A Bayesian nonparametric model for Taguchi's on-line quality monitoring procedure for attributes

A Bayesian nonparametric model for Taguchi's on-line quality monitoring procedure for attributes is introduced. The proposed model may accommodate the original single shift setting to the more realistic situation of gradual quality deterioration and allows the incorporation of an expert's opinion on the production process. Based on the number of inspections to be carried out until a defective item is found, the Bayesian operation for the distribution function that represents the increasing sequence of defective fractions during a cycle considering a mixture of Dirichlet processes as prior distribution is performed. Bayes estimates for relevant quantities are also obtained.     

From the manifestations of culture to the underlying sensemaking process. The contribution of semiotic cultural psychology theory to the interpretation of socio-political scenario

Several explanations of the current syndrome affecting advanced democracies make reference to a process of cultural change that has been triggered by the complex and interrelated phenomena known as globalization. The rise of populist-authoritarian parties, the advent of post-truth politics and the increasing dissatisfaction with democracy are seen by many political scientists as rather direct consequences of social and economic transformations which had changed the context in which the democratic process takes place. The main limitation of this literature is that it treats culture as a black box receiving inputs from the social context and translate them into political consequences. By doing so it cannot explain why the same conditions produce different consequences in different contexts and it is silent on the criteria to develop anti-crisis policies. This article argues that some of the insights offered by the Semiotic Cultural Psychology Theory, most notably the idea that cultural evolution is moved by the need to find affect-laden, simplified interpretations of the reality to restore the capacity of making sense on an uncertain socio-political context, can enhance the ability of political scientists to understand the current political phenomena and to develop methodological criteria to counteract the current scenario of democratic crisis.     

Guidelines for Hoshin Kanri implementation: development and discussion

Hoshin Kanri is a strategic management framework originally conceived in Japan and recognised for developing a deployment process that integrates business strategy and operations execution. Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest regarding Hoshin Kanri implementation among western managers, who usually face cultural challenges towards its use. This leads to the necessity of systematising a set of universally applicable guiding principles or guidelines, for Hoshin Kanri initiatives. This paper presents the results of an in-depth assessment of Hoshin Kanri guidelines carried out through a systematic process of experts? interviews. It uses as its starting point a model of the guidelines that was previously developed through a systematic literature review. The revising and refining of the guidelines is carried out by discussing their conceptual foundations and 20 guidelines are presented that may aid in the implementation of Hoshin Kanri in dfferent types of organisations.     

Accounting for Recent Fertility Swings in Cuba

In 2006, Cuba's TFR had declined to 1.39, a level nearly comparable to those found in ultra‐low‐fertility but far richer European and Asian countries. Given the vast economic differences, Cuba's very low fertility was anomalous. Since 2006, and in tandem with what has occurred in many other low‐fertility countries, the Cuban TFR has increased. This article contends that the TFR increase largely was a response to improvements in the welfare of individual households—and thus, in their financial ability to have children. These improvements were the result of considerable permanent and temporary labor emigration, which together with US and Cuban policy changes, led to a surge in remittances and contributed to easing Cuba's perennial housing shortage.     

A guide for supply chain integration in SMEs

Supply chain integration (SCI) is a competitive business approach for enterprises that has not been implemented as widely as expected in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). One of the factors explaining this low level of application is the lack of methodologies to develop SCI that fit the characteristics of this type of enterprise. In this article, we present a methodology that enables SMEs to achieve correct SCI in a manner that is simple, straightforward and oriented towards their particular characteristics. Thus, SMEs will be able to align and coordinate the aims, resources, decisions, methods, business processes and employees involved in the supply chain. The methodology addresses the problem of SMEs SCI and it was produced by applying the case study research method to 30 industrial SMEs. The methodology is organised in phases and the activities to be performed, the techniques and supporting tools to be used, as well as the expected outcomes are all described for each phase. With this methodology, it becomes possible to overcome the main barriers that prevent SMEs from achieving a correct integration of their supply chains. In addition to the methodology, this article also outlines the significant benefits observed in the 30 enterprises as a result of its application.     

Using occupational structure to measure employability with an application to the Brazilian labor market

We propose measuring individual employability as a weighted average across occupations of a worker’s predicted wage for each occupation. Weights are given by the individual occupational probability distribution. Under this measure, a worker is more employable than another if she has a greater chance to obtain a better paid occupation. After normalization, expected employability corresponds to the population correlation between occupational predicted wages and the chance to obtain employment in these occupations and serves as a measure of the allocative efficiency of labor market. We apply the methodology to Brazil and found that employability increased and became less unequally distributed from 2002 to 2011. We used a decomposition method to investigate the causes of these changes. Although average normalized employability is weakly positive, it has increased for the period, which suggests that there is room for efficiency gains in the allocation of workers to occupations in the Brazilian labor market.     

Mood's test for dispersion as a counting of triplets

The well-known equivalence of Wilcoxon and Mann-Whitney location statistics is herein extended to dispersion tests. Mood (1954) statistic is related to a statistic based on “triplets”. The triplet version of Mood statistic is useful for proving the asymptotic normality (under alternatives) of the test.