A tool for assessing reconfigurability of distributed manufacturing systems

In recent years, a large number of approaches to developing distributed manufacturing systems has been proposed. One of the principles reasons for these development has been to enhance the reconfigurability of a manufacturing operation; allowing it to readily adapt to changes over time. However, to date, there has only been a limited assessment of the resulting reconfigurability properties and hence it remains inconclusive as to whether a distributed manufacturing system design approach does in fact improve reconfigurability. This paper represents part of a study which investigates this issue. It proposes an assessment tool - the so called "Design Structure Matrix" as a means of assessing the modularity of elements in a manufacturing system. (Modularity has been shown to be a key characteristic of a reconfigurable manufacturing system.) The use of the Design Structure Matrix is illustrated in assessing a robot assembly cell designed on distributed manufacturing system principles. Copyright © 2006 IFAC.

Análise e aplicação de métodos de modularização no desenvolvimento do produto

Pós-graduação em Engenharia de Produção - FEG

Structure- and ligand-based drug design approaches for neglected tropical diseases

Drug discovery has moved toward more rational strategies based on our increasing understanding of the fundamental principles of protein-ligand interactions. Structure( SBDD) and ligand-based drug design (LBDD) approaches bring together the most powerful concepts in modern chemistry and biology, linking medicinal chemistry with structural biology. The definition and assessment of both chemical and biological space have revitalized the importance of exploring the intrinsic complementary nature of experimental and computational methods in drug design. Major challenges in this field include the identification of promising hits and the development of high-quality leads for further development into clinical candidates. It becomes particularly important in the case of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) that affect disproportionately poor people living in rural and remote regions worldwide, and for which there is an insufficient number of new chemical entities being evaluated owing to the lack of innovation and R&D investment by the pharmaceutical industry. This perspective paper outlines the utility and applications of SBDD and LBDD approaches for the identification and design of new small-molecule agents for NTDs.

Evaluation of financial incentives as a quality improvement strategy in the public hospital context : clinician attitudes, design variables, and economic costs

In 2008, a three-year pilot ‘pay for performance’ (P4P) program, known as ‘Clinical Practice Improvement Payment’ (CPIP) was introduced into Queensland Health (QHealth). QHealth is a large public health sector provider of acute, community, and public health services in Queensland, Australia. The organisation has recently embarked on a significant reform agenda including a review of existing funding arrangements (Duckett et al., 2008). Partly in response to this reform agenda, a casemix funding model has been implemented to reconnect health care funding with outcomes. CPIP was conceptualised as a performance-based scheme that rewarded quality with financial incentives. This is the first time such a scheme has been implemented into the public health sector in Australia with a focus on rewarding quality, and it is unique in that it has a large state-wide focus and includes 15 Districts. CPIP initially targeted five acute and community clinical areas including Mental Health, Discharge Medication, Emergency Department, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, and Stroke. The CPIP scheme was designed around key concepts including the identification of clinical indicators that met the set criteria of: high disease burden, a well defined single diagnostic group or intervention, significant variations in clinical outcomes and/or practices, a good evidence, and clinician control and support (Ward, Daniels, Walker & Duckett, 2007). This evaluative research targeted Phase One of implementation of the CPIP scheme from January 2008 to March 2009. A formative evaluation utilising a mixed methodology and complementarity analysis was undertaken. The research involved three research questions and aimed to determine the knowledge, understanding, and attitudes of clinicians; identify improvements to the design, administration, and monitoring of CPIP; and determine the financial and economic costs of the scheme. Three key studies were undertaken to ascertain responses to the key research questions. Firstly, a survey of clinicians was undertaken to examine levels of knowledge and understanding and their attitudes to the scheme. Secondly, the study sought to apply Statistical Process Control (SPC) to the process indicators to assess if this enhanced the scheme and a third study examined a simple economic cost analysis. The CPIP Survey of clinicians elicited 192 clinician respondents. Over 70% of these respondents were supportive of the continuation of the CPIP scheme. This finding was also supported by the results of a quantitative altitude survey that identified positive attitudes in 6 of the 7 domains-including impact, awareness and understanding and clinical relevance, all being scored positive across the combined respondent group. SPC as a trending tool may play an important role in the early identification of indicator weakness for the CPIP scheme. This evaluative research study supports a previously identified need in the literature for a phased introduction of Pay for Performance (P4P) type programs. It further highlights the value of undertaking a formal risk assessment of clinician, management, and systemic levels of literacy and competency with measurement and monitoring of quality prior to a phased implementation. This phasing can then be guided by a P4P Design Variable Matrix which provides a selection of program design options such as indicator target and payment mechanisms. It became evident that a clear process is required to standardise how clinical indicators evolve over time and direct movement towards more rigorous ‘pay for performance’ targets and the development of an optimal funding model. Use of this matrix will enable the scheme to mature and build the literacy and competency of clinicians and the organisation as implementation progresses. Furthermore, the research identified that CPIP created a spotlight on clinical indicators and incentive payments of over five million from a potential ten million was secured across the five clinical areas in the first 15 months of the scheme. This indicates that quality was rewarded in the new QHealth funding model, and despite issues being identified with the payment mechanism, funding was distributed. The economic model used identified a relative low cost of reporting (under $8,000) as opposed to funds secured of over $300,000 for mental health as an example. Movement to a full cost effectiveness study of CPIP is supported. Overall the introduction of the CPIP scheme into QHealth has been a positive and effective strategy for engaging clinicians in quality and has been the catalyst for the identification and monitoring of valuable clinical process indicators. This research has highlighted that clinicians are supportive of the scheme in general; however, there are some significant risks that include the functioning of the CPIP payment mechanism. Given clinician support for the use of a pay–for-performance methodology in QHealth, the CPIP scheme has the potential to be a powerful addition to a multi-faceted suite of quality improvement initiatives within QHealth.

Ontario high school sport : an investigation of organizational design and its context

In 2002, The Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations (OFSAA) identified that in providing extracurricular sport programs schools are faced with the 'new realities' of the education system. Although research has been conducted exploring the pressures impacting the provision of extracurricular school sport (Donnelly, Mcloy, Petherick, & Safai, 2000), few studies within the field have focused on understanding extracurricular school sport from an organizational level. The focus of this study was to examine the organizational design (structure, systems, and values) of the extracurricular sport department within three Ontario high schools, as well as to understand the context within which the departments exist. A qualitative multiple case study design was adopted and three public high schools were selected from one district school board in Ontario to represent the cases under investigation. Interviews, observations and documents were used to analyze the extracurricular sport department design of each case and to better understand the context within which the departments exist. As the result of the analysis of the structure, systems and values of each case, two designs emerged- Design KT1 and Design KT2. Differences in the characteristics of design archetype KT1 and KT2 centered on the design dimension of values, and therefore this study identified that contrasting organizational values reflect differences in design types. The characteristics of the Kitchen Table archetype were found to be transferable to the sub-sector of extracurricular school sport, and therefore this research provides a springboard for further research in organizational design within the education sector of extracurricular high school sport. Interconnections were found between the data associated with the external and internal contexts within which the extracurricular sport departments exist. The analysis of the internal context indicated the important role played by organizational members in shaping the context within which the departments exist. The analysis of the external context highlighted the institutional pressures that were present within the education environment. Both political and cultural expectations related to the role of extracurricular sport within schools were visible and were subsequently used by the high schools to create legitimacy and prestige, and to access resources.

Constructing a Canonical form of a Matrix in Several Problems about Combinatorial Designs

Partially supported by the Bulgarian Science Fund contract with TU Varna, No 487.

Analysis of conical-cylinder shells fundamental characteristics for structural health diagnostics

This paper describes the formulation for the free vibration of joined conical-cylindrical shells with uniform thickness using the transfer of influence coefficient for identification of structural characteristics. These characteristics are importance for structural health monitoring to develop model. This method was developed based on successive transmission of dynamic influence coefficients, which were defined as the relationships between the displacement and the force vectors at arbitrary nodal circles of the system. The two edges of the shell having arbitrary boundary conditions are supported by several elastic springs with meridional/axial, circumferential, radial and rotational stiffness, respectively. The governing equations of vibration of a conical shell, including a cylindrical shell, are written as a coupled set of first order differential equations by using the transfer matrix of the shell. Once the transfer matrix of a single component has been determined, the entire structure matrix is obtained by the product of each component matrix and the joining matrix. The natural frequencies and the modes of vibration were calculated numerically for joined conical-cylindrical shells. The validity of the present method is demonstrated through simple numerical examples, and through comparison with the results of previous researchers.

Solving tri-diagonal linear systems using field programmable gate arrays

In this paper, we present the outcomes of a project on the exploration of the use of Field Programmable Gate Arrays(FPGAs) as co-processors for scientific computation. We designed a custom circuit for the pipelined solving of multiple tri-diagonal linear systems. The design is well suited for applications that require many independent tri diagonal system solves, such as finite difference methods for solving PDEs or applications utilising cubic spline interpolation. The selected solver algorithm was the Tri Diagonal Matrix Algorithm (TDMA or Thomas Algorithm). Our solver supports user specified precision thought the use of a custom floating point VHDL library supporting addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. The variable precision TDMA solver was tested for correctness in simulation mode. The TDMA pipeline was tested successfully in hardware using a simplified solver model. The details of implementation, the limitations, and future work are also discussed.

Managing Project Business Development: an Inter-Organizational and Intra-Organizational Perspective (summary section only)

The driving force behind this study is the gap between the reality of the firms engaged in project business and the available studies covering project management and business process development. Previous studies show that project-based organizations were ‘immature’ in terms of the project-management ‘maturity model’, as few firms were found to be optimizing processes. Even within those, very little attention was paid to combine inter-organizational and intra-organizational perspectives. In this study an effort is made to elaborate some thoughts and views on project management, which interrelate firms’ external and internal activities. In line with the integration, the dissertation uses an approach to the management of project-business interdependencies in the networks of actors, activities and resources. Firstly, the study develops an understanding for inter-organizational perspectives by exploring the complementarities of process activities in the basic development of project business. It presents a framework that is elaborated on the basis of the reciprocal interactions of activities within and outside the organization—thus providing a coherent basis for continuous business-process improvement. In addition, the study presents new tools that can be used to develop project-business processes in each of its functional areas. The research demonstrates how project-business activities can be optimized using the right resources at the right time with the right actors and the right actions. The selected five articles included in this dissertation explain the basic framework for the development of project business. Each paper covers various aspects of inter-organizational and intra-organizational perspectives for project management. The study develops a valuable and procedural model for business-process improvement using the Delphi method that can be used not only in academia but also as a guide for practitioners that takes them through a series of well-defined steps when making informed, consistent and efficient changes to their business processes.

Geometric integration applied to moving mesh methods and degenerate Lagrangians

Moving mesh methods (also called r-adaptive methods) are space-adaptive strategies used for the numerical simulation of time-dependent partial differential equations. These methods keep the total number of mesh points fixed during the simulation, but redistribute them over time to follow the areas where a higher mesh point density is required. There are a very limited number of moving mesh methods designed for solving field-theoretic partial differential equations, and the numerical analysis of the resulting schemes is challenging. In this thesis we present two ways to construct r-adaptive variational and multisymplectic integrators for (1+1)-dimensional Lagrangian field theories. The first method uses a variational discretization of the physical equations and the mesh equations are then coupled in a way typical of the existing r-adaptive schemes. The second method treats the mesh points as pseudo-particles and incorporates their dynamics directly into the variational principle. A user-specified adaptation strategy is then enforced through Lagrange multipliers as a constraint on the dynamics of both the physical field and the mesh points. We discuss the advantages and limitations of our methods. The proposed methods are readily applicable to (weakly) non-degenerate field theories---numerical results for the Sine-Gordon equation are presented.

In an attempt to extend our approach to degenerate field theories, in the last part of this thesis we construct higher-order variational integrators for a class of degenerate systems described by Lagrangians that are linear in velocities. We analyze the geometry underlying such systems and develop the appropriate theory for variational integration. Our main observation is that the evolution takes place on the primary constraint and the 'Hamiltonian' equations of motion can be formulated as an index 1 differential-algebraic system. We then proceed to construct variational Runge-Kutta methods and analyze their properties. The general properties of Runge-Kutta methods depend on the 'velocity' part of the Lagrangian. If the 'velocity' part is also linear in the position coordinate, then we show that non-partitioned variational Runge-Kutta methods are equivalent to integration of the corresponding first-order Euler-Lagrange equations, which have the form of a Poisson system with a constant structure matrix, and the classical properties of the Runge-Kutta method are retained. If the 'velocity' part is nonlinear in the position coordinate, we observe a reduction of the order of convergence, which is typical of numerical integration of DAEs. We also apply our methods to several models and present the results of our numerical experiments.

Improving data quality in DSM modelling: A structural comparison approach

The Dependency Structure Matrix (DSM) has proved to be a useful tool for system structure elicitation and analysis. However, as with any modelling approach, the insights gained from analysis are limited by the quality and correctness of input information. This paper explores how the quality of data in a DSM can be enhanced by elicitation methods which include comparison of information acquired from different perspectives and levels of abstraction. The approach is based on comparison of dependencies according to their structural importance. It is illustrated through two case studies: creation of a DSM showing the spatial connections between elements in a product, and a DSM capturing information flows in an organisation. We conclude that considering structural criteria can lead to improved data quality in DSM models, although further research is required to fully explore the benefits and limitations of our proposed approach.

管线钢硫化物应力腐蚀裂开危险性智能探测仪的研究

介绍了管线钢硫化物应力腐蚀裂开危险性智能探测仪的设计、结构和检测结果。该检测仪具有数据采集、存储处理、逻辑判断和现场制表打印输出评价/判断等功能,对及时发现和消除含硫油气管线的隐患,以防止恶性破坏事故的发生有重要意义。

A Mono- and Multi-objective Approach for Recommending Software Refactoring

Les systèmes logiciels sont devenus de plus en plus répondus et importants dans notre société. Ainsi, il y a un besoin constant de logiciels de haute qualité. Pour améliorer la qualité de logiciels, l’une des techniques les plus utilisées est le refactoring qui sert à améliorer la structure d'un programme tout en préservant son comportement externe. Le refactoring promet, s'il est appliqué convenablement, à améliorer la compréhensibilité, la maintenabilité et l'extensibilité du logiciel tout en améliorant la productivité des programmeurs. En général, le refactoring pourra s’appliquer au niveau de spécification, conception ou code. Cette thèse porte sur l'automatisation de processus de recommandation de refactoring, au niveau code, s’appliquant en deux étapes principales: 1) la détection des fragments de code qui devraient être améliorés (e.g., les défauts de conception), et 2) l'identification des solutions de refactoring à appliquer. Pour la première étape, nous traduisons des régularités qui peuvent être trouvés dans des exemples de défauts de conception. Nous utilisons un algorithme génétique pour générer automatiquement des règles de détection à partir des exemples de défauts. Pour la deuxième étape, nous introduisons une approche se basant sur une recherche heuristique. Le processus consiste à trouver la séquence optimale d'opérations de refactoring permettant d'améliorer la qualité du logiciel en minimisant le nombre de défauts tout en priorisant les instances les plus critiques. De plus, nous explorons d'autres objectifs à optimiser: le nombre de changements requis pour appliquer la solution de refactoring, la préservation de la sémantique, et la consistance avec l’historique de changements. Ainsi, réduire le nombre de changements permets de garder autant que possible avec la conception initiale. La préservation de la sémantique assure que le programme restructuré est sémantiquement cohérent. De plus, nous utilisons l'historique de changement pour suggérer de nouveaux refactorings dans des contextes similaires. En outre, nous introduisons une approche multi-objective pour améliorer les attributs de qualité du logiciel (la flexibilité, la maintenabilité, etc.), fixer les « mauvaises » pratiques de conception (défauts de conception), tout en introduisant les « bonnes » pratiques de conception (patrons de conception).

Studies on Riverine Fishing Gears of Central Kerala

The overall focus of the thesis involves Studies on the riverine fishing geara of central kerala.Rivers and reservoirs of India harbour a rich and varied spectrum of fishes exceeding 400 species, which include commercially important fishes.The fish and fisheries play a crucial role in kerala's economy,employment generation ,food security and well being of its people.In the present study ,results of investigations conducted during 2001-2002 on riverine fishing gears of central kerala are presented along with detailed description of fishing gears,their distribution and operation covering aspects of selectivity and operational economics.Chapter I gives an introduction to the topiC of the study highlighting the relevance of the study and reviews of the existing literature on fishing gears and practices in riverine sector and sets out objectives of the study.The chapter 11 deals with the Materials and Methods used for the conduct of the investigations. In this chapter the area and the rivers selected for the study. reasons for the selection process and methodologies used for survey of riverine fishing gaear and investigations on design, structure and operation of different gear systems are presented.The chapter III discusses gillnet and its operation. Gill netting is one of the simplest and oldest methods of fishing. They are the most widely operated fishing gear in the rivers of Central Kerala. Gill netting being a low cost fishing method is of special interest for artisanal fisheries. Twenty different types of gillnets are operated in this sector.Chapter IV deals with cast nets. The origin and evolution of cast net has been briefly described in the introductory part.The chapter V deals with fishing lines, traps and other miscellaneous gears.This findings will be useful for riverine fishermen for deployment of appropriate gear systems during different seasons to ensure profitability of fishing operations.

Aproximación a un marco teórico para la construcción de una metodología para el estudio sistémico de sectores estratégicos

En la búsqueda de adaptabilidad por parte de las organizaciones, para sobrevivir y crecer frente a los cambios, así como de los procesos de formulación y revisión de la estrategia empresarial para la toma de decisiones, la exploración e interpretación del entorno, sus elementos y dinámica se han convertido en una necesidad apremiante. En este contexto, una de las herramientas que permite a las organizaciones mejorar la visión sectorial es la metodología del Análisis Estructural de Sectores Estratégicos (en adelante AESE). Esta visión que se construye a partir de la aplicación de dicha metodología se deriva de los procesos de análisis y de síntesis. En el mismo sentido, la falta de uniformidad del mundo actual, la cantidad de factores que impactan el desempeño organizacional y la complejidad de las interacciones que se dan en los sectores estratégicos conducen a la búsqueda un nuevo enfoque para comprenderlos e intervenirlos. Lo anterior debido a que es claro que desde el pensamiento analítico no se contemplan las múltiples interrelaciones en los sectores estratégicos, su permanente variación, ni los procesos circulares que en ellos se dan, por lo cual la visión que proporciona se considera limitada para comprender la realidad y guiar a los directivos empresariales en la toma de decisiones estratégicas. Por el contrario, el uso del pensamiento sistémico en el estudio sectorial sí posibilita la comprensión de los sectores como sistemas, su diseño, estructura (relaciones) y funcionamiento (dinámica) a fin de obtener una visión de conjunto para intervenirlos. Dentro de los beneficios que brinda la aplicación del pensamiento sistémico (dinámica de sistemas) se encuentra la posibilidad de simular un modelo dinámico que permite determinar el futuro de los sectores estratégicos y guiar a las organizaciones a la definición de políticas alineadas con la búsqueda de la perdurabilidad. Luego, el presente trabajo de investigación pretende establecer los elementos teóricos, conceptuales y metodológicos, asociados con la toma de decisiones estratégicas y con el pensamiento sistémico (dinámica de sistemas), que contribuyen a la construcción de una metodología para el Estudio Sistémico de Sectores Estratégicos (en adelante ESSE).