Nellie Landblom's copybook for beginners in research work; computational procedures used in applied biometrics.

Multigraphed.

Business process quantitative analysis and optimization for service industries

The total time a customer spends in the business process system, called the customer cycle-time, is a major contributor to overall customer satisfaction. Business process analysts and designers are frequently asked to design process solutions with optimal performance. Simulation models have been very popular to quantitatively evaluate the business processes; however, simulation is time-consuming and it also requires extensive modeling experiences to develop simulation models. Moreover, simulation models neither provide recommendations nor yield optimal solutions for business process design. A queueing network model is a good analytical approach toward business process analysis and design, and can provide a useful abstraction of a business process. However, the existing queueing network models were developed based on telephone systems or applied to manufacturing processes in which machine servers dominate the system. In a business process, the servers are usually people. The characteristics of human servers should be taken into account by the queueing model, i.e. specialization and coordination. ^ The research described in this dissertation develops an open queueing network model to do a quick analysis of business processes. Additionally, optimization models are developed to provide optimal business process designs. The queueing network model extends and improves upon existing multi-class open-queueing network models (MOQN) so that the customer flow in the human-server oriented processes can be modeled. The optimization models help business process designers to find the optimal design of a business process with consideration of specialization and coordination. ^ The main findings of the research are, first, parallelization can reduce the cycle-time for those customer classes that require more than one parallel activity; however, the coordination time due to the parallelization overwhelms the savings from parallelization under the high utilization servers since the waiting time significantly increases, thus the cycle-time increases. Third, the level of industrial technology employed by a company and coordination time to mange the tasks have strongest impact on the business process design; as the level of industrial technology employed by the company is high; more division is required to improve the cycle-time; as the coordination time required is high; consolidation is required to improve the cycle-time. ^

Leadership in the Lodging and Non-Commercial Food Service Industries

The qualities of vision, communication, trust, and perseverance are strongly identified by leaders in the lodging and food service businesses as characterizing effective leaders. The authors report on their research into essential qualities which mark the innovative industry leader.

Research work in Tokyo Institute of Technology

Research carried out in Tokyo Institute of Technology. The objective is to determine the influence of Interfacial Transition Zone (ITZ) around Lightweight aggregate in concrete on Chloride ion diffusivity. The ITZ of conventional concretes is the weakest point of concrete. The accumulating water on ITZ zone forms the most permeable area inside the concrete. Hence ITZ paves the way for chloride ion diffusion. The quality of ITZ depends on type and quality of aggregates used, water-cement ratio and also the method used for the production of concrete. It has been used two types of lightweight aggregates will be used, Chinese and Japanese, with different absorption capacities. The idea is to produce concrete with same effective water - cement ratio, using the same aggregates in two different conditions, dry and saturated, and compare the chloride ion diffusivity in these concretes (by diffusion test). A comparison of ITZ thickness of these concretes by SEM and EDAX-maps is also proposed. The chloride ion diffusion of concretes produced with the same effective water – cement ratio and same aggregates (dry and ssd) will depend, mainly, on ITZ.

Let's do data research work: the creation of a portal with research information from Catalan Universities

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Service industries and service economy

The study analyses the role of services in modern and less-developed economies. It shows the different meanings of the value, definition and classification of service activities found in economic literature. It discusses the relation between service production growth and economic development observing the role of these activities in the dynamics of economic restructuring. Further, it also examines the differences between private and public sector service restructuring and the consequences of internationalization of services. It concludes that economic restructuring also caused by changes in the nature of goods and services has important regional effects.