Lean product development in practice: Insights from 4 companies

This paper aims to elucidate practitioners' understanding and implementation of Lean in Product Development (LPD). We report on a workshop held in the UK during 2012. Managers and engineers from four organizations discussed their understanding of LPD and their ideas and practice regarding management and assessment of value and waste. The study resulted in a set of insights into current practice and lean thinking from the industry perspective. Building on this, the paper introduces a balanced value and waste model that can be used by practitioners as a checklist to identify issues that need to be considered when applying LPD. The main results indicate that organizations tend to focus on waste elimination rather than value enhancement in LPD. Moreover, the lean metrics that were discussed by the workshop participants do not link the strategic level with the operational one, and poorly reflect the value and waste generated in the process. Future directions for research are explored, and include the importance of a balanced approach considering both value and waste when applying LPD, and the need to link lean metrics with value and waste levels.

Seasonal and interannual variability of primary and export production in the South China Sea: a three-dimensional physical-biogeochemical model study

To investigate the seasonal and interannual variations in biological productivity in the South China Sea (SCS), a Pacific basin-wide physical - biogeochemical model has been developed and used to estimate the biological productivity and export flux in the SCS. The Pacific circulation model, based on the Regional Ocean Model Systems (ROMS), is forced with daily air-sea fluxes derived from the NCEP (National Centers for Environmental Prediction) reanalysis between 1990 and 2004. The biogeochemical processes are simulated with a carbon, Si(OH)(4), and nitrogen ecosystem (CoSiNE) model consisting of silicate, nitrate, ammonium, two phytoplankton groups (small phytoplankton and large phytoplankton), two zooplankton grazers (small micrograzers and large mesozooplankton), and two detritus pools. The ROMS-CoSiNE model favourably reproduces many of the observed features, such as ChI a, nutrients, and primary production (PP) in the SCS. The modelled depth-integrated PP over the euphotic zone (0-125 m) varies seasonally, with the highest value of 386 mg C m (-2) d (-1) during winter and the lowest value of 156 mg C m (-2) d (-1) during early summer. The annual mean value is 196 mg C m (-2) d (-1). The model-integrated annual mean new production (uptake of nitrate), in carbon units, is 64.4 mg C m (-2) d (-1) which yields an f-ratio of 0.33 for the entire SCS. The modelled export ratio (e-ratio: the ratio of export to PP) is 0.24 for the basin-wide SCS. The year-to-year variation of biological productivity in the SCS is weaker than the seasonal variation. The large phytoplankton group tends to dominate over the smaller phytoplankton group, and likely plays an important role in determining the interannual variability of primary and new production.

ODP系统中的联邦交易模型

In this paper we present a federated trading model for the trading services of ODP, A federation constract is used to document the agreement between two federating traders. The federation constract consists of import constract and export constract. We discuss the constituent of the model based on the five viewpoints of ODP.

US Foreign Sales Corporations, Export Tax Credits and the WTO

Rhodes, Mark. 'US Foreign Sales Corporations, Export Tax Credits and the WTO', in: 'The WTO and the Regulation of International Trade: Recent Trade Disputes between the European Union and the United States', (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2005), pp.177-189 RAE2008

Which of the three action-oriented corporate social responsibility (CSR) types is the most effective in improving the public attitude toward tobacco companies?

Dissertação apresentada à Universidade Fernando Pessoa como parte dos requisitos para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Ciências da Comunicação, ramo de Marketing e Publicidade

Historical sketch of the Flathead Indian nation from the year 1813 to 1890 : embracing the history of the establishment of St. Mary's Indian Mission in the Bitter Root Valley, Mont. : with sketches of the missionary life of Father Ravalli and other early missionaries : wars of the Blackfeet and Flatheads and sketches of history, trapping and trading in the early days / by Peter Ronan.

http://www.canadiana.org/ECO/mtq?doc=16974 View document online

Trade & Cap: A Customer-Managed, Market-Based System for Trading Bandwidth Allowances at a Shared Link

We propose Trade & Cap (T&C), an economics-inspired mechanism that incentivizes users to voluntarily coordinate their consumption of the bandwidth of a shared resource (e.g., a DSLAM link) so as to converge on what they perceive to be an equitable allocation, while ensuring efficient resource utilization. Under T&C, rather than acting as an arbiter, an Internet Service Provider (ISP) acts as an enforcer of what the community of rational users sharing the resource decides is a fair allocation of that resource. Our T&C mechanism proceeds in two phases. In the first, software agents acting on behalf of users engage in a strategic trading game in which each user agent selfishly chooses bandwidth slots to reserve in support of primary, interactive network usage activities. In the second phase, each user is allowed to acquire additional bandwidth slots in support of presumed open-ended need for fluid bandwidth, catering to secondary applications. The acquisition of this fluid bandwidth is subject to the remaining "buying power" of each user and by prevalent "market prices" – both of which are determined by the results of the trading phase and a desirable aggregate cap on link utilization. We present analytical results that establish the underpinnings of our T&C mechanism, including game-theoretic results pertaining to the trading phase, and pricing of fluid bandwidth allocation pertaining to the capping phase. Using real network traces, we present extensive experimental results that demonstrate the benefits of our scheme, which we also show to be practical by highlighting the salient features of an efficient implementation architecture.

The Shawlies: A study of early neoliberal ‘gender-fication’. The Street Trading Act, 1926, modern gender-fication, and the implications for Cork’s women street traders

For centuries Cork’s Shawlies, working-class women, survived by trading on public streets. My study explores how the first Irish Free State government, and Cork’s local authority, limited the rights of poor women to earn by subsistence trading with The Street Trading Act, 1926. The government insisted this would regulate street trading. In practice it further marginalised the women economically and socially, containing them outside the privileged, commercial city centre. In Cork the legislation facilitated the gradual disappearance of the Shawlies amid entrenched social processes and relations, contingencies that allowed for the abuse of their rights in the service of amalgamated business interests. This study address the role of discourses in deepening this marginalisation. My theoretical framework is designed to demonstrate how a seemingly innocuous piece of legislation would, in practice, do this. I set out the concepts of ‘Thriving State’, ‘Prosperous State’, and state of ‘Best Intentions’ that uses gentrification to meet these goals. The existing knowledge on women in trade is then examined, highlighting the gaps in what is known about the Shawlies. Chapter 3 details the theory behind my genealogical method. The legislation, debate, and other data produced at the national level is then examined, before moving to the local data. Chapter 6 is devoted to the Shawlies, setting their stories in the larger context of the debates. An examination of studies of contemporary women street traders in poor nations follows, along with a brief history of the decline of street trading in New York city under gentrification. Points of convergence between that process and the one in Cork are identified, along with convergences between contemporary traders and the Shawlies. The conclusion sets out my methodological, theoretical and substantive discoveries, and comments on current nostalgic renderings of the Shawlies in Cork’s newly gentrified Corn Market Street.

CloudNeg: An autonomous multi issue negotiation system, with preference elicitation component, for trading cloud services

Cloud services provide its users with flexible resource provisioning. But in the current market, a user has to choose from a limited set of configurations at a fixed price. This paper presents an autonomous negotiation system termed CloudNeg for negotiating cloud services. CloudNeg provides buyers and sellers of cloud services with autonomous agents to negotiate on the specifications of a cloud instance, including price, on their behalf. These agents elicit their buyers’ time preferences and use them in negotiations. Further, this paper presents two artifacts: a negotiation algorithm and a prototype which together form CloudNeg.

Equity trading volume and volatility: Latent information arrivals and common long-run dependencies

This article examines the behavior of equity trading volume and volatility for the individual firms composing the Standard & Poor's 100 composite index. Using multivariate spectral methods, we find that fractionally integrated processes best describe the long-run temporal dependencies in both series. Consistent with a stylized mixture-of-distributions hypothesis model in which the aggregate "news"-arrival process possesses long-memory characteristics, the long-run hyperbolic decay rates appear to be common across each volume-volatility pair.

Phosphorus export from a restored wetland ecosystem in response to natural and experimental hydrologic fluctuations

Wetland restoration is a commonly used approach to reduce nutrient loading to freshwater and coastal ecosystems, with many wetland restoration efforts occurring in former agricultural fields. Restored wetlands are expected to be effective at retaining or removing both nitrogen and phosphorus (P), yet restoring wetland hydrology to former agricultural fields can lead to the release of legacy fertilizer P. Here, we examined P cycling and export following rewetting of the Timberlake Restoration Project, a 440 ha restored riverine wetland complex in the coastal plain of North Carolina. We also compared P cycling within the restored wetland to two minimally disturbed nearby wetlands and an adjacent active agricultural field. In the restored wetland we observed increased soluble reactive phosphorus (SRP) concentrations following initial flooding, consistent with our expectations that P bound to iron would be released under reducing conditions. SRP concentrations in spring were 2.5 times higher leaving the restored wetland than a forested wetland and an agricultural field. During two large-scale drawdown and rewetting experiments we decreased the water depth by 1 m in ∼10 ha of inundated wetland for 2 weeks, followed by reflooding. Rewetting following experimental drainage had no effect on SRP concentrations in winter, but SRP concentrations did increase when the experiment was repeated during summer. Our best estimates suggest that this restored wetland could release legacy fertilizer P for up to a decade following hydrologic restoration. The time lag between restoration and biogeochemical recovery should be incorporated into management strategies of restored wetlands. Copyright 2010 by the American Geophysical Union.

Control of cyclin B1 localization through regulated binding of the nuclear export factor CRM1.

Activation of the Cyclin B/Cdc2 kinase complex triggers entry into mitosis in all eukaryotic cells. Cyclin B1 localization changes dramatically during the cell cycle, precipitously transiting from the cytoplasm to the nucleus at the beginning of mitosis. Presumably, this relocalization promotes the phosphorylation of nuclear targets critical for chromatin condensation and nuclear envelope breakdown. We show here that the previously characterized cytoplasmic retention sequence of Cyclin B1, responsible for its interphase cytoplasmic localization, is actually an autonomous nuclear export sequence, capable of directing nuclear export of a heterologous protein, and able to bind specifically to the recently identified export mediator, CRM1. We propose that the observed cytoplasmic localization of Cyclin B1 during interphase reflects the equilibrium between ongoing nuclear import and rapid CRM1-mediated export. In support of this hypothesis, we found that treatment of cells with leptomycin B, which disrupted Cyclin B1-CRM1 interactions, led to a marked nuclear accumulation of Cyclin B1. In mitosis, Cyclin B1 undergoes phosphorylation at several sites, a subset of which have been proposed to play a role in Cyclin B1 accumulation in the nucleus. Both CRM1 binding and the ability to direct nuclear export were affected by mutation of these phosphorylation sites; thus, we propose that Cyclin B1 phosphorylation at the G2/M transition prevents its interaction with CRM1, thereby reducing nuclear export and facilitating nuclear accumulation.