A strategic approach to labour inspection

In a report released in 2006, the ILO highlighted the difficulties of labour inspection in its member States and advocated a number of measures to strengthen its effectiveness. The author argues that inspectorates must go beyond calls for more inspectors by adopting a clear strategic framework for reacting to incoming complaints and targeting programmed investigations in order to maximize effectiveness in the use of their overstretched resources. To do so, he proposes, their work must be guided by the principles of prioritization, deterrence, sustainability and achieving systemic effects. The article concludes with an outline of the requirements of a coherent regulatory strategy.     

An investigation of the effects of inspection errors on the run-length control charts

For continuous inspection schemes in an automated manufacturing environment, a useful alternative to the traditional p or np chart is the Run-Length control chart, which is based on plotting the run lengths (the number of conforming items) between successive nonconforming items. However, its establishment relies on the error-free inspection assumption, which can seldom be met in practice. In this paper, the effects of inspection errors on the Run-Length chart are investigated based on that these errors are assumed known. The actual false alarm probability and the average number inspected (ANI) in the presence of inspection errors are studied. This paper also presents the adjusted control limits for the Run-Length chart, which can provide much closer ANI curves to the ones obtained under error-free inspection.     

中国近代教育督导发源探析

教育督导(或者视导、视察),就是依据既定的教育方针和政策,对各级各类的教育设施和教育行为进行检查、监督和指导,为教育主管部门提供决策、控制和引导的基本材料和参照指标,从而保证教育事业的建设和发展。中国近代的视学制度,正是基于这一原因,借鉴了一些发达国家的教育立法和教育视导的经验而建立起来的。     

Condition-based maintenance policy for linear consecutive-k-out-of-n: F system

In the article, a condition-based maintenance policy is proposed for a linear consecutive-k-out-of-n: F system. The failure times of components are assumed to be independent and identically distributed. It is assumed that the component states in the system can be known at any time and the system failure can be detected immediately. The preventive maintenance action is based on the number of working components in minimal cut sets of the system. If there is at least one minimal cut set consisting of only one working component, the system is maintained preventively after a certain time interval. The proposed policy is compared with corrective maintenance and age-based maintenance policies. As an extended case, it is assumed that the component states can only be known by inspection, but the system failure can be detected immediately. In this case, the system is inspected periodically and is also maintained preventively based on the system state at inspection. Numerical examples are studied to evaluate the performance of the proposed policy and investigate the effects of cost parameters on the expected cost rate.     

Social worker or social administrator? Findings from a qualitative case study of a child protection social work team

This paper reports on data from a qualitative case study of child protection social work in one local authority. Ethnographic methods were used and constructionist grounded theory employed to collect and analyse 329 pages of historical documents about the local authority child protection service, 246.5 hours of observations of social work practice and 19 interviews of social workers and their team managers. By interpreting the experiences of the social workers through the conceptual debates about the changes in the field of social administration, the social workers could be seen to want to perform a traditional form of social work but were required to perform a contemporary form of social administration. The aims and purposes of this form of practice could be considered to be distinct from those of social work as understood by the social workers, and as such, the social workers experienced the practice environment as constraining and often felt disillusioned. This paper conceptualizes these forms of practice, contributing to the debates about what practice is and how we are to analyse and categorize it for the purposes of influencing the institutions that create and maintain contemporary practice.     

Lifetime Assessment by Intermittent Inspection under the Mixture Weibull Power Law Model with Application to XLPE Cables

This paper proposes a new treatment for electrical insulation degradation. Some types of insulation which have been used under various circumstances are considered to degrade at various rates in accordance with their stress circumstances. The cross-linked polyethylene (XLPE) insulated cables inspected by major Japanese electric companies clearly indicate such phenomena. By assuming that the inspected specimen is sampled from one of the clustered groups, a mixed degradation model can be constructed. Since the degradation of the insulation under common circumstances is considered to follow a Weibull distribution, a mixture model and a Weibull power law can be combined. This is called The mixture Weibull power law model. By using the maximum likelihood estimation for the newly proposed model to Japanese 22 and 33kV insulation class cables, they are clustered into a certain number of groups by using the AIC and the generalized likelihood ratio test method. The reliability of the cables at specified years are assessed. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

法律衡平与劳权保障:现代劳动法的价值理念及其实现(一)

针对法律衡平与劳权保障中的现代劳动法的价值理念及其实现探析了在市场经济条件下劳动者相对于用工者所处于弱势地位,与其用工者在订立与履行劳动契约过程中,存在着实质上是以法律形式平等掩盖了双方的实际不平等地位。这就要求现代劳动法应以约束和规范用工者劳动用工行为,保护劳动者合法权益为立法价值取向,要在法律上形成劳动基准制度、最低工资保障制度和劳动监察制度,运用法律手段衡平劳动者与用工者之间的权利义务关系。对于当代中国的劳动法制建设、劳动立法、司法与执法工作并举,为有效保障劳动者合法权益法律机制的形成起到积极的推动作用。     

清代赴日考察官绅日本访书活动初探

有清一代,日本书籍西传中国的规模巨大,数量空前,参与其中者有商人、驻日使节、赴日考察官绅、留学生、旅日文人墨客及政治活动家、来华日人等.而清末赴日考察官绅的日本访书活动是特殊历史背景下形成的极具特色的文化活动,不仅参与人数众多,携归书籍数量巨大,而且所访求的书籍不局限于从中国东渐的典籍及日人著述的和汉书籍等"旧书",还包含了当时中国人所关心的有关政治、经济、文化等各方面的"新书",对中国文化典籍的回归及中国近代化事业作出了重要的贡献.     

欧洲农业产业化给我们的启示

欧洲农业已高度产业化,文章就欧洲农业考察中的所见所闻,总结了五方面的启示,以此来推进我国的农业产业化。     

Optimal Inspection of Imports to Prevent Invasive Pest Introduction

The United States imports more than 1 billion live plants annually—an important and growing pathway for introduction of damaging nonnative invertebrates and pathogens. Inspection of imports is one safeguard for reducing pest introductions, but capacity constraints limit inspection effort. We develop an optimal sampling strategy to minimize the costs of pest introductions from trade by posing inspection as an acceptance sampling problem that incorporates key features of the decision context, including (i) simultaneous inspection of many heterogeneous lots, (ii) a lot‐specific sampling effort, (iii) a budget constraint that limits total inspection effort, (iv) inspection error, and (v) an objective of minimizing cost from accepted defective units. We derive a formula for expected number of accepted infested units (expected slippage) given lot size, sample size, infestation rate, and detection rate, and we formulate and analyze the inspector's optimization problem of allocating a sampling budget among incoming lots to minimize the cost of slippage. We conduct an empirical analysis of live plant inspection, including estimation of plant infestation rates from historical data, and find that inspections optimally target the largest lots with the highest plant infestation rates, leaving some lots unsampled. We also consider that USDA‐APHIS, which administers inspections, may want to continue inspecting all lots at a baseline level; we find that allocating any additional capacity, beyond a comprehensive baseline inspection, to the largest lots with the highest infestation rates allows inspectors to meet the dual goals of minimizing the costs of slippage and maintaining baseline sampling without substantial compromise.