SPC—a team effort for process improvement across four Area Control Centres

This paper describes an innovative application of statistical process control to the online remote control of the UK's gas transportation networks. The gas industry went through a number of changes in ownership, regulation, access to networks, organization and management culture in the 1990s. The application of SPC was motivated by these changes along with the desire to apply the best industrial statistics theory to practical problems. The work was initiated by a studentship, with the technology gradually being transferred to the industry. The combined efforts of control engineers and statisticians helped develop a novel SPC system. Having set up the control limits, a system was devised to automatically update and publish the control charts on a daily basis. The charts and an associated discussion forum are available to both managers and control engineers throughout the country at their desktop PCs. The paper describes methods of involving people to design first-class systems to achieve continual process improvement. It describes how the traditional benefits of SPC can be realized in a 'distal team working', and 'soft systems', context of four Area Control Centres, controlling a system delivering two thirds of the UK's energy needs.     

SPC—a team effort for process improvement across four Area Control Centres

This paper describes an innovative application of statistical process control to the online remote control of the UK's gas transportation networks. The gas industry went through a number of changes in ownership, regulation, access to networks, organization and management culture in the 1990s. The application of SPC was motivated by these changes along with the desire to apply the best industrial statistics theory to practical problems. The work was initiated by a studentship, with the technology gradually being transferred to the industry. The combined efforts of control engineers and statisticians helped develop a novel SPC system. Having set up the control limits, a system was devised to automatically update and publish the control charts on a daily basis. The charts and an associated discussion forum are available to both managers and control engineers throughout the country at their desktop PCs. The paper describes methods of involving people to design first-class systems to achieve continual process improvement. It describes how the traditional benefits of SPC can be realized in a 'distal team working', and 'soft systems', context of four Area Control Centres, controlling a system delivering two thirds of the UK's energy needs.     

Modeling and Managing the Percentage of Satisfied Customers in Hidden and Revealed Waiting Line Systems

We perform an analysis of various queueing systems with an emphasis on estimating a single performance metric. This metric is defined to be the percentage of customers whose actual waiting time was less than their individual waiting time threshold. We label this metric the Percentage of Satisfied Customers (PSC.) This threshold is a reflection of the customers' expectation of a reasonable waiting time in the system given its current state. Cases in which no system state information is available to the customer are referred to as “hidden queues.” For such systems, the waiting time threshold is independent of the length of the waiting line, and it is randomly drawn from a distribution of threshold values for the customer population. The literature generally assumes that such thresholds are exponentially distributed. For these cases, we derive closed form expressions for our performance metric for a variety of possible service time distributions. We also relax this assumption for cases where service times are exponential and derive closed form results for a large class of threshold distributions. We analyze such queues for both single and multi‐server systems. We refer to cases in which customers may observe the length of the line as “revealed” queues.“ We perform a parallel analysis for both single and multi‐server revealed queues. The chief distinction is that for these cases, customers may develop threshold values that are dependent upon the number of customers in the system upon their arrival. The new perspective this paper brings to the modeling of the performance of waiting line systems allows us to rethink and suggest ways to enhance the effectiveness of various managerial options for improving the service quality and customer satisfaction of waiting line systems. We conclude with many useful insights on ways to improve customer satisfaction in waiting line situations that follow directly from our analysis.     

Seeing the Forest for Trees: Tools for Analyzing Faculty Research Output

Abstract

For academic libraries, because budgetary pressures are nearly universal, it is imperative to evaluate journal packages regularly. This article presents an overview of the data and methods that the NC State University Libraries traditionally uses to evaluate journal packages and presents additional methods to expand our evaluation of publishing and editorial activity. We describe methods for downloading and analyzing Web of Science citation data to identify the most common publishers for NC State affiliated authors as well as the journals in which NC State authors publish most frequently. This article also demonstrates a custom Python web scraping application to harvest NC State affiliated editor data from publishers’ websites. Finally, this article discusses how these data elements are combined to provide a more comprehensive evaluative strategy for our journal investments.     

ESTIMATING TEMPORAL FARM INCOME DISTRIBUTIONS USING SPATIAL SMOOTHING TECHNIQUES

The Australian Bureau of Agricultural & Resource Economics (ABARE) has conducted the annual Australian Agricultural and Grazing Industries Survey, covering the broadacre sector, in a consistent format since 1978/79. In this period the incomes of farmers have fluctuated considerably. Interest has focused on temporal income variation because of its relationship to the inherent riskiness of farming. Part of these income fluctuations can be explained by changing commodity prices and by highly variable climatic conditions. This paper outlines a method of measuring the magnitude of this income variation and how it relates to other variables. Due to rotation within the sample of farms surveyed, data are limited for determining the income variability of any particular farm. This paper, using spatial locations of surveyed farms, shows how kernel smoothing techniques can be adapted to estimate the distribution of a farm's income. This analysis uses data collected from 1978/79 to 1991/92. Summary information from these distributions is cross-tabulated against several other variables. This shows that income variability is strongly related to the production mixture of farming businesses.     

MAXIMUM LIKELIHOOD ESTIMATION OF GROSS FLOWS

A method of maximum likelihood estimation of gross flows from overlapping stratified sample data is developed. The approach taken is model-based and the EM algorithm is used to solve the estimation problem. Inference is thus based on information from the total sample at each time period. This can be contrasted with the conventional approach to gross flows estimation which only uses information from the overlapping sub-sample. An application to estimation of flows of Australian cropping and livestock industries farms into and out of an “at risk” situation over the period 1979–84 is presented, as well as a discussion of extensions to more complex sampling situations.     

Hidden losers? The impact of rural refugees and refugee programs on poorer hosts

Refugee relief organizations and refugee studies have refugees as their 1st concern and focus. Adverse impacts of refugees on hosts are relatively neglected. When impacts are considered, they are seen in terms of host country governments, economies, and services rather than people or different groups among host populations. In rural refugee-affected areas, the better-off and more visible hosts usually gain from the presence of refugees and from refugee programs. In contrast, the poorer among the hosts can be hidden losers. This is more so now than in the past, especially where land is scarce and labor relatively abundant. The poorer hosts can lose from competition for food, work, wages, services, and common property resources. Vulnerable hosts also lack refugees' option of sending their weaker dependents to camps and settlements. Development programs in refugee-affected areas and refugee studies will do a disservice if they neglect adverse effects of refugees on vulnerable hosts. These effects further strengthen the case for development to benefit the whole population in refugee-affected areas (author's).     

Enquiry and action learning in practice placements

A new approach to social work education is described (Enquiry and Action Learning), and its application to practice placements and practice teaching is explored. A structure for planning and evaluating students' work on placement is given and their use in a Practice Learning Centre discussed.     

Portfolios for learning and assessment: laying the foundations for continuing professional development

Portfolios are widely used in a range of education programmes at different levels in a number of countries. They are also well established at all stages in social work education. However, in the literature there is surprisingly little critical analysis of the application of the portfolio in social work. In this paper the authors' objective is to contribute to professional knowledge about the use of portfolios in social work. The authors are all members of the Higher Education Funding Council Self-Assessment in Professional and Higher Education Project and are concerned to develop self-assessment in social work and enhance the development of life-long learning. They begin by examining the literature about portfolios from the field of education. Findings are then analysed from a small exploratory study of the use of portfolios in practice learning on a Diploma in Social Work course. Five different but related conceptual themes which emerge from the analysis are discussed: compiling the portfolio; issues of evidence; reflection in a context of assessment; the practice teacher and the learning dialogue; and the challenge of assessment. Suggestions are offered for effective portfolio practice.