The impact of learning opportunities and decision authority on occupational health

In an investigation of 418 employees in the Norwegian Postal Service, employees with high learning opportunities and high decision authority were found to be better off on psychological functioning, health and organizational outcome variables than employees with low scores on these variables. Decision authority and learning opportunities had specific and independent impact on subjective health, psychological functioning, coping style and organizational outcome variables. There were, however, also interaction effects between demands, learning opportunities, and decision authority on subjective health. Learning opportunities and decision authority were operationalized with a questionnaire, supplemented with questions on the opportunities to learn skills beyond the present job situation. It is suggested that this is a particularly important dimension for coping with the present day rapid changes in working life, where the objective for many workers will be to broaden their repertoire and competence to increase their flexibility in the labour market.     

The Job Demands-Job Control Model and absence behaviour: results of a 3-year longitudinal study

Empirical results of earlier studies only marginally supported the relevance of Karasek's Job Demands-Job Control Model for absence behaviour. Since longitudinal studies with respect to these relations were largely lacking, a four-wave panel study was carried out using data from 1755 male employees of a technical maintenance firm in the public sector. Job demands, job control, physical working conditions, and the employee's age, education, and health were measured in one year and absenteeism in the same year and in the next 3 years. Data were analysed with linear regression and Poisson regression techniques. The Poisson regression technique was superior to the linear regression technique in explaining absence. Age, health and prior absence were the best predictors of later absence behaviour. With respect to the Job Demands-Job Control Model, the main findings of the study were (1) that job control was significantly associated with a low number of simultaneous and later absence days, and (2) that, contrary to expectations, job demands were also related to a low number of simultaneous and later absence days. These results hold when age, health, education, prior absence, and working conditions are controlled for. Job control and job demands did not predict later absence frequency. In the discussion it is suggested that a high level of job demands may not only be harmful for the well-being of employees but also work as 'a pressure to attend'.     

FORRIDGE - Principles of good practice in material flow

The post World War II Industrial Revolution has driven production away from the old 'economies of scale' to the new 'economies of scope'. Apparently Japanese led, the associated roots of present good practice on material flow can be traced back in the USA to Jay Forrester and in the UK to Jack Burbidge. Specifically, in the supply chain scenario, Forrester exposed the importance of system structure in relating and integrating information flow with material flow. Similarly Burbidge led the way in exploiting cycle time reduction, synchronization of orders throughout the chain, simplified product structures, and streamlined component flows. This paper unites their contributions to material flow engineering and shows how present day system design methodologies incorporate their ideas on best practice. These principles are particularly relevant to the product delivery process (PDP) which governs material flow in supply chains.     

Layered supervisory control architecture for reconfigurable automation

The development of control systems and supporting software remains one of the greatest obstacles to the widespread implementation of highly adaptive reconfigurable automation technology. This paper will present the structure of a modular automation control system designed to support rapid reconfiguration and redeployment of automation components. The paper will first present the concept of a layered system architecture and the use of modular automation components to support the construction of a wide variety of automated systems. This layered system architecture is then applied to the proposed modular supervisory control system responsible for configuring and driving automated production resources. Each of the control components comprising this modular control system will be presented.     

Applying State Space to SPC: Monitoring Multivariate Time Series

Monitoring cross-sectional and serially interdependent processes has become a new issue in statistical process control (SPC). In up-to-date SPC literature, Kalman filtering was reported to monitor univariate autocorrelated processes. This paper applies a Kalman filter or state-space method for SPC to monitoring multivariate time series. We use Aoki's approach to estimate the parameter matrices of a state-space model. Multivariate Hotelling T ² control charts are employed to monitor the residuals of the state-space. Examples of this approach are illustrated.     

“森林有害生物控制”教学改革理论与实践

作者针对“森林有害生物控制”课程的特点,将原属于“森林昆虫学”和“林木病理学”两门课程的内容全面整合;进一步改革教学方法,通过使用多媒体技术,提供翔实生动的多媒体资料,提高学生学习的兴趣;充分利用网络工具,增加学生获取信息的途径,体现学生学习的主体地位,增强学生的自学能力;通过教学活动的全程控制,提高学生学习的主动性和积极性。     

示范性数控技术专业建设探索与实践

总结了过去几年来数控技术专业的办学经验和办学成果,找到存在的不足,并对今后的专业建设和教学改革提出了工作设想和未来展望。     

浅析莎剧中的上帝母题

上帝是基督教神学最重要的观念,在基督教信仰中,上帝具有全能的智慧,全在全知;他的旨意决定着一切,世人所能做的只是对他表示无条件的承认和顺从;上帝是仁慈的,对其子民永远表示眷爱;上帝又是公义的,扬善惩恶.在莎士比亚戏剧中,上帝的这些属性得到了充分的展现.文章紧扣圣经文本和剧本内容,对该母题在莎剧中的具体表现作出详尽分析.     

开放信息系统动态运行的需求控制问题

与组织融为一体并相互作用的具有动态结构的开放信息系统是国民经济信息化的基础。本文抽象出信息系统动态运行的需求控制结构,提出了保证这种反馈结构的计算机信息系统的建设要求。     

Multistage methodologies for comparing several treatments with a control

We consider the problem of constructing a set of fixed-width simultaneous confidence intervals for the treatment-control differences of means for several independent normal populations with a common unknown variance. Taking c observations from the control population instead of the usual vector-at-a-time approach, purely sequential estimation methodology is developed and asymptotic second-order characteristics are provided. Brief remarks on the accelerated sequential and three-stage methodologies have been added. Next, with the help of simulations, performances of the purely sequential, accelerated sequential and three-stage estimation techniques are compared. Overall, the second-order asymptotics are found to provide useful approximations even for moderate sample sizes.