A variability taxonomy to support automation decision-making for manufacturing processes

Abstract

Although many manual operations have been replaced by automation in the manufacturing domain in various industries, skilled operators still carry out critical manual tasks such as final assembly. The business case for automation in these areas is difficult to justify due to increased complexity and costs arising out of process variabilities associated with those tasks. The lack of understanding of process variability in automation design means that industrial automation often does not realize the full benefits at the first attempt, resulting in the need to spend additional resource and time, to fully realize the potential. This article describes a taxonomy of variability when considering the automation of manufacturing processes. Three industrial case studies were analyzed to develop the proposed taxonomy. The results obtained from the taxonomy are discussed with a further case study to demonstrate its value in supporting automation decision-making.     

The impact of resources and family-level cultural practices on immigrant women’s workforce participation

This article aims to assess the extent to which women's labor force participation reflects culturally or situationally induced family strategies above and beyond the well-known effects of opportunities and constraints associated with education and the life cycle. We focus particularly on women immigrants from the former Yugoslavia in Australia, and explore the family strategies by comparing the Yugoslav women systematically to immigrant women from other parts of the Mediterranean world and to immigrant women from other parts of the Slavic world. To this end, we use data from the one percent public use sample of individual records of the 1981 Australian Census. We find that the labor force particiaation patterns of immigrant women from the former Yugoslavia are more shaped by education and less shaped by the life course than is true of other groups, although the life course matters for all of them. Indeed, in the impact of education on labor force they closely resemble the Eastern Europeans across most of the range of education. But in the impact of life cycle stage on participation they more closely resemble the Greeks and the Italians. This emphasizes how important it is that statistical agencies release data at the greatest possible level of detail: A country may belong in one group for some purposes, but in a different group for other purposes. We assess a number of explanations for birthplace differences in participation patterns, and find most wanting. We suggest that they may reflect culturally conditioned intergenerational wealth flows and patterns of time investiment in children and the elderly. M.D.R. Evans's research focuses on comparative, international analyses of stratification, ethnicity, culture, and gender. Her book, Prejudice or Productivity, is forthcoming from Westview Press.     

Testing for serial correlation in the presence of dynamic heteroscedasticity

Standard serial correlation tests are derived assuming that the disturbances are homoscedastic, but this study shows that asympotic critical values are not accurate when this assumption is violated. Asymptotic critical values for the ARCH(2)-corrected LM, BP and BL tests are valid only when the underlying ARCH process is strictly stationary, whereas Wooldridge's robust LM test has good properties overall. These tests exhibit similar bahaviour even when the underlying process is GARCH (1,1). When the regressors include lagged dependent variables, the rejection frequencies under both the null and alternative hypotheses depend on the coefficientsof the lagged dependent variables and the other model parameters. They appear to be robust across various disturbance distributions under the null hypothesis.     

UK International Joint Ventures: An Analysis of Patterns of Activity and Distribution

To date no study has presented data which systematically considers the detailed activity of UK firms in joint venture formation over a significant period of time. This paper attempts to rectify this position by providing key statistics on the formation of joint ventures between UK firms and partner firms in Western Europe, the USA and Japan over the 1980s. The study examines several dimensions of activity: Trends in UK joint ventures over time, geographic distribution, industry characteristics, joint venture purpose, number of partners, contractual form and the equity share of UK partners.     

Recognition of Emotions in Gait Patterns by Means of Artificial Neural Nets

This paper describes an application of emotion recognition in human gait by means of kinetic and kinematic data using artificial neural nets. Two experiments were undertaken, one attempting to identify participants’ emotional states from gait patterns, and the second analyzing effects on gait patterns of listening to music while walking. In the first experiment gait was analyzed as participants attempted to simulate four distinct emotional states (normal, happy, sad, angry). In the second experiment, participants were asked to listen to different types of music (excitatory, calming, no music) before and during gait analysis. Derived data were fed into different types of artificial neural nets. Results showed not only a clear distinction between individuals, but also revealed clear indications of emotion recognition in nets.     

Developing Responsive Preventative Practices: Key Messages from Children's and Families’ Experiences of the Children's Fund

As part of the prevention and social inclusion agenda, the Children's Fund, set up in 2000, has developed preventative services for children at risk of social exclusion. Drawing on a large qualitative dataset of interviews conducted in 2004/05 with children, young people and their parents/carers who accessed Children Fund services, this article analyses key practices and approaches valued by children and parents. These included: specialist support tailored to individual support needs, family‐oriented approaches, trusting relationships with service providers, multi‐agency approaches and sustainability of services. Finally, the article draws out key lessons for the future development of preventative services.     

Resource Tangibility and Patterns of Interaction in a Publicly Funded Health and Human Services Network

This article examines a publicly funded mental health servicesnetwork, focusing on the patterns of interaction in five resource-basedsubnetworks. We argue that the structure of network relationshipscan be explained by the nature of the resources that are atthe source of the interaction. Depending on whether a particularresource is tangible or tacit, subnetwork structures will differin predictable ways. We found that the pattern of interactionsamong network organizations in resource-based subnetworks appearsto be dependent on the organizations controlling these resources(the Network Administrative Organization versus network members)as well as the nature of the resource (tangible versus knowledgebased). Our research extends theory on network interactionsas well as having implications for network practice.     

再造乐高

表面看来，乐高似乎并没有遇到任何麻烦。作为全球第四大玩具制造商，乐高在2004年的玩具销售总额高达1315亿美元，产品线几乎涵盖了所有领域，包括从小孩子们玩的积木到大孩子们玩的组装机器人。新产品源源不绝，在乐高每年的销售总额当中，有四分之三是由新产品所创造的。     

The impact of training on the formulation of ill-structured problems

Problem structuring heuristics and creative thinking techniques have been advanced as useful approaches for solving ill-structured problems. Unfortunately, little controlled experimentation has been done to test the effectiveness of these techniques. This paper describes an experiment in which the effects of training in the use of a problem-structuring heuristic and creative thinking on the quality and quantity of problem statements are investigated. The experiment illustrates that such training does have a positive impact on problem formulation quality and quantity.