Automation, rationalisation and concentration : a case study in the British chemical industry

This thesis is based upon a case study of the adoption of digital, electronic, microprocessor-based control systems by Albright & Wilson Limited - a UK chemical producer. It offers an explanation of the company's changing technology policy between 1978 and 1981, by examining its past development, internal features and industrial environment. Part One of the thesis gives an industry-level analysis which relates the development of process control technology to changes in the economic requirements of production . The rapid diffusion of microcomputers and other microelectronic equipment in the chemical industry is found to be a response to general need to raise the efficiency of all processes, imposed by the economic recession following 1973. Part Two examines the impaot of these technical and eoonomic ohanges upon Albright & Wilson Limited. The company's slowness in adopting new control technology is explained by its long history in which trends are identified whlich produced theconservatism of the 1970s. By contrast, a study of Tenneco Incorporated, a much more successful adoptor of automating technology, is offered with an analysis of the new technology policy of adoption of such equipment which it imposed upon Albright & Wilson, following the latter's takeover by Tenneco in 1978. Some indications of the consequences by this new policy of widespread adoptions of microprocessor-based control equipment are derived from a study of the first Albright & Wilson plant to use such equipment. The thesis concludes that companies which fail to adopt rapidly the new control technology may not survive in the recessionary environment, the long- established British companies may lack the flexibility to make such necessary changes and that multi-national companies may have an important role jn the planned transfer and adoption of new production technology through their subsidiaries in the UK.

A contingency theory perspective on the risk management control system within Birmingham City Council

In recent years the topic of risk management has moved up the agenda of both government and industry, and private sector initiatives to improve risk and internal control systems have been mirrored by similar promptings for change in the public sector. Both regulators and practitioners now view risk management as an integral part of the process of corporate governance, and an aid to the achievement of strategic objectives. The paper uses case study material on the risk management control system at Birmingham City Council to extend existing theory by developing a contingency theory for the public sector. The case demonstrates that whilst the structure of the control system fits a generic model, the operational details indicate that controls are contingent upon three core variables—central government policies, information and communication technology and organisational size. All three contingent variables are suitable for testing the theory across the broader public sector arena.

Competitive edge through operations management

A view has emerged within manufacturing and service organizations that the operations management function can hold the key to achieving competitive edge. This has recently been emphasized by the demands for greater variety and higher quality which must be set against a background of increasing cost of resources. As nations' trade barriers are progressively lowered and removed, so producers of goods and service products are becoming more exposed to competition that may come from virtually anywhere around the world. To simply survive in this climate many organizations have found it necessary to improve their manufacturing or service delivery systems. To become real ''winners'' some have adopted a strategic approach to operations and completely reviewed and restructured their approach to production system design and operations planning and control. The articles in this issue of the International journal of Operations & Production Management have been selected to illustrate current thinking and practice in relation to this situation. They are all based on papers presented to the Sixth International Conference of the Operations Management Association-UK which was held at Aston University in June 1991. The theme of the conference was "Achieving Competitive Edge" and authors from 15 countries around the world contributed to more than 80 presented papers. Within this special issue five topic areas are addressed with two articles relating to each. The topics are: strategic management of operations; managing change; production system design; production control; and service operations. Under strategic management of operations De Toni, Filippini and Forza propose a conceptual model which considers the performance of an operating system as a source of competitive advantage through the ''operation value chain'' of design, purchasing, production and distribution. Their model is set within the context of the tendency towards globalization. New's article is somewhat in contrast to the more fashionable literature on operations strategy. It challenges the validity of the current idea of ''world-class manufacturing'' and, instead, urges a reconsideration of the view that strategic ''trade-offs'' are necessary to achieve a competitive edge. The importance of managing change has for some time been recognized within the field of organization studies but its relevance in operations management is now being realized. Berger considers the use of "organization design", ''sociotechnical systems'' and change strategies and contrasts these with the more recent idea of the ''dialogue perspective''. A tentative model is suggested to improve the analysis of different strategies in a situation specific context. Neely and Wilson look at an essential prerequisite if change is to be effected in an efficient way, namely product goal congruence. Using a case study as its basis, their article suggests a method of measuring goal congruence as a means of identifying the extent to which key performance criteria relating to quality, time, cost and flexibility are understood within an organization. The two articles on production systems design represent important contributions to the debate on flexible production organization and autonomous group working. Rosander uses the results from cases to test the applicability of ''flow groups'' as the optimal way of organizing batch production. Schuring also examines cases to determine the reasons behind the adoption of ''autonomous work groups'' in The Netherlands and Sweden. Both these contributions help to provide a greater understanding of the production philosophies which have emerged as alternatives to more conventional systems -------for intermittent and continuous production. The production control articles are both concerned with the concepts of ''push'' and ''pull'' which are the two broad approaches to material planning and control. Hirakawa, Hoshino and Katayama have developed a hybrid model, suitable for multistage manufacturing processes, which combines the benefits of both systems. They discuss the theoretical arguments in support of the system and illustrate its performance with numerical studies. Slack and Correa's concern is with the flexibility characteristics of push and pull material planning and control systems. They use the case of two plants using the different systems to compare their performance within a number of predefined flexibility types. The two final contributions on service operations are complementary. The article by Voss really relates to manufacturing but examines the application of service industry concepts within the UK manufacturing sector. His studies in a number of companies support the idea of the ''service factory'' and offer a new perspective for manufacturing. Harvey's contribution by contrast, is concerned with the application of operations management principles in the delivery of professional services. Using the case of social-service provision in Canada, it demonstrates how concepts such as ''just-in-time'' can be used to improve service performance. The ten articles in this special issue of the journal address a wide range of issues and situations. Their common aspect is that, together, they demonstrate the extent to which competitiveness can be improved via the application of operations management concepts and techniques.

Logical Models of Composite Dynamic Objects Control

The questions of designing multicriteria control systems on the basis of logic models of composite dynamic objects are considered.

Timed Transition Automata as Numerical Planning Domain

A general technique for transforming a timed finite state automaton into an equivalent automated planning domain based on a numerical parameter model is introduced. Timed transition automata have many applications in control systems and agents models; they are used to describe sequential processes, where actions are labelling by automaton transitions subject to temporal constraints. The language of timed words accepted by a timed automaton, the possible sequences of system or agent behaviour, can be described in term of an appropriate planning domain encapsulating the timed actions patterns and constraints. The time words recognition problem is then posed as a planning problem where the goal is to reach a final state by a sequence of actions, which corresponds to the timed symbols labeling the automaton transitions. The transformation is proved to be correct and complete and it is space/time linear on the automaton size. Experimental results shows that the performance of the planning domain obtained by transformation is scalable for real world applications. A major advantage of the planning based approach, beside of the solving the parsing problem, is to represent in a single automated reasoning framework problems of plan recognitions, plan synthesis and plan optimisation.

The Complex Unified Evolutionary Approach to the Creation of the Multilevel Distributed Control System of a Gas-transport Company

The objects of a large-scale gas-transport company (GTC) suggest a complex unified evolutionary approach, which covers basic building concepts, up-to-date technologies, models, methods and means that are used in the phases of design, adoption, maintenance and development of the multilevel automated distributed control systems (ADCS).. As a single methodological basis of the suggested approach three basic Concepts, which contain the basic methodological principles and conceptual provisions on the creation of distributed control systems, were worked out: systems of the lower level (ACS of the technological processes based on up-to-date SCADA), of the middle level (ACS of the operative-dispatch production control based on MES-systems) and of the high level (business process control on the basis of complex automated systems ERP).

Comparison between conventional and stochastic pinning control

Theoretical developments on pinning control of complex dynamical networks have mainly focused on the deterministic versions of the model dynamics. However, the dynamical behavior of most real networks is often affected by stochastic noise components. In this paper the pinning control of a stochastic version of the coupled map lattice network with spatiotemporal characteristics is studied. The control of these complex dynamical networks have functional uncertainty which should be considered when calculating stabilizing control signals. Two feedback control methods are considered: the conventional feedback control and modified stochastic feedback control. It is shown that the typically-used conventional control method suffers from the ignorance of model uncertainty leading to a reduction and potentially a collapse in the control efficiency. Numerical verification of the main result is provided for a chaotic coupled map lattice network. © 2011 IEEE.

A mixture density network approach to modelling and exploiting uncertainty in nonlinear control problems

In nonlinear and stochastic control problems, learning an efficient feed-forward controller is not amenable to conventional neurocontrol methods. For these approaches, estimating and then incorporating uncertainty in the controller and feed-forward models can produce more robust control results. Here, we introduce a novel inversion-based neurocontroller for solving control problems involving uncertain nonlinear systems which could also compensate for multi-valued systems. The approach uses recent developments in neural networks, especially in the context of modelling statistical distributions, which are applied to forward and inverse plant models. Provided that certain conditions are met, an estimate of the intrinsic uncertainty for the outputs of neural networks can be obtained using the statistical properties of networks. More generally, multicomponent distributions can be modelled by the mixture density network. Based on importance sampling from these distributions a novel robust inverse control approach is obtained. This importance sampling provides a structured and principled approach to constrain the complexity of the search space for the ideal control law. The developed methodology circumvents the dynamic programming problem by using the predicted neural network uncertainty to localise the possible control solutions to consider. A nonlinear multi-variable system with different delays between the input-output pairs is used to demonstrate the successful application of the developed control algorithm. The proposed method is suitable for redundant control systems and allows us to model strongly non-Gaussian distributions of control signal as well as processes with hysteresis. © 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A production/recycling model with quality consideration

An integrated production–recycling system is investigated. A constant demand can be satisfied by production and recycling. The used items might be bought back and then recycled. The not recycled products are disposed off. Two types of models are analyzed. The first model examines and minimizes the EOQ related cost. The second model generalizes the first one by introducing additionally linear waste disposal, recycling, production and buyback costs. This basic model was examined by the authors in a previous paper. The main results are that a pure strategy (either production or recycling) is optimal. This paper extends the model for the case of quality consideration: it is asked for the quality of the bought back products. In the former model we have assumed that all returned items are serviceable. One can put the following question: Who should control the quality of the returned items? If the suppliers examine the quality of the reusable products, then the buyback rate is strongly smaller than one, α<1. If the user does it, then not all returned items are recyclable, i.e. the use rate is smaller than one, δ<1. Which one of the control systems are more cost advantageous in this case?

Optimization of adaptive traffic signal control with transit signal priority at isolated intersections using parallel genetic algorithms

Optimization of adaptive traffic signal timing is one of the most complex problems in traffic control systems. This dissertation presents a new method that applies the parallel genetic algorithm (PGA) to optimize adaptive traffic signal control in the presence of transit signal priority (TSP). The method can optimize the phase plan, cycle length, and green splits at isolated intersections with consideration for the performance of both the transit and the general vehicles. Unlike the simple genetic algorithm (GA), PGA can provide better and faster solutions needed for real-time optimization of adaptive traffic signal control. ^ An important component in the proposed method involves the development of a microscopic delay estimation model that was designed specifically to optimize adaptive traffic signal with TSP. Macroscopic delay models such as the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM) delay model are unable to accurately consider the effect of phase combination and phase sequence in delay calculations. In addition, because the number of phases and the phase sequence of adaptive traffic signal may vary from cycle to cycle, the phase splits cannot be optimized when the phase sequence is also a decision variable. A "flex-phase" concept was introduced in the proposed microscopic delay estimation model to overcome these limitations. ^ The performance of PGA was first evaluated against the simple GA. The results show that PGA achieved both faster convergence and lower delay for both under- or over-saturated traffic conditions. A VISSIM simulation testbed was then developed to evaluate the performance of the proposed PGA-based adaptive traffic signal control with TSP. The simulation results show that the PGA-based optimizer for adaptive TSP outperformed the fully actuated NEMA control in all test cases. The results also show that the PGA-based optimizer was able to produce TSP timing plans that benefit the transit vehicles while minimizing the impact of TSP on the general vehicles. The VISSIM testbed developed in this research provides a powerful tool to design and evaluate different TSP strategies under both actuated and adaptive signal control. ^

Los Angeles, 1984: Hot Dogs and Croissants

Providing spectator food service for the Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles was a massive and challenging undertaking. The author details the planning, recruitment, training, and sales considerations which the provider went through over a two-year period to be ready for the Games.

LPJ-LMfire simulations for Europe for the Last Glacial Maximum and preindustrial control, link to netCDF files

This data sets contains LPJ-LMfire dynamic global vegetation model output covering Europe and the Mediterranean for the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM; 21 ka) and for a preindustrial control simulation (20th century detrended climate). The netCDF data files are time averages of the final 30 years of the model simulation. Each netCDF file contains four or five variables: fractional cover of 9 plant functional types (PFTs; cover), total fractional coverage of trees (treecover), population density of hunter-gatherers (foragerPD; only for the "people" simulations), fraction of the gridcell burned on 30-year average (burnedf), and vegetation net primary productivity (NPP). The model spatial resolution is 0.5-degrees For the LGM simulations, LPJ-LMfire was driven by the PMIP3 suite of eight GCMs for which LGM climate simulations were available. Also provided in this archive is the result of an LPJ-LMfire run that was forced by the average climate of all GCMs (the "GCM-mean" files), and the average of each of the individual LPJ-LMfire runs over the eight LGM scenarios individually (the "LPJ-mean" files). The model simulations are provided that include the influence of human presence on the landscape (the "people" files), and in a "world without humans" scenario (the "natural" files). Finally this archive contains the preindustrial reference simulation with and without human influence ("PI_reference_people" and "PI_reference_nat", respectively). There are therefore 22 netCDF files in this archive: 8 each of LGM simulations with and without people (total 16) and the "GCM mean" simulation (2 files) and the "LPJ mean" aggregate (2 files), and finally the two preindustrial "control" simulations ("PI"), with and without humans (2 files). In addition to the LPJ-LMfire model output (netCDF files), this archive also contains a table of arboreal pollen percent calculated from pollen samples dated to the LGM at sites throughout (lgmAP.txt), and a table containing the location of archaeological sites dated to the LGM (LGM_archaeological_site_locations.txt).

Welke 'acteur' neemt de controllerrol als extraverte business partner?

Which 'actor' takes the management accountant role as an extravert business partner? Does a relation between the personal trait Extraversion and fulfilling a management accountant role as a business partner exist? Open Universiteit Nederland End thesis MSc Management, Accounting & Finance Support 1: Prof. dr. A.C.N. van de Ven RA Support 2: dr. P.C.M. Claes Examinator: dr. P. Kamminga Date of approval: September 3, 2014 student: P.R. van der Wal (studentnumber 839104017 email petervanderwal2003@yahoo.com The main question of this research is: Does a relation between the personal trait Extraversion and fulfilling a management accountant role as a business partner exist? This research is based on the dataset obtained by the controller survey 2013, executed in commission of the 'Open Universiteit' (Bork & van der Wal, 2014). From the literature review it is clear: among other management accountant roles we need business partners. And there is a relation between the personal trait Extraversion and fulfilling the role as business partner. At the same time a lack of necessary personal traits for this role has been noticed, among which is Extraversion. The factor- and cluster analyses reported by Bork & van der Wal (2014) resulted in the identification of two types of management accountant roles. In this extended research TYPE II is identified as a business partner because (s)he practices activity-combinations which are related to strategy, analyzing, supporting management in decision making, advisory, change-agency and representing the organization. 36% of the population of Dutch management accountants with a master degree (or similar) meet with the role of the business partner. Although the fulfillment of the role (TYPE II) is not purely business partnering. E.g. reporting and scorekeeping are still activities executed by TYPE II and it is not clear to what extent. Apart from that, role TYPE I executes change management and risk-management activities, which are (according to the definition) activities that belong to the business partner. The role as business partner is practiced but not that optimal as defined in theory. The logistic regression analyses on the survey-data show that Extraversion among three other triggers is significant for the prediction of the fulfillment of the management accountant role (Bork & van der Wal, 2014). A more extravert personal trait predicts a preference for TYPE II, which relates to the business partner. This 'in depth research' concentrated on the relation between the Big Five personal traits and the six activity-combinations (factors) instead of on the two clusters (I and II). The statistic analyses confirm the predicting influence of Extraversion on the business partner role. Although, except for one factor, no extra significance has been found in this additional research. The essential question can be confirmed positively: the management accountant role business partner exists in practice, some management accountants are more extravert then others, and there is a positive relation between extraversion and fulfilling the business partner role. Some formulated research limitations are related to the statistical weakness of some prediction outcomes and to interpretation differences that might occur. Further research can e.g. concentrate on the other personal traits and the significance for role-differentiation in education programs. The management accountant survey 2013 Management accountant roles in 2013 in the Netherlands Open Universiteit Nederland End thesis MSc Management, Accounting & Finance Support 1: Prof. dr. A.C.N. van de Ven RA Support 2: dr. P.C.M. Claes Examinator: dr. P. Kamminga Date of approval: September 3, 2014 student: P.R. van der Wal and H.J. Bork studentnumber: 839104017 and 838532340) email: petervanderwal2003@yahoo.com and hjbork@hotmail.com This paper describes the conceptual model and results of the 'management accountants survey 2013'. The survey is part of a longitudinal survey, earlier executed in 2004, 2007 and 2010 under responsibility of the 'Open Universiteit Nederland'. Secondly the dataset of this survey will be used by us to do our own analyses on the predicting value of the triggers 'personality factor: extraversion' and 'lever of control: interactive controls' on the management accounting role that comes close to a role defined as 'Business Partner'. Scientific research shows that there are different management accounting roles, and that these roles change and that preferences exist for certain roles (Verstegen B. , Loo, Mol, Slagter, & Geerkens, 2007). The main question that will be answered in this paper is which coherent combinations of activities are being executed by management accountants in 2013 in the Netherlands by master-graduates? And secondly which triggers of management accountants' activities predict to which cluster a management accountant belongs? The conceptual model of this research has been developed in 2004 (Verstegen B. , Loo, Mol, Slagter, & Geerkens, 2007). For this research the same 37 activities as in the former researches are included (appendix 1). In the trigger-set (appendix 1) some adaptations have been made for reasons of restricting the length of the survey and to pinpoint on particular research goals (e.g. personality and levers of control). The coherent combinations of activities were found by a factor-analysis and the groups of controllers by a cluster analysis. A regression analysis shows which trigger-items are most significant. The survey has been sent to 2.353 students that finished a controller-study on a Dutch University. There was a 9% (211) response with a completely filled survey. 137 of which indicated to work in a controller-function at the moment. These controllers have been included in the results. The factor-analysis results in six different coherent combinations of activities (factors). Shortly these factors are: advising top management on strategic level with result-effecting information (1), organizing internal reporting (2) organizing and representing the organization on external reporting (3), advising and managing changes by shortcomings in processes and control systems (4), maintaining and managing administrative organization- , information- and control systems (5) and organizing/executing risk management and internal audit (6). Factors 4, 5 and 6 are clustered in cluster TYPE I (125 controllers) and factors 1, 2 and 3 in cluster TYPE II (69 controllers). TYPE II can be associated with the management accountant role 'Business Partner', although the accountant keeps partly active in a scorekeeper role. The four most significant triggers for predicting being a TYPE II controller are 'Executing a risk-management task in order to meet compliance standards' (1), extraversion (2), company size in terms of fte (3) and gender (4).

Soil-less systems vs. soil-based systems for cultivating edible plants on buildings in relation to the contribution towards sustainable cities

Food production and consumption for cities has become a global concern due to increasing numbers of people living in urban areas, threatening food security. There is the contention that people living in cities have become disconnected with food production, leading to reduced nutrition in diets and increased food waste. Integrating food production into cities (urban agriculture) can help alleviate some of these issues. Lack of space at ground level in high-density urban areas has accelerated the idea of using spare building surfaces for food production. There are various growing methods being used for food production on buildings, which can be split into two main types, soil-less systems and soil-based systems. This paper is a holistic assessment (underpinned by the triple bottom line of sustainable development) of these two types of systems for food production on buildings, looking at the benefits and limitation of each type in this context. The results illustrate that soil-less systems are more productive per square metre, which increases the amount of locally grown, fresh produce available in urban areas. The results also show that soil-based systems for cultivation on buildings are more environmentally and socially beneficial overall for urban areas than soil-less systems.

Manufacturing Performance Reporting For Continuous Quality Improvement

Recently many plants have implemented the new manufacturing strategy of continuous quality improvement. The central hypothesis in this paper is that the implementation of a policy of continuous quality improvement results in a shift in the management control system. This article tests this hypothesis by examining the shop floor reporting policies of forty-two plants located in the United States. The paper documents that the extent of information concerning the current status of manufacturing, such as charts on defect rates or schedule compliance and productivity information, provided to workers on the shop floor is positively related to the implementation of continuous quality improvement programs.