Abstract: The growing outsourcing of logistics services
resulting from the ongoing current in firms of costs
reduction/increased efficiency means that it is becoming more and
more important for the companies doing the outsourcing to carry out
a proper evaluation.
The multiple definitions and measures of logistics service
performance found in research on the topic create a certain degree of
confusion and do not clear the way towards the proper measurement
of their performance. Do a model and a specific set of indicators exist
that can be considered appropriate for measuring the performance of
logistics services outsourcing in industrial environments? Are said
indicators in keeping with the objectives pursued by outsourcing? We
aim to answer these and other research questions in the study we have
initiated in the field within the framework of the international High
Performance Manufacturing (HPM) project of which this paper
forms part.
As the first stage of this research, this paper reviews articles
dealing with the topic published in the last 15 years with the aim of
detecting the models most used to make this measurement and
determining which performance indicators are proposed as part of
said models and which are most used. The first steps are also taken in
determining whether these indicators, financial and operational, cover
the aims that are being pursued when outsourcing logistics services.
The findings show there is a wide variety of both models and
indicators used. This would seem to testify to the need to continue
with our research in order to try to propose a model and a set of
indicators for measuring the performance of logistics services
outsourcing in industrial environments.
Abstract: This paper presents a simple approach for load
flow analysis of a radial distribution network. The proposed
approach utilizes forward and backward sweep algorithm
based on Kirchoff-s current law (KCL) and Kirchoff-s voltage
law (KVL) for evaluating the node voltages iteratively. In this
approach, computation of branch current depends only on the
current injected at the neighbouring node and the current in
the adjacent branch. This approach starts from the end nodes
of sub lateral line, lateral line and main line and moves
towards the root node during branch current computation. The
node voltage evaluation begins from the root node and moves
towards the nodes located at the far end of the main, lateral
and sub lateral lines. The proposed approach has been tested
using four radial distribution systems of different size and
configuration and found to be computationally efficient.
Abstract: It has been shown that in most accidents the driver is responsible due to being distracted or misjudging the situation. In order to solve such problems research has been dedicated to developing driver assistance systems that are able to monitor the traffic situation around the vehicle. This paper presents methods for recognizing several circumstances on a road. The methods use both the in-vehicle warning systems and the roadside infrastructure. Preliminary evaluation results for fog and ice-on-road detection are presented. The ice detection results are based on data recorded in a test track dedicated to tyre friction testing. The achieved results anticipate that ice detection could work at a performance of 70% detection with the right setup, which is a good foundation for implementation. However, the full benefit of the presented cooperative system is achieved by fusing the outputs of multiple data sources, which is the key point of discussion behind this publication.
Abstract: Company mergers and acquisitions reached their peak
in the twenty-first century. Mergers and acquisitions have become one
of the competitive strategies for external growth. In general, it is
believed that mergers and acquisitions can create synergies. However,
they require complete information technology system and service
integration, especially in the banking industry. Much of the research
has focused on performance evaluation, shareholder equity allocation,
or even the increase of company market value after the merger and
acquisition, whereas few scholars have focused on information system
integration post merger and acquisition. This study indicates the role
of information systems after a merger and acquisition, explaining the
benefits of information system integration using a merger and
acquisition case in the banking industry as an example. In addition, we
discuss factors that affect the performance of information system
integration, and utilize system dynamics to interpret the relationship
among factors that affect information system integration performance
in the banking industry after a merger and acquisition.
Abstract: carrot is one of the important root vegetable crops,
and it is highly nutritious as it contains appreciable amount of
vitamins, minerals and β-carotene. The major objective of current
research was to evaluate the chemical composition of carrot variety
'Nante' hybrids in general and to select the best samples for fresh-cut
salad production. The research was accomplished on fresh in Latvia
cultivated carrots harvested in Zemgale region in the first part of
October, 2011 and immediately used for experiments. Late-bearing
variety 'Nante' hybrid carrots were used for analysis:
'Nante/Berlikum', 'Nante/Maestro', 'Nante/Forto', 'Nante/Bolero'
and 'Nante/Champion'. The quality parameters as moisture, soluble
solid, firmness, b-carotene, carotenoid, color, polyphenols, total
phenolic compounds and total antioxidant capacity were analyzed
using standard methods. For fresh-cut salad production as more
applicable could be recommended hybrids 'Nante/Forto' and
'Nante/Berlikum' - mainly because it-s higher nutritive value, as
higher total phenolic compounds, polyphenols and pronounced
antioxidant capacity.
Abstract: The paper evaluates several hundred one-day-ahead
VaR forecasting models in the time period between the years 2004
and 2009 on data from six world stock indices - DJI, GSPC, IXIC,
FTSE, GDAXI and N225. The models model mean using the ARMA
processes with up to two lags and variance with one of GARCH,
EGARCH or TARCH processes with up to two lags. The models are
estimated on the data from the in-sample period and their forecasting
accuracy is evaluated on the out-of-sample data, which are more
volatile. The main aim of the paper is to test whether a model
estimated on data with lower volatility can be used in periods with
higher volatility. The evaluation is based on the conditional coverage
test and is performed on each stock index separately. The primary
result of the paper is that the volatility is best modelled using a
GARCH process and that an ARMA process pattern cannot be found
in analyzed time series.
Abstract: This paper presents an evaluation for a wavelet-based
digital watermarking technique used in estimating the quality of
video sequences transmitted over Additive White Gaussian Noise
(AWGN) channel in terms of a classical objective metric, such as
Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) without the need of the original
video. In this method, a watermark is embedded into the Discrete
Wavelet Transform (DWT) domain of the original video frames
using a quantization method. The degradation of the extracted
watermark can be used to estimate the video quality in terms of
PSNR with good accuracy. We calculated PSNR for video frames
contaminated with AWGN and compared the values with those
estimated using the Watermarking-DWT based approach. It is found
that the calculated and estimated quality measures of the video
frames are highly correlated, suggesting that this method can provide
a good quality measure for video frames transmitted over AWGN
channel without the need of the original video.
Abstract: Selective oxidation of H2S to elemental sulfur in a
fixed bed reactor over newly synthesized alumina nanocatalysts was
physio-chemically investigated and results compared with a
commercial Claus catalyst. Amongst these new materials, Al2O3-
supported sodium oxide prepared with wet chemical technique and
Al2O3 nanocatalyst prepared with spray pyrolysis method were the
most active catalysts for selective oxidation of H2S to elemental
sulfur. Other prepared nanocatalysts were quickly deactivated,
mainly due to the interaction with H2S and conversion into sulfides.
Abstract: Korea Train eXpress (KTX) is now being operated,
which allows Korea being one of the countries that operates the
high-speed rail system. The high-speed rail has its advantage of short
time transportation of population and materials, which lead to many
researches performed in this matter. In the case of high speed classical
trackbed system, the maintenance and usability of gravel ballast
system is costly. Recently, the concrete trackbed structure has been
introduced as a replacement of classical trackbed system. In this case,
the sleeper plays a critical role. Current study investigated to develop
the track sleepers readily applicable to the top of the asphalt trackbed,
as part of the trcakbed study utilizing the asphalt material. Among
many possible shapes and design of sleepers, current study proposed
two types of wide-sleepers according to the shear-key installation
method. The structural behavior analysis and safety evaluation on each
case was conducted using Korean design standard.
Abstract: This paper presents a new strategy of identification
and classification of pathological voices using the hybrid method
based on wavelet transform and neural networks. After speech
acquisition from a patient, the speech signal is analysed in order to
extract the acoustic parameters such as the pitch, the formants, Jitter,
and shimmer. Obtained results will be compared to those normal and
standard values thanks to a programmable database. Sounds are
collected from normal people and patients, and then classified into
two different categories. Speech data base is consists of several
pathological and normal voices collected from the national hospital
“Rabta-Tunis". Speech processing algorithm is conducted in a
supervised mode for discrimination of normal and pathology voices
and then for classification between neural and vocal pathologies
(Parkinson, Alzheimer, laryngeal, dyslexia...). Several simulation
results will be presented in function of the disease and will be
compared with the clinical diagnosis in order to have an objective
evaluation of the developed tool.
Abstract: I/O workload is a critical and important factor to
analyze I/O pattern and file system performance. However tracing I/O
operations on the fly distributed parallel file system is non-trivial due
to collection overhead and a large volume of data. In this paper, we
design and implement a parallel file system logging method for high
performance computing using shared memory-based multi-layer
scheme. It minimizes the overhead with reduced logging operation
response time and provides efficient post-processing scheme through
shared memory. Separated logging server can collect sequential logs
from multiple clients in a cluster through packet communication.
Implementation and evaluation result shows low overhead and high
scalability of this architecture for high performance parallel logging
analysis.
Abstract: The visualization of geographic information on mobile devices has become popular as the widespread use of mobile Internet. The mobility of these devices brings about much convenience to people-s life. By the add-on location-based services of the devices, people can have an access to timely information relevant to their tasks. However, visual analysis of geographic data on mobile devices presents several challenges due to the small display and restricted computing resources. These limitations on the screen size and resources may impair the usability aspects of the visualization applications. In this paper, a variable-scale visualization method is proposed to handle the challenge of small mobile display. By merging multiple scales of information into a single image, the viewer is able to focus on the interesting region, while having a good grasp of the surrounding context. This is essentially visualizing the map through a fisheye lens. However, the fisheye lens induces undesirable geometric distortion in the peripheral, which renders the information meaningless. The proposed solution is to apply map generalization that removes excessive information around the peripheral and an automatic smoothing process to correct the distortion while keeping the local topology consistent. The proposed method is applied on both artificial and real geographical data for evaluation.
Abstract: As the information age matures, major social
infrastructures such as communication, finance, military and energy,
have become ever more dependent on information communication
systems. And since these infrastructures are connected to the Internet,
electronic intrusions such as hacking and viruses have become a new
security threat. Especially, disturbance or neutralization of a major
social infrastructure can result in extensive material damage and social
disorder. To address this issue, many nations around the world are
researching and developing various techniques and information
security policies as a government-wide effort to protect their
infrastructures from newly emerging threats. This paper proposes an
evaluation method for information security levels of CIIP (Critical
Information Infrastructure Protection), which can enhance the security
level of critical information infrastructure by checking the current
security status and establish security measures accordingly to protect
infrastructures effectively.
Abstract: The hidden-point bar method is useful in many
surveying applications. The method involves determining the
coordinates of a hidden point as a function of horizontal and vertical
angles measured to three fixed points on the bar. Using these
measurements, the procedure involves calculating the slant angles,
the distances from the station to the fixed points, the coordinates of
the fixed points, and then the coordinates of the hidden point. The
propagation of the measurement errors in this complex process has
not been fully investigated in the literature. This paper evaluates the
effect of the bar geometry on the position accuracy of the hidden
point which depends on the measurement errors of the horizontal and
vertical angles. The results are used to establish some guidelines
regarding the inclination angle of the bar and the location of the
observed points that provide the best accuracy.
Abstract: Soursop (Anona muricata) is one of the underutilized tropical fruits containing nutrients, particularly dietary fibre and antioxidant properties that are beneficial to human health. This objective of this study is to investigate the feasibility of matured soursop pulp flour (SPF) to be substituted with high-protein wheat flour in bread. Bread formulation was substituted with different levels of SPF (0%, 5%, 10% and 15%). The effect on physicochemical properties and sensory attributes were evaluated. Higher substitution level of SPF resulted in significantly higher (p
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to introduce a parametric
distribution model in fatigue life reliability analysis dealing with
variation in material properties. Service loads in terms of responsetime
history signal of Belgian pave were replicated on a multi-axial
spindle coupled road simulator and stress-life method was used to
estimate the fatigue life of automotive stub axle. A PSN curve was
obtained by monotonic tension test and two-parameter Weibull
distribution function was used to acquire the mean life of the
component. A Pearson system was developed to evaluate the fatigue
life reliability by considering stress range intercept and slope of the
PSN curve as random variables. Considering normal distribution of
fatigue strength, it is found that the fatigue life of the stub axle to
have the highest reliability between 10000 – 15000 cycles. Taking
into account the variation of material properties associated with the
size effect, machining and manufacturing conditions, the method
described in this study can be effectively applied in determination of
probability of failure of mass-produced parts.
Abstract: Modularized design approach can facilitate the
modeling of complex systems and support behavior analysis and
simulation in an iterative and thus complex engineering process, by
using encapsulated submodels of components and of their interfaces.
Therefore it can improve the design efficiency and simplify the
solving complicated problem. Multi-drivers off-road vehicle is
comparatively complicated. Driving-line is an important core part to a
vehicle; it has a significant contribution to the performance of a
vehicle. Multi-driver off-road vehicles have complex driving-line, so
its performance is heavily dependent on the driving-line. A typical
off-road vehicle-s driving-line system consists of torque converter,
transmission, transfer case and driving-axles, which transfer the
power, generated by the engine and distribute it effectively to the
driving wheels according to the road condition. According to its main
function, this paper puts forward a modularized approach for
designing and evaluation of vehicle-s driving-line. It can be used to
effectively estimate the performance of driving-line during concept
design stage. Through appropriate analysis and assessment method, an
optimal design can be reached. This method has been applied to the
practical vehicle design, it can improve the design efficiency and is
convenient to assess and validate the performance of a vehicle,
especially of multi-drivers off-road vehicle.
Abstract: Internet is nowadays included to all National Curriculums of the elementary school. A comparative study of their
goals leads to the conclusion that a complete curriculum should aim to student-s acquisition of the abilities to navigate and search for
information and additionally to emphasize on the evaluation of the information provided by the World Wide Web. In a constructivistic knowledge framework the design of a course has to take under
consideration the conceptual representations of students. The following paper presents the conceptual representation of students of eleven years old, attending the Sixth Grade of Greek Elementary School about World Wide Web and their use in the design and
implementation of an innovative course.
Abstract: Web sites are rapidly becoming the preferred media
choice for our daily works such as information search, company
presentation, shopping, and so on. At the same time, we live in a
period where visual appearances play an increasingly important
role in our daily life. In spite of designers- effort to develop a web
site which be both user-friendly and attractive, it would be difficult
to ensure the outcome-s aesthetic quality, since the visual
appearance is a matter of an individual self perception and opinion.
In this study, it is attempted to develop an automatic system for
web pages aesthetic evaluation which are the building blocks of
web sites. Based on the image processing techniques and artificial
neural networks, the proposed method would be able to categorize
the input web page according to its visual appearance and aesthetic
quality. The employed features are multiscale/multidirectional
textural and perceptual color properties of the web pages, fed to
perceptron ANN which has been trained as the evaluator. The
method is tested using university web sites and the results
suggested that it would perform well in the web page aesthetic
evaluation tasks with around 90% correct categorization.
Abstract: In this paper a novel method was presented for
evaluating the fabric pills using digital image processing techniques. This work provides a novel technique for
detecting pills and also measuring their heights, surfaces and
volumes. Surely, measuring the intensity of defects by human vision is an inaccurate method for quality control; as a result, this problem became a motivation for employing digital image processing techniques for detection of defects of fabric
surface. In the former works, the systems were just limited to measuring of the surface of defects, but in the presented
method the height and the volume of defects were also
measured, which leads to a more accurate quality control. An algorithm was developed to first, find pills and then measure their average intensity by using three criteria of height, surface
and volume. The results showed a meaningful relation
between the number of rotations and the quality of pilled fabrics.