Assessing the effectiveness of five-year mechanical engineering technology programs of junior colleges in Taiwan, R.O.C.: An application of the CIPP evaluation model

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the mechanical engineering technology curriculum effectiveness at the junior college in Taiwan by using the CIPP evaluation model. The study concerned the areas of the curriculum, curriculum materials, individualized instruction, support services, teaching effectiveness, student achievement, and job performance. A descriptive survey method was used with questionnaires for data collection from faculty, students, graduates, and employers.^ All categories of respondents tended to agree that the curriculum provides appropriate occupational knowledge and skills. Students, graduates, and faculty tended to be satisfied with the curriculum; faculty tended to be satisfied with student achievement; graduates tended to be satisfied with their job preparation; and employers were most satisfied with graduates' job performance.^ Conclusions were drawn in the context, input, process, and product of the CIPP model. In Context area: Students were dissatisfied with curriculum flexibility in students characteristics. Graduates were dissatisfied with curriculum design for student's adaptability in new economic and industrial conditions; practicum flexibility in student characteristics; and course overlap. Both students and graduates were dissatisfied with practicum credit hours. Both faculty and students were dissatisfied with the number of required courses.^ In Input area: Students, faculty, and graduates perceived audiovisuals and manipulative aids positively. Faculty and students perceive CAI implementation positively. Students perceived textbooks negatively.^ In Process area: Faculty, students, and graduates perceived all support service negatively. Faculty tended to perceive the ratios of graduates who enter advanced study and related occupation, and who passed the professional skills certification, negatively. Students tended to perceive teaching effectiveness in terms of instructional strategies, the quality of instruction, overall suitability, and receivable, negatively. Graduates also tended to identify the instructional strategies as a negative perception. Faculty and students perceived curriculum objectives and practicum negatively. Both faculty and students felt that instructors should be more interested in making the courses a useful learning experience.^ In Product area: Employers were satisfied with graduates' academic preparation and job performance, adaptability, punctuality, and their ability to communicate, cooperate, and meet organization needs. Graduates were weak in terms of equipment familiarity and supervisory ability.^ In sum, the curriculum of the five-year mechanical engineering technology programs of junior college in Taiwan has served adequately up to this time in preparing a work force to enter industry. It is now time to look toward the future and adapt the curriculum and instruction for the future needs of this high-tech society. ^

Parameter design considerations in precision engineering

Parameter design is an experimental design and analysis methodology for developing robust processes and products. Robustness implies insensitivity to noise disturbances. Subtle experimental realities, such as the joint effect of process knowledge and analysis methodology, may affect the effectiveness of parameter design in precision engineering; where the objective is to detect minute variation in product and process performance. In this thesis, approaches to statistical forced-noise design and analysis methodologies were investigated with respect to detecting performance variations. Given a low degree of process knowledge, Taguchi's methodology of signal-to-noise ratio analysis was found to be more suitable in detecting minute performance variations than the classical approach based on polynomial decomposition. Comparison of inner-array noise (IAN) and outer-array noise (OAN) structuring approaches showed that OAN is a more efficient design for precision engineering. ^

A review of Taiwan's technological five-year junior college mechanical engineering curriculum development: 1948 to 1994

Taiwan's technological five-year junior college (TFYJC) was founded in 1948 to train technicians to meet the demand coming from national construction. Site level professionals never were trained in curriculum development as this was under strict national control. The purpose of this study is to present an accurate narrative of Taiwan's TFYJC mechanical engineering curriculum development history in order to display the focus, rationale, and influencing forces of the evolving curriculum. This study employed historical research methodology and used document analysis as the primary approach.^ This analysis revealed that the target FYJC curriculum was manufacturing-oriented. The range of government control shifted from little, to full, then to partial control of the curriculum, from autonomy to uniformity then to partial autonomy. The intention of the target curriculum development was always to advance domestic economic development. Voices from the academia and government also influenced curriculum development decisions. Currently, the government has instituted a shift in focus and content causing individual institutions to develop curriculum responses addressing the challenge of advancing Taiwan's position in a global economy.^ Considering the shift in policy and practice, individual institutions intending to design curriculum are advised to implement empirical needs assessments of students, graduates, and employers and to engage in critical studies of emerging resources in order to provide effective in service training. To accomplish this end, TFYJC faculty and administration need training in curriculum theory and practice and evaluation. ^

Development of an odor management plan for industrial stationary sources in an urban environment: A case study for Broward County, Florida

Objectionable odors remain at the top of air pollution complaints in urban areas such as Broward County that is subject to increasing residential and industrial developments. The odor complaints in Broward County escalated by 150 percent for the 2001 to 2004 period although the population increased by only 6 percent. It is estimated that in 2010 the population will increase to 2.5 million. Relying solely on enforcing the local odor ordinance is evidently not sufficient to manage the escalating odor complaint trends. An alternate approach similar to odor management plans (OMPs) that are successful in managing major malodor sources such as animal farms is required. ^ This study aims to develop and determine the feasibility of implementing a comprehensive odor management plan (COMP) for the entire Broward County. Unlike existing OMPs for single sources where the receptors (i.e. the complainants) are located beyond the boundary of the source, the COMP addresses a complex model of multiple sources and receptors coexisting within the boundary of the entire county. Each receptor is potentially subjected to malodor emissions from multiple sources within the county. Also, the quantity and quality of the source/receptor variables are continuously changing. ^ The results of this study show that it is feasible to develop a COMP that adopts a systematic procedure to: (1) Generate maps of existing odor complaint areas and malodor sources, (2) Identify potential odor sources (target sources) responsible for existing odor complaints, (3) Identify possible odor control strategies for target sources, (4) Determine the criteria for implementing odor control strategies, (5) Develop an odor complaint response protocol, and (6) Conduct odor impact analyses for new sources to prevent future odor related issues. Geographic Information System (GIS) is used to identify existing complaint areas. A COMP software that incorporates existing United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) air dispersion software is developed to determine the target sources, predict the likelihood of new complaints, and conduct odor impact analysis. The odor response protocol requires pre-planning field investigations and conducting surveys to optimize the local agency available resources while protecting the citizen's welfare, as required by the Clean Air Act. ^

Development of risk based treatability and engineering measures for reducing exposure to lead contaminated media in the Miami inner city, Florida

A major consequence of contamination at the local level’s population as it relates to environmental health and environmental engineering is childhood lead poisoning. Environmental contamination is one of the pressing environmental concerns facing the world today. Current approaches often focus on large contaminated industrial size sites that are designated by regulatory agencies for site remediation. Prior to this study, there were no known published studies conducted at the local and smaller scale, such as neighborhoods, where often much of the contamination is present to remediate. An environmental health study of local lead-poisoning data in Liberty City, Little Haiti and eastern Little Havana in Miami-Dade County, Florida accounted for a disproportionately high number of the county’s reported childhood lead poisoning cases. An engineering system was developed and designed for a comprehensive risk management methodology that is distinctively applicable to the geographical and environmental conditions of Miami-Dade County, Florida. Furthermore, a scientific approach for interpreting environmental health concerns, while involving detailed environmental engineering control measures and methods for site remediation in contained media was developed for implementation. Test samples were obtained from residents and sites in those specific communities in Miami-Dade County, Florida (Gasana and Chamorro 2002). Currently lead does not have an Oral Assessment, Inhalation Assessment, and Oral Slope Factor; variables that are required to run a quantitative risk assessment. However, various institutional controls from federal agencies’ standards and regulation for contaminated lead in media yield adequate maximum concentration limits (MCLs). For this study an MCL of .0015 (mg/L) was used. A risk management approach concerning contaminated media involving lead demonstrates that the linkage of environmental health and environmental engineering can yield a feasible solution.

Ethnic groups and institutions: A study of institutional engineering in four Central and Eastern European countries

The issue of institutional engineering has gained a renewed interest with the democratic transitions of the Central and Eastern European countries, as for some states it has become a matter of state survival. The four countries examined in the study – Macedonia, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria – exemplify the difficulty in establishing a stable democratic society in the context of the resurgence of national identity. The success of ethnonational minorities in achieving the desired policies affirming or expanding their rights as a group was conditioned upon the cohesion of the minority as well as the permissiveness of state institutions in terms of participation and representation of minority members. The Hungarian minorities in Slovakia and Romania, the Turkish minority in Bulgaria, and the Albanian minority in Macedonia, formed their political organizations to represent their interests. However, in some cases the divergence of strategies or goals between factions of the minority group seriously impeded its ability to obtain the desired concessions from the majority. The difficulty in the pursuit of policies favoring the expansion of minority rights was further exacerbated in some of the cases by the impermissiveness of political institutions. The political parties representing the interest of ethnonational minorities were allowed to participate in elections, although not without suspicions about their intent and even strong opposition from majority groups, but participation in elections and subsequent representation in legislative bodies did not translate into adoption of the desired policies. The ethnonational minorities' inability to effectively influence the decision-making process was the result of the inadequacy of democratic institutions to process these demands and channel them through the normal political process in the absence of majority desire to accommodate them. Despite the promise of democratic institutions to bring about a major overhaul of the policies of forceful assimilation and disregard for minority rights, the four cases analyzed in the study demonstrate that in effect ethnonational minorities continued to be at the mercy of the majority, especially if the minority was unable to position itself as a balancing actor.

Análise de confiabilidade de um moto-ventilador centrífugo: aplicação no sistema de pressurização de subestação industrial para garantia da segurança operacional na indústria petroquímica

The need of the oil industry to ensure the safety of the facilities, employees and the environment, not to mention the search for maximum efficiency of its facilities, makes it seeks to achieve a high level of excellence in all stages of its production processes in order to obtain the required quality of the final product. Know the reliability of equipment and what it stands for a system is of fundamental importance for ensuring the operational safety. The reliability analysis technique has been increasingly applied in the oil industry as fault prediction tool and undesirable events that can affect business continuity. It is an applied scientific methodology that involves knowledge in engineering and statistics to meet and or analyze the performance of components, equipment and systems in order to ensure that they perform their function without fail, for a period of time and under a specific condition. The results of reliability analyzes help in making decisions about the best maintenance strategy of petrochemical plants. Reliability analysis was applied on equipment (bike-centrifugal fan) between the period 2010-2014 at the Polo Petrobras Guamaré Industrial, situated in rural Guamaré municipality in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, where he collected data field, analyzed historical equipment and observing the behavior of faults and their impacts. The data were processed in commercial software reliability ReliaSoft BlockSim 9. The results were compared with a study conducted by the experts in the field in order to get the best maintenance strategy for the studied system. With the results obtained from the reliability analysis tools was possible to determine the availability of the centrifugal motor-fan and what will be its impact on the security of process units if it will fail. A new maintenance strategy was established to improve the reliability, availability, maintainability and decreased likelihood of Moto-Centrifugal Fan failures, it is a series of actions to promote the increased system reliability and consequent increase in cycle life of the asset. Thus, this strategy sets out preventive measures to reduce the probability of failure and mitigating aimed at minimizing the consequences.

Toxicity assessment of industrial- and sunscreen-derived ZnO nanoparticles

Lo scopo della presente tesi è l’analisi della tossicità di nanoparticelle di ossido di zinco (nano-ZnO) verso gli organismi acquatici. In particolare, il presente studio valuta per la prima volta l'inibizione della crescita della diatomea Thalassiosira pseudonana indotta sia da nanoparticelle di dervazione industriale, che da nanoparticelle auto-estratte in laboratorio da un filtro solare. Gli esperimenti, condotti presso il Laboratorio di Ingegneria dell'Università di Miami, hanno mostrato che la tossicità indotta dalle nanoparticelle di ossido di zinco è influenzata dal tipo di nanoparticelle, nonché dalla loro concentrazione nella soluzione acquosa e dal tempo di esposizione. In particolare le nanoparticelle di derivazione industriale, più piccole rispetto alle nanoparticelle estratte dal filtro solare, hanno indotto un’inibizione della crescita superiore, specialmente a concentrazioni inferiori. Questo andamento suggerisce che ad alte concentrazioni la tossicità di nano-ZnO potrebbe essere influenzata dall’aggregazione di nanoparticelle (indipendentemente dalle dimensioni di partenza delle nanoparticelle), mentre a concentrazioni inferiori la tossicità potrebbe essere influenzata dalle dimensioni di partenza delle nanoparticelle, così come dal tipo di nanoparticelle e dal tempo di esposizione.

Novel Formulation and Efficient Solution Strategy for Strategic Optimization of an Industrial Chemical Supply Chain Under Demand Uncertainty

This paper is concerned with strategic optimization of a typical industrial chemical supply chain, which involves a material purchase and transportation network, several manufacturing plants with on-site material and product inventories, a product transportation network and several regional markets. In order to address large uncertainties in customer demands at the different regional markets, a novel robust scenario formulation, which has been developed by the authors recently, is tailored and applied for the strategic optimization. Case study results show that the robust scenario formulation works well for this real industrial supply chain system, and it outperforms the deterministic formulation and the classical scenario-based stochastic programming formulation by generating better expected economic performance and solutions that are guaranteed to be feasible for all uncertainty realizations. The robust scenario problem exhibits a decomposable structure that can be taken advantage of by Benders decomposition for efficient solution, so the application of Benders decomposition to the solution of the strategic optimization is also discussed. The case study results show that Benders decomposition can reduce the solution time by almost an order of magnitude when the number of scenarios in the problem is large.

Dimensionamento de uma ponte metálica de suporte de uma tela transportadora de inertes a utilizar numa instalação industrial

Trabalho de Projeto para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Civil na Área de Especialização em Estruturas

Desenvolvimento de um flotador industrial

A presente dissertação apresenta uma investigação teórica e prática na área de Engenharia e Design de Produto com o objetivo principal de desenvolver um Flotador Industrial para a Adventech, procurando indicadores inovadores, competitivos e focando a necessidade de encontrar uma solução que reflita numa relação entre necessidade, utilizador, performance e design. Desta forma, no presente trabalho cruzam-se temas como a Engenharia e o Design de Produto, Tratamentos de Efluentes Líquidos e Flotação de modo a introduzir e compreender o desenvolvimento deste equipamento. Foi efetuada uma pesquisa sobre o tema para compreender, as suas características e limitações, bem como as formas e mecanismos utilizados para dar resposta aos requisitos e produzir um produto eficiente e eficaz. Paralelamente realizou-se uma abordagem teórica sobre Design de Produto e Processo de Flotação, de modo a conhecer o seu desenvolvimento e as suas restrições, preocupações e objetivos. Complementou-se o trabalho desenvolvido com pesquisa e analisaram-se os produtos existentes na concorrência com o objetivo de conhecer características técnicas, funcionais e físicas. Desta forma, o estudo desenvolvido nesta dissertação serviu e auxiliou o projeto no resultado final, incluindo a materialização do conceito para proporcionar uma boa relação entre utilizador, performance e design. Obtendo assim, um resultado final com características adequadas nas diversas aplicações deste produto nas Estações de Águas Residuais, reduzindo custos de operação e manutenção, eficiência do processo de flotação e vida útil do produto. Paralelamente o design proporciona uma apresentação estética do produto que transmite fiabilidade e profissionalismo.

Analysis of competitiveness level in an industrial company using a continuous improvement based approach

International audience

Modelling of metal recovery from industrial wastewater using a biopolymer sorbent

Comunicação selecionada e Artigo publicado no Livro de Actas do Congresso