Search results for: quality evaluation

Authors: Asma Rabaoui, Zied Lachiri, Noureddine Ellouze

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Discrimination between different classes of environmental sounds is the goal of our work. The use of a sound recognition system can offer concrete potentialities for surveillance and security applications. The first paper contribution to this research field is represented by a thorough investigation of the applicability of state-of-the-art audio features in the domain of environmental sound recognition. Additionally, a set of novel features obtained by combining the basic parameters is introduced. The quality of the features investigated is evaluated by a HMM-based classifier to which a great interest was done. In fact, we propose to use a Multi-Style training system based on HMMs: one recognizer is trained on a database including different levels of background noises and is used as a universal recognizer for every environment. In order to enhance the system robustness by reducing the environmental variability, we explore different adaptation algorithms including Maximum Likelihood Linear Regression (MLLR), Maximum A Posteriori (MAP) and the MAP/MLLR algorithm that combines MAP and MLLR. Experimental evaluation shows that a rather good recognition rate can be reached, even under important noise degradation conditions when the system is fed by the convenient set of features.

Keywords: Sounds recognition, HMM classifier, Multi-style training, Environmental Adaptation, Feature combinations.

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Authors: Armando Cartenì, Ilaria Henke

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Recently, the Italian government has approved a new law for public contracts and has been laying the groundwork for restarting a planning phase. The government has adopted the indications given by the European Commission regarding the estimation of the external costs within the Cost-Benefit Analysis, and has been approved the ‘Guidelines for assessment of Investment Projects’. In compliance with the new Italian law, the aim of this research was to perform a feasibility study applying quantitative methods regarding the revamping of an Italian tourist railway line. A Cost-Benefit Analysis was performed starting from the quantification of the passengers’ demand potentially interested in using the revamped rail services. The benefits due to the external costs reduction were also estimated (quantified) in terms of variations (with respect to the not project scenario): climate change, air pollution, noises, congestion, and accidents. Estimations results have been proposed in terms of the Measure of Effectiveness underlying a positive Net Present Value equal to about 27 million of Euros, an Internal Rate of Return much greater the discount rate, a benefit/cost ratio equal to 2 and a PayBack Period of 15 years.

Keywords: Cost-benefit analysis, evaluation analysis, demand management, external cost, transport planning, quality.

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Authors: Budiyanto, Hening Widi Oetomo

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Magetan area is going to be the object of this research which is located in East Java, Indonesia. The data were obtained from 270 civil servants working at the Magetan District government. The data were analyzed using the Structural Equation Modeling with Partial Least Square program. The research showed the following findings: (1) job motivation variable has a positive and significant effect on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB); (2) work environment has positive and significant effect on OCB; (3) leadership variable has positive and significant effect on OCB; (4) job motivation variable has no significant effect on job satisfaction; (5) work environment variable has no significant effect on job satisfaction; (6) leadership variable has no significant effect on job satisfaction; (7) OCB is positively and significantly associated with job satisfaction; (8) job satisfaction variable is positively and significantly correlated with quality of public service at the Magetan District government.

Keywords: Job Satisfaction, Leadership, OrganizationalCitizenship Behavior (OCB), Quality of Public Service

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Authors: J. Tonkonogij, A. Pedišius, A. Stankevičius

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The new semi-experimental method for simulation of the turbine flow meters rotation in the transitional flow has been developed. The method is based on the experimentally established exponential low of changing of dimensionless relative turbine gas meter rotation frequency and meter inertia time constant. For experimental evaluation of the meter time constant special facility has been developed. The facility ensures instant switching of turbine meter under test from one channel to the other channel with different flow rate and measuring the meter response. The developed method can be used for evaluation and predication of the turbine meters response and dynamic error in the transitional flow with any arbitrary law of flow rate changing. The examples of the method application are presented.

Keywords: Dynamic error, pulsing flow, numerical simulation, response, turbine gas meters.

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Authors: M. Raciti Castelli, L. M. Moglia, E. Benini

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This paper presents an evaluation of the wind potential in the area of the Lagoon of Venice (Italy). A full anemometric campaign of 2 year measurements, performed by the "Osservatorio Bioclimatologico dell'Ospedale al Mare di Venezia" has been analyzed to obtain the Weibull wind speed distribution and the main wind directions. The annual energy outputs of two candidate horizontal-axis wind turbines (“Aventa AV-7 LoWind" and “Gaia Wind 133-11kW") have been estimated on the basis of the computed Weibull wind distribution, registering a better performance of the former turbine, due to a higher ratio between rotor swept area and rated power of the electric generator, determining a lower cut-in wind speed.

Keywords: Wind potential, Annual Energy Output (AEO), Weibull distribution, Horizontal-Axis Wind Turbine (HAWT).

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Authors: Hwa-Jong Kim

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In many countries, digital city or ubiquitous city (u-City) projects have been initiated to provide digitalized economic environments to cities. Recently in Korea, Kangwon Province has started the u-Kangwon project to boost local economy with digitalized tourism services. We analyze the limitations of the ubiquitous IT approach through the u-Kangwon case. We have found that travelers are more interested in quality over speed in access of information. For improved service quality, we are looking to develop an IT-convergence service design framework (ISDF). The ISDF is based on the service engineering technique and composed of three parts: Service Design, Service Simulation, and the Service Platform.

Keywords: Service design, service simulation, service platform, service design framework.

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Authors: Mary A. Bisi-Johnson, Hamzat A. Oyelade, Kehinde A. Adediran, Saheed A. Akinola

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Geophagic and cosmetic clays are among potential nanomaterial which occur naturally and are of various forms. The use of these nanoclays is a common practice in both rural and urban areas mostly due to tradition and medicinal reasons. These naturally occurring materials can be valuable sources of nanomaterial by serving as nanocomposites. The need to ascertain the safety of these materials is the motivation for this research. Physical Characterization based on the hue value and microbiological qualities of the nanoclays were carried out. The Microbial analysis of the clay samples showed considerable contamination with both bacteria and fungi with fungal contaminants taking the lead. This observation may not be unlikely due to the ability of fungi species to survive harsher growth conditions than bacteria. ‘Atike pupa’ showed no bacterial growth. The clay with the largest bacterial count was Calabash chalk (Igbanke), while that with the highest fungal count was ‘Eko grey’. The most commonly isolated bacteria in this study were Clostridium spp. and Corynebacterium spp. while fungi included Aspergillus spp. These results are an indication of the need to subject these clay materials to treatments such as heating before consumption or topical usage thereby ascertaining their safety.

Keywords: Nanomaterial, clay, microorganism, quality.

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Authors: Sahilu Wendeson Sahilu, Wan Fatimah Wan Ahmad, Nazleeni Samiha Haron

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Mobile learning (M-learning) integrates mobile devices and wireless computing technology to enhance the current conventional learning system. However, there are constraints which are affecting the implementation of platform and device independent M-learning. The main aim of this research is to fulfill the following main objectives: to develop platform independent mobile learning tool (M-LT) for structured programming course, and evaluate its effectiveness and usability using ADDIE instructional design model (ISD) as M-LT life cycle. J2ME (Java 2 micro edition) and XML (Extensible Markup Language) were used to develop platform independent M-LT. It has two modules lecture materials and quizzes. This study used Quasi experimental design to measure effectiveness of the tool. Meanwhile, questionnaire is used to evaluate the usability of the tool. Finally, the results show that the system was effective and also usability evaluation was positive.

Keywords: ADDIE, Conventional learning, ISD, J2ME, Mlearning, Quasi Experiment, Wireless Technology, XML

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Authors: R. Bužgová, R. Kozáková, M. Škutová, M. Bar, P. Ressner, P. Bártová

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Introduction: Currently, there has been an increasing concern about the provision of palliative care in non-oncological patients in both professional literature and clinical practice. However, there is not much scientific information on how to provide neurological and palliative care together. The main objective of the project is to create and to verify a concept of neuro-palliative and rehabilitative care for patients with selected neurological diseases in an advanced stage of the disease and also to evaluate bio-psychosocial and spiritual needs of these patients and their caregivers related to the quality of life using created standardized tools. Methodology: Triangulation of research methods (qualitative and quantitative) will be used. A concept of care and assessment tools will be developed by analyzing interviews and focus groups. Qualitative data will be analyzed using grounded theory. The concept of care will be tested in the context of the intervention study. Using quantitative analysis, we will assess the effect of an intervention provided on the saturation of needs, quality of life, and quality of care. A research sample will be made up of the patients with selected neurological diseases (Parkinson´s syndrome, motor neuron disease, multiple sclerosis, Huntington’s disease), together with patients´ family members. Based on the results, educational materials and a certified course for health care professionals will be created. Findings: Based on qualitative data analysis, we will propose the concept of integrated care model combining neurological, rehabilitative and specialist palliative care for patients with selected neurological diseases in different settings of care and services. Patients´ needs related to quality of life will be described by newly created and validated measuring tools before the start of intervention (application of neuro-palliative and palliative approach) and then in the time interval. Conclusion: Based on the results, educational materials and a certified course for doctors and health care professionals will be created.

Keywords: Multidisciplinary approach, neuropalliative care, research, quality of life.

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Authors: Ghada A. El Khayat

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This paper argues that a product development exercise involves in addition to the conventional stages, several decisions regarding other aspects. These aspects should be addressed simultaneously in order to develop a product that responds to the customer needs and that helps realize objectives of the stakeholders in terms of profitability, market share and the like. We present a framework that encompasses these different development dimensions. The framework shows that a product development methodology such as the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is the basic tool which allows definition of the target specifications of a new product. Creativity is the first dimension that enables the development exercise to live and end successfully. A number of group processes need to be followed by the development team in order to ensure enough creativity and innovation. Secondly, packaging is considered to be an important extension of the product. Branding strategies, quality and standardization requirements, identification technologies, design technologies, production technologies and costing and pricing are also integral parts to the development exercise. These dimensions constitute the proposed framework. The paper also presents a mathematical model used to calculate the design targets based on the target costing principle. The framework is used to study a case of a new product development in the telecommunications services sector.

Keywords: Product Development Framework, Quality FunctionDeployment, Mathematical Models, Telecommunications.

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Authors: Yueming Wang, Rendong Ying, Sumxin Jiang, Peilin Liu

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Unified Speech Audio Coding (USAC), the latest MPEG standardization for unified speech and audio coding, uses a speech/audio classification algorithm to distinguish speech and audio segments of the input signal. The quality of the recovered audio can be increased by well-designed orchestra/percussion classification and subsequent processing. However, owing to the shortcoming of the system, introducing an orchestra/percussion classification and modifying subsequent processing can enormously increase the quality of the recovered audio. This paper proposes an orchestra/percussion classification algorithm for the USAC system which only extracts 3 scales of Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs) rather than traditional 13 scales of MFCCs and use Iterative Dichotomiser 3 (ID3) Decision Tree rather than other complex learning method, thus the proposed algorithm has lower computing complexity than most existing algorithms. Considering that frequent changing of attributes may lead to quality loss of the recovered audio signal, this paper also design a modified subsequent process to help the whole classification system reach an accurate rate as high as 97% which is comparable to classical 99%.

Keywords: ID3 Decision Tree, MFCC, Orchestra/Percussion Classification, USAC

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Authors: V. G. Sangam, Balasaheb M. Patre

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In this paper we have proposed a methodology to develop an amperometric biosensor for the analysis of glucose concentration using a simple microcontroller based data acquisition system. The work involves the development of Detachable Membrane Unit (enzyme based biomembrane) with immobilized glucose oxidase on the membrane and interfacing the same to the signal conditioning system. The current generated by the biosensor for different glucose concentrations was signal conditioned, then acquired and computed by a simple AT89C51-microcontroller. The optimum operating parameters for the better performance were found and reported. The detailed performance evaluation of the biosensor has been carried out. The proposed microcontroller based biosensor system has the sensitivity of 0.04V/g/dl, with a resolution of 50mg/dl. It has exhibited very good inter day stability observed up to 30 days. Comparing to the reference method such as HPLC, the accuracy of the proposed biosensor system is well within ± 1.5%. The system can be used for real time analysis of glucose concentration in the field such as, food and fermentation and clinical (In-Vitro) applications.

Keywords: Biosensor, DMU, Glucose oxidase andMicrocontroller.

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Authors: Abdelghani Boudiaf

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The profusion of studies relating to the concept of organizational learning shows the importance that has been given to this concept in the management sciences. A few years ago, companies leaned towards ISO 9001 certification; this requires the implementation of the quality management system (QMS). In order for this objective to be achieved, companies must have a set of skills, which pushes them to develop learning through continuous training. The results of empirical research have shown that implementation of the QMS in the company promotes the development of learning. It should also be noted that several types of learning are developed in this sense. Given the nature of skills development is normative in the context of the quality demarche, companies are obliged to qualify and improve the skills of their human resources. Continuous training is the keystone to develop the necessary learning. To carry out continuous training, companies need to be able to identify their real needs by developing training plans based on well-defined engineering. The training process goes obviously through several stages. Initially, training has a general aspect, that is to say, it focuses on topics and actions of a general nature. Subsequently, this is done in a more targeted and more precise way to accompany the evolution of the QMS and also to make the changes decided each time (change of working method, change of practices, change of objectives, change of mentality, etc.). To answer our problematic we opted for the method of qualitative research. It should be noted that the case study method crosses several data collection techniques to explain and understand a phenomenon. Three cases of companies were studied as part of this research work using different data collection techniques related to this method.

Keywords: Changing mentalities, continuous training, organizational learning, quality management system, skills development.

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Authors: G. Gürsel, K. H. Gülkesen, N. Zayim, A. Arifoğlu, O. Saka

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User satisfaction is one of the most used success indicators in the research of information system (IS). Literature shows user expectations have great influence on user satisfaction. Both expectation and satisfaction of users are important for Hospital Information Systems (HIS). Education, IS experience, age, attitude towards change, business title, sex and working unit of the hospital, are examined as the potential determinant of the medical users’ expectations. Data about medical user expectations are collected by the “Expectation Questionnaire” developed for this study. Expectation data are used for calculating the Expectation Meeting Ratio (EMR) with the evaluation framework also developed for this study. The internal consistencies of the answers to the questionnaire are measured by Cronbach´s Alpha coefficient. The multivariate analysis of medical user’s EMRs of HIS is performed by forward stepwise binary logistic regression analysis. Education and business title is appeared to be the determinants of expectations from HIS.

Keywords: Evaluation, Fuzzy Logic, Hospital Information System, User Expectation.

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Authors: Isabel Brás, Artur Figueirinha, Bruno Esteves, Luísa P. Cruz-Lopes

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The agriculture lignocellulosic by-products are receiving increased attention, namely in the search for filter materials that retain contaminants from water. These by-products, specifically almond and hazelnut shells are abundant in Portugal once almond and hazelnuts production is a local important activity. Hazelnut and almond shells have as main constituents lignin, cellulose and hemicelluloses, water soluble extractives and tannins. Along the adsorption of heavy metals from contaminated waters, water soluble compounds can leach from shells and have a negative impact in the environment. Usually, the chemical characterization of treated water by itself may not show environmental impact caused by the discharges when parameters obey to legal quality standards for water. Only biological systems can detect the toxic effects of the water constituents. Therefore, the evaluation of toxicity by biological tests is very important when deciding the suitability for safe water discharge or for irrigation applications.

The main purpose of the present work was to assess the potential impacts of waters after been treated for heavy metal removal by hazelnut and almond shells adsorption systems, with short term acute toxicity tests.

To conduct the study, water at pH 6 with 25 mg.L^-1 of lead, was treated with 10 g of shell per litre of wastewater, for 24 hours. This procedure was followed for each bark. Afterwards the water was collected for toxicological assays; namely bacterial resistance, seed germination, Lemna minor L. test and plant grow. The effect in isolated bacteria strains was determined by disc diffusion method and the germination index of seed was evaluated using lettuce, with temperature and humidity germination control for 7 days. For aquatic higher organism, Lemnas were used with 4 days contact time with shell solutions, in controlled light and temperature. For terrestrial higher plants, biomass production was evaluated after 14 days of tomato germination had occurred in soil, with controlled humidity, light and temperature.

Toxicity tests of water treated with shells revealed in some extent effects in the tested organisms, with the test assays showing a close behaviour as the control, leading to the conclusion that its further utilization may not be considered to create a serious risk to the environment.

Keywords: Acute toxicity tests, adsorption, lignocellulosic wastes, risk assessment.

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Authors: Sankalp Devanand, Prateek Agasimani, V. S. Shamith, Rohith Neeraje

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Machine translation has witnessed significant advancements in recent years, but the translation of languages with distinct linguistic characteristics, such as English and Sanskrit, remains a challenging task. This research presents the development of a dedicated English to Sanskrit machine translation model, aiming to bridge the linguistic and cultural gap between these two languages. Using a variety of natural language processing (NLP) approaches including FastText embeddings, this research proposes a thorough method to improve word meaning retrieval. Data preparation, part-of-speech tagging, dictionary searches, and transliteration are all included in the methodology. The study also addresses the implementation of an interpreter pattern and uses a word similarity task to assess the quality of word embeddings. The experimental outcomes show how the suggested approach may be used to enhance word meaning retrieval tasks with greater efficacy, accuracy, and adaptability. Evaluation of the model's performance is conducted through rigorous testing, comparing its output against existing machine translation systems. The assessment includes quantitative metrics such as BLEU scores, METEOR scores, Jaccard Similarity etc.

Keywords: Machine translation, English to Sanskrit, natural language processing, word meaning retrieval, FastText embeddings.

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Authors: Thabet Slimani, Boutheina Ben Yaghlane, Khaled Mellouli

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In the last few years, the Semantic Web gained scientific acceptance as a means of relationships identification in knowledge base, widely known by semantic association. Query about complex relationships between entities is a strong requirement for many applications in analytical domains. In bioinformatics for example, it is critical to extract exchanges between proteins. Currently, the widely known result of such queries is to provide paths between connected entities from data graph. However, they do not always give good results while facing the user need by the best association or a set of limited best association, because they only consider all existing paths but ignore the path evaluation. In this paper, we present an approach for supporting association discovery queries. Our proposal includes (i) a query language PmSPRQL which provides a multiparadigm query expressions for association extraction and (ii) some quantification measures making easy the process of association ranking. The originality of our proposal is demonstrated by a performance evaluation of our approach on real world datasets.

Keywords: Association extraction, query Language, relationships, knowledge base, multi-paradigm query.

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Authors: W. Wu, X. H. Wang, D. Paull

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This paper contributes to the field of Environmental Awareness Training (EAT) evaluation in terms of military activities. Environmental management of military activities is a growing concern for defence forces worldwide and the importance of EAT is becoming widely recognized. As one of Australia-s largest landowners, the Australian Defence Force (ADF) is extremely mindful of its duty as a joint environmental manager. It has an integrated Environmental Management System (EMS) to assist environmental management and EAT is an essential part of the ADF EMS model. This paper examines how EAT was conducted during the exercise Talisman Saber in 2009 (TS09) and evaluates its effectiveness, using Shoalwater Bay Training Area (SWBTA), one of the most significant military training areas and a significant protected area in Australia, as a case study. A questionnaire survey conducted showed, overall, that EAT was effective from the perspective of a sample of participants. Recommendations are made for the ADF to refine EAT for future exercises.

Keywords: Australian Defence Force, effectiveness evaluation, Environmental Awareness Training, Shoalwater Bay Training Area

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Authors: O. Aluko, M. R. Brai, A. O. Adelore

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Healthy snack (cookie) was produced from corn flour and moringa seed flour blends. The samples were mixed in various proportions and analysed for proximate composition and functional characteristics. The healthy snack (cookies) was evaluated for sensory parameters of Colour, Crispness, Taste, Aroma and Overall Acceptability. The proximate analysis of the flour obtained from different proportion showed that proximate composition increased with increase in substitution level of moringa seed flour especially with protein, fat and crude fibre. The protein contents of samples range from 1.75 to 6.58, fat from 0.60 to 6.80, while fibre from 0.85 to 2.06. There was no significance difference in the functional properties of the blend when compared with 100% corn flour. Sensory evaluation results shows a significant difference in Colour, Taste, Crispness, Aroma and Overall Acceptability of healthy snack (cookies) sample from different blends at 5% significance level.

Keywords: Healthy snack, moringa.

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Authors: G. Dottavio, M. F. Andrade, F. Renard, V. Cheutet, A.-L. L. S. Vercraene, P. Hoang, S. Briet, R. Dachicourt, Y. Baizet

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An important number of technological equipment and high-skilled workers over long periods of time have to be mobilized during nuclear decommissioning processes. The related operations generate complex flows of waste and high inventory levels, associated to information flows of heterogeneous types. Taking into account that more than 10 decommissioning operations are on-going in France and about 50 are expected toward 2025: A big challenge is addressed today. The management of decommissioning and dismantling of nuclear installations represents an important part of the nuclear-based energy lifecycle, since it has an environmental impact as well as an important influence on the electricity cost and therefore the price for end-users. Bringing new technologies and new solutions into decommissioning methodologies is thus mandatory to improve the quality, cost and delay efficiency of these operations. The purpose of our project is to improve decommissioning management efficiency by developing a decision-support framework dedicated to plan nuclear facility decommissioning operations and to optimize waste evacuation by means of a logistic approach. The target is to create an easy-to-handle tool capable of i) predicting waste flows and proposing the best decommissioning logistics scenario and ii) managing information during all the steps of the process and following the progress: planning, resources, delays, authorizations, saturation zones, waste volume, etc. In this article we present our results from waste nuclear flows simulation during decommissioning process, including discrete-event simulation supported by FLEXSIM 3-D software. This approach was successfully tested and our works confirms its ability to improve this type of industrial process by identifying the critical points of the chain and optimizing it by identifying improvement actions. This type of simulation, executed before the start of the process operations on the basis of a first conception, allow ‘what-if’ process evaluation and help to ensure quality of the process in an uncertain context. The simulation of nuclear waste flows before evacuation from the site will help reducing the cost and duration of the decommissioning process by optimizing the planning and the use of resources, transitional storage and expensive radioactive waste containers. Additional benefits are expected for the governance system of the waste evacuation since it will enable a shared responsibility of the waste flows.

Keywords: Nuclear decommissioning, logistical optimization, decision-support framework, waste management.

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Authors: Suma. V., T. R. Gopalakrishnan Nair

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Defect prevention is the most vital but habitually neglected facet of software quality assurance in any project. If functional at all stages of software development, it can condense the time, overheads and wherewithal entailed to engineer a high quality product. The key challenge of an IT industry is to engineer a software product with minimum post deployment defects. This effort is an analysis based on data obtained for five selected projects from leading software companies of varying software production competence. The main aim of this paper is to provide information on various methods and practices supporting defect detection and prevention leading to thriving software generation. The defect prevention technique unearths 99% of defects. Inspection is found to be an essential technique in generating ideal software generation in factories through enhanced methodologies of abetted and unaided inspection schedules. On an average 13 % to 15% of inspection and 25% - 30% of testing out of whole project effort time is required for 99% - 99.75% of defect elimination. A comparison of the end results for the five selected projects between the companies is also brought about throwing light on the possibility of a particular company to position itself with an appropriate complementary ratio of inspection testing.

Keywords: Defect Detection and Prevention, Inspections, Software Engineering, Software Process, Testing.

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Authors: Gupta Amit, Kumar Ramesh, Tewari P. C.

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Globalization is putting enormous pressure on the business organizations specially manufacturing one to rethink the supply chain in innovative manners. Inventory consumes major portion of total sale revenue. Effective and efficient inventory management plays a vital role for the successful functioning of any organization. Selection of inventory policy is one of the important purchasing activities. This paper focuses on selection and ranking of alternative inventory policies. A deterministic quantitative model based on Distance Based Approach (DBA) method has been developed for evaluation and ranking of inventory policies. We have employed this concept first time for this type of the selection problem. Four inventory policies economic order quantity (EOQ), just in time (JIT), vendor managed inventory (VMI) and monthly policy are considered. Improper selection could affect a company’s competitiveness in terms of the productivity of its facilities and quality of its products. The ranking of inventory policies is a multi-criteria problem. There is a need to first identify the selection criteria and then processes the information with reference to relative importance of attributes for comparison. Criteria values for each inventory policy can be obtained either analytically or by using a simulation technique or they are linguistic subjective judgments defined by fuzzy sets, like, for example, the values of criteria. A methodology is developed and applied to rank the inventory policies.

Keywords: Inventory Policy, Ranking, DBA, Selection criteria.

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Authors: Helene Le Cadre

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Three service providers in competition, try to optimize their quality of service / content level and their service access price. But, they have to deal with uncertainty on the consumers- preferences. To reduce their uncertainty, they have the opportunity to buy information and to build alliances. We determine the Shapley value which is a fair way to allocate the grand coalition-s revenue between the service providers. Then, we identify the values of β (consumers- sensitivity coefficient to the quality of service / contents) for which allocating the grand coalition-s revenue using the Shapley value guarantees the system stability. For other values of β, we prove that it is possible for the regulator to impose a per-period interest rate maximizing the market coverage under equal allocation rules.

Keywords: Alliance, Shapley value, Stability, Repeated game, Interest rate.

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Authors: Nooshin La'l Mohamadi

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Due to the fact that in the new century customers tend to express globally increasing demands, networks of interconnected businesses have been established in societies and the management of such networks seems to be a major key through gaining competitive advantages. Supply chain management encompasses such managerial activities. Within a supply chain, a critical role is played by quality. QFD is a widely-utilized tool which serves the purpose of not only bringing quality to the ultimate provision of products or service packages required by the end customer or the retailer, but it can also initiate us into a satisfactory relationship with our initial customer; that is the wholesaler. However, the wholesalers- cooperation is considerably based on the capabilities that are heavily dependent on their locations and existing circumstances. Therefore, it is undeniable that for all companies each wholesaler possesses a specific importance ratio which can heavily influence the figures calculated in the House of Quality in QFD. Moreover, due to the competitiveness of the marketplace today, it-s been widely recognized that consumers- expression of demands has been highly volatile in periods of production. Apparently, such instability and proneness to change has been very tangibly noticed and taking it into account during the analysis of HOQ is widely influential and doubtlessly required. For a more reliable outcome in such matters, this article demonstrates the application viability of Analytic Network Process for considering the wholesalers- reputation and simultaneously introduces a mortality coefficient for the reliability and stability of the consumers- expressed demands in course of time. Following to this, the paper provides further elaboration on the relevant contributory factors and approaches through the calculation of such coefficients. In the end, the article concludes that an empirical application is needed to achieve broader validity.

Keywords: Analytic Network Process, Quality Function Deployment, QFD flaws, Supply Chain Management

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Authors: S. Areerachakul

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Nowadays, several techniques such as; Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) and Neural Network (NN) are employed for developing of the predictive models to estimate parameters of water quality. The main objective of this study is to compare between the predictive ability of the Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) model and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model to estimate the Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) on data from 11 sampling sites of Saen Saep canal in Bangkok, Thailand. The data is obtained from the Department of Drainage and Sewerage, Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, during 2004-2011. The five parameters of water quality namely Dissolved Oxygen (DO), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Ammonia Nitrogen (NH3N), Nitrate Nitrogen (NO3N), and Total Coliform bacteria (T-coliform) are used as the input of the models. These water quality indices affect the biochemical oxygen demand. The experimental results indicate that the ANN model provides a higher correlation coefficient (R=0.73) and a lower root mean square error (RMSE=4.53) than the corresponding ANFIS model.

Keywords: adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system, artificial neural network, biochemical oxygen demand, surface water.

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Authors: V. Barot, S. McLeod, R. Harrison, A. A. West

Abstract:

Manufacturing Industries face a crucial change as products and processes are required to, easily and efficiently, be reconfigurable and reusable. In order to stay competitive and flexible, situations also demand distribution of enterprises globally, which requires implementation of efficient communication strategies. A prototype system called the “Broadcaster" has been developed with an assumption that the control environment description has been engineered using the Component-based system paradigm. This prototype distributes information to a number of globally distributed partners via an adoption of the circular-based data processing mechanism. The work highlighted in this paper includes the implementation of this mechanism in the domain of the manufacturing industry. The proposed solution enables real-time remote propagation of machine information to a number of distributed supply chain client resources such as a HMI, VRML-based 3D views and remote client instances regardless of their distribution nature and/ or their mechanisms. This approach is presented together with a set of evaluation results. Authors- main concentration surrounds the reliability and the performance metric of the adopted approach. Performance evaluation is carried out in terms of the response times taken to process the data in this domain and compared with an alternative data processing implementation such as the linear queue mechanism. Based on the evaluation results obtained, authors justify the benefits achieved from this proposed implementation and highlight any further research work that is to be carried out.

Keywords: Broadcaster, circular buffer, Component-based, distributed manufacturing, remote data propagation.

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Authors: S. Arrizabalaga, A. Salterain, M. Domínguez, I. Alvaro

Abstract:

Traditionally, Internet has provided best-effort service to every user regardless of its requirements. However, as Internet becomes universally available, users demand more bandwidth and applications require more and more resources, and interest has developed in having the Internet provide some degree of Quality of Service. Although QoS is an important issue, the question of how it will be brought into the Internet has not been solved yet. Researches, due to the rapid advances in technology are proposing new and more desirable capabilities for the next generation of IP infrastructures. But neither all applications demand the same amount of resources, nor all users are service providers. In this way, this paper is the first of a series of papers that presents an architecture as a first step to the optimization of QoS in the Internet environment as a solution to a SMSE's problem whose objective is to provide public service to internet with certain Quality of Service expectations. The service provides new business opportunities, but also presents new challenges. We have designed and implemented a scalable service framework that supports adaptive bandwidth based on user demands, and the billing based on usage and on QoS. The developed application has been evaluated and the results show that traffic limiting works at optimum and so it does exceeding bandwidth distribution. However, some considerations are done and currently research is under way in two basic areas: (i) development and testing new transfer protocols, and (ii) developing new strategies for traffic improvements based on service differentiation.

Keywords: Differentiated Services, Linux, Quality of Service, queueing disciplines, web application.

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Authors: Pradeep M., N. S. Mahesh, Raja Hussain

Abstract:

Resistance spot welding (RSW) has been used widely to join sheet metals. It has been a challenge to get required weld quality in spot welding of dissimilar thickness materials. Weld parameters are not generally available in standards for thickness beyond 4mm. This paper presents the welding process design and parameter optimization of RSW used in joining of low carbon steel sheet of thickness 0.8 mm and metal strips of cross section 10 x 5mm for electrical motor applications. Taguchi quality design was adopted for weld current and time optimization using L9 orthogonal array. Optimum process parameters (current- 3.5kA and time- 10 cycles) were obtained from the Taguchi analysis and shear test results. Confirmation experiment result revealed that the weld quality was within acceptable interval. Further, numerical simulation of RSW process was carried out with selected weld parameters to quantify the temperature at faying surface and check for formation of appropriate nugget. The nugget geometry measured after peel test and predicted from numerical validation method were similar and in accordance with the standards.

Keywords: Resistance spot welding, dissimilar thickness, weld parameters, Taguchi method, numerical modeling.

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Authors: Abu Qudeiri Jaber, Yamamoto Hidehiko Rizauddin Ramli

Abstract:

To create a solution for a specific problem in machine learning, the solution is constructed from the data or by use a search method. Genetic algorithms are a model of machine learning that can be used to find nearest optimal solution. While the great advantage of genetic algorithms is the fact that they find a solution through evolution, this is also the biggest disadvantage. Evolution is inductive, in nature life does not evolve towards a good solution but it evolves away from bad circumstances. This can cause a species to evolve into an evolutionary dead end. In order to reduce the effect of this disadvantage we propose a new a learning tool (criteria) which can be included into the genetic algorithms generations to compare the previous population and the current population and then decide whether is effective to continue with the previous population or the current population, the proposed learning tool is called as Keeping Efficient Population (KEP). We applied a GA based on KEP to the production line layout problem, as a result KEP keep the evaluation direction increases and stops any deviation in the evaluation.

Keywords: Genetic algorithms, Layout problem, Machinelearning, Production system.

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Authors: Zainul Huda, Muhammad Hani Ajani

Abstract:

The design, manufacture, and operation of thin-walled pressure vessels must be based on maximum safe operating pressure and an adequate factor of safety (FoS). This research paper first reports experimental evaluation of longitudinal and hoops stresses based on working pressure as well as maximum pressure; and then includes a critical study of factor of safety (FoS) in the design of a glass fiber pressure vessel. Experimental work involved the use of measuring instruments and the readings from pressure gauges. Design calculations involved the computations of design stress and FoS; the latter was based on breaking strength of 55 MPa for the glass fiber (pressure-vessel material). The experimentally determined FoS value has been critically compared with the general FoS allowed in the design of glass fiber pressure vessels.

Keywords: Thin-walled pressure vessel, hoop stress, longitudinal stress, factor of safety (FoS), fiberglass.

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