved competitiveness of the wood processing industry. The focus was on the task level on shop floor and concrete improvement suggestions were elaborated after applying the measurement method for Levels of Automation. Main aspects considered for generalization were enhancements regarding ergonomics in process design and cognitive support tools for shop-floor personnel through task standardization. Furthermore, difficulties regarding the automation of grading and sorting processes due to the heterogeneous material properties of wood argue for a suitable arrangement of human intervention options in terms of work task allocation.  The application of a modified version of DYNAMO++ reveals its pros and cons during a case study which covers a high operator involvement in the improvement process and the distinct predisposition of DYNAMO++ to be applied in an assembly system.

The water-food nexus and the role of demand management

With the global population projected to reach 9 billion in 2050, demand for food is expected to increase by over 50% in 2030 and 70% in 2050 (UN-Water, 2013). Already agriculture is the largest user of water with irrigation accounting for nearly 70% of all freshwater withdrawals (UN-Water, 2016).

Study of tissue damage during mechanical peeling of tough skinned vegetables

Peeling is an essential phase of post harvesting and processing industry; however the undesirable losses and waste rate that occur during peeling stage are always the main concern of food processing sector. There are three methods of peeling fruits and vegetables including mechanical, chemical and thermal, depending on the class and type of fruit. By comparison, the mechanical method is the most preferred; this method keeps edible portions of produce fresh and creates less damage. Obviously reducing material losses and increasing the quality of the process has a direct effect on the whole efficiency of food processing industry which needs more study on technological aspects of this industrial segment. In order to enhance the effectiveness of food industrial practices it is essential to have a clear understanding of material properties and behaviour of tissues under industrial processes. This paper presents the scheme of research that seeks to examine tissue damage of tough skinned vegetables under mechanical peeling process by developing a novel FE model of the process using explicit dynamic finite element analysis approach. In the proposed study a nonlinear model which will be capable of simulating the peeling process specifically, will be developed. It is expected that unavailable information such as cutting force, maximum shearing force, shear strength, tensile strength and rupture stress will be quantified using the new FEA model. The outcomes will be used to optimize and improve the current mechanical peeling methods of this class of vegetables and thereby enhance the overall effectiveness of processing operations. Presented paper aims to review available literature and previous works have been done in this area of research and identify current gap in modelling and simulation of food processes.

USE OF TSIM IN DIGITAL SIMULATION.

In this paper we shall discuss the use of the TSIM simulation software for modelling large-scale industrial processes. The discussion draws on our recent experience of modelling a large plant in the food-processing industry. We shall focus on those features of software organization and software engineering which proved to be particularly necessary for the execution of this project, and illustrate the extent to which the use of TISM facilitated the implementation of these features. We shall also make some general remarks about the 'life-cycle' of models resulting from projects of this kind.