Automatic Transfer Research Articles

AUTOMATIC TRANSFER SWITCH UNTUK RUMAH TINGGAL SEDERHANA BERBASIS ARDUINO NANO

Automatic Transfer Switch (ATS) is a device that can move the main power source to a backup power source automatically and quickly when the main power source experiences a disturbance or cut-off of supply to the load. In this study, ATS was designed based on the Arduino Nano microcontroller as an automatic control that works based on voltage readings. Using the Arduino Nano microcontroller can facilitate the process of making tools and minimize the use of components. This ATS uses the PZEM-004T voltage sensor module. The voltage sensor module functions to detect and measure the value of the PLN voltage. From the test results, it was found that the time lag between the PLN supply being cut off until the generator was turned on and ready to load was an average of 2.76 seconds. Meanwhile, the time lag when the PLN supply turns on again until the generator supply is cut off and the load supply is again served by PLN is an average of 1.74 seconds. All working status of this ATS panel can be displayed on the LCD indicator, indicator light and analog voltmeter.

Acquisition, transmission and management of data in industrial practice in the digital age

Digital technologies permeate all aspects of industrial production and Logistics systems, accelerating the generation of large amounts of industrial data. Industry 4.0 and Industrial Internet of Things offers great development opportunities, new perspectives, a new paradigm of autonomous and decentralized production control. The information on the current status of industrial processes is invaluable in present times. Among others, it enables deliberate and rational management of available resources. Therefore, acquisition, transmission and management of data is an important issue in the systems for collecting data from production lines and a key element in the decision-making process. In industrial practice, the data acquisition process uses the information obtained from various sensors placed directly in production lines. The current level of microelectronics development enables acquisition and transfer of data from technological processes in real time. This article presents selected popular methods of automatic acquisition and transfer of data directly from production lines in the course of implementation of manufacturing processes. A review of all the issues discussed is supported by examples. Particular attention is paid to the nature and importance of data acquisition in the decisionmaking process. It was emphasized that the information itself is very important, but the value of information and the way it is processed and managed are also important. Data management in the unit optimizes the decision-making process and the work of the entire unit. On the other hand, data is a resource, the loss of which may result in the loss of competitive position or the loss of development opportunities.

Hyper 100 °C Langmuir-Blodgett (Langmuir-Schaefer) Technique for Organized Ultrathin Film of Polymeric Semiconductors.

In this study, we advanced the conventional Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) method to a high-temperature range (above 100 °C) using a newly manufactured LB machine, which is adaptable to a high-boiling-point subphase, as a universally usable apparatus. A sophisticated trough design, with homogeneous heating capability up to approximately 200 °C, together with automatic film compression and Langmuir-Schaefer type film transfer, enabled the fabrication of highly aligned thin films of polymeric semiconductors with uniaxial alignment of polymer backbones, which is desirable for efficient charge transport. Herein, ultrathin films of semicrystalline thiophene-based semiconductors were prepared on ethylene glycol and heated to 80 °C. The analyses of the transferred films with pressure-area isotherms, atomic force microscopy (AFM), polarized optical microscopy (POM), and grazing-incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering (GIWAXS) indicated that the proposed high-temperature LB method allows ideal deposition of high-quality ultrathin films with molecular layer precision at the selected high-temperature conditions. Furthermore, preparing thin-film donor-acceptor-type copolymers in ionic liquids at high temperatures (up to 140 °C) was a challenging task that was successfully demonstrated in this study. Highly ordered thin films of donor-acceptor polymers with a uniaxial backbone orientation were obtained only at 140 °C. The obtained semicrystalline thin films with uniaxially aligned polymer backbones significantly contribute to the two-dimensional overlap of molecular orbitals, which is likely to promote charge transport. The use of the manufactured automatic LB machines is advantageous for better quality films prepared at higher temperatures (even above 100 °C) from various technical viewpoints, including homogeneous heating, constant compression, and automatic film transfer. The novel methodology proposed herein expands the possibilities of the Hyper 100 °C Langmuir-Blodgett technique, which has not been accessible by the conventional LB method with the aqueous subphase.

Penerapan Sistem Daya Cadangan Untuk Lemari Vaksin Menggunakan PLTS Pada Puskesmas Sindangbarang Bogor

The temperature stability of the vaccine needs to be designed in such a way as to maintain its quality. Where vaccines are generally placed in a special refrigerator with an internal temperature of around +20C - +80C. The condition of the electricity network in the Bogor area, which sometimes goes out for a long time can cause electricity to not be supplied for vaccine refrigerators. For a long period of time, this condition can cause damage to the vaccine so that it cannot be given to toddlers. This activity is the application of technology that is very useful for the people of the Bogor, especially for the Sindangbarang Health Center in Bogor related to the design of power reserves, especially for vaccine refrigerators. This power backup system uses various equipment with appropriate technology such as Automatic Transfer Switch (ATS), solar panels, inverters, batteries, solar charge controllers and other supporting equipment. This PKM program has a focus on managing backup power systems in vaccine cabinets using solar power plants

Semi-supervised video-driven facial animation transfer for production

We propose a simple algorithm for automatic transfer of facial expressions, from videos to a 3D character, as well as between distinct 3D characters through their rendered animations. Our method begins by learning a common, semantically-consistent latent representation for the different input image domains using an unsupervised image-to-image translation model. It subsequently learns, in a supervised manner, a linear mapping from the character images' encoded representation to the animation coefficients. At inference time, given the source domain (i.e., actor footage), it regresses the corresponding animation coefficients for the target character. Expressions are automatically remapped between the source and target identities despite differences in physiognomy. We show how our technique can be used in the context of markerless motion capture with controlled lighting conditions, for one actor and for multiple actors. Additionally, we show how it can be used to automatically transfer facial animation between distinct characters without consistent mesh parameterization and without engineered geometric priors. We compare our method with standard approaches used in production and with recent state-of-the-art models on single camera face tracking.

Analysis of Display Cabinet Design with Commissioning Test for Fresh Sea Food

This research is a design of a display cabinet cooling system with integrated energy from PLN electricity and solar power. This equipment is used for displaying marine fish and other fresh sea food in restaurants or cafes in support of Balinese culinary specialties, namely grilled fish and seafood which are very well known and can be a very extraordinary carrying capacity for Bali tourism. This cooling system is designed to be able to maintain the temperature of the cooling room (cabin) up to -5 oC. This is in accordance with the standards for storing fresh sea fish and sea food in a temperature range of -2oC to 2oC, where fish and sea food are still in a very fresh condition for an average of 1 week. Other standards to maintain product freshness also require room humidity between RH 90% – RH 95%. Furthermore, data collection on system performance is carried out using the commissioning test method to determine the initial performance achievement of the tool so that its shortcomings can be evaluated which will be developed and corrected in further research. From the research, it is found that the temperature achievement is very good, the solar and PLN integration system with the Automatic Transfer Switch (ATS) control system has also worked well where the switch occurs when the battery charging condition is below 30% or below 10V. However, something that has not been achieved is the humidity in this system, the average relative humidity (RH) is 50% so that the final condition of the product becomes dry on the surface of the fish. This relatively low humidity is due to the fact that it still relies on the humidity increase system by opening the cooler cabin door. In the next development, the right humidifier system will be designed for this display cabinet system.

Automatic Data Transfer from OMOP-CDM to REDCap: A Semantically-Enriched Framework.

Automatic Data Transfer from OMOP-CDM to REDCap: A Semantically-Enriched Framework.

The accidental caseworker – How digital self-service influences citizens' administrative burden

Following a large worldwide uptake of digital public services, several countries have turned to mandatory digitization, whereby citizens or companies must use digital self-service applications to apply for public services. However, previous research on the adoption of digital public services has predominantly focused on simple, or even hypothetical, services and situations. We identify a knowledge gap concerning citizens' experience of actual interactions with digital self-service for more complicated social services and benefits. Therefore, we explore digital self-service from the perspective of citizens using the concept of administrative burden as a theoretical lens. Specifically, we analyze data from in-depth empirical studies encompassing observations, interviews, and focus group discussions with single mothers who have applied for public benefits following divorce or family separation. We present a descriptive process model for citizens' application for public benefits. Next, we illustrate how digital self-service influences citizens' administrative burden throughout this process. An important contribution reveals that citizens' administrative burden increases—they must learn how to complete tasks that professional caseworkers previously conducted and comply with government demands concerning digital self-service applications and specific data formats. However, digital self-service can also reduce citizens' administrative burden through the online provision of information and automatic data transfers. Further, digital self-service offers an anonymous application process that may reduce the psychological costs and stigma associated with receiving public benefits. Finally, our research contributes new insights at the theoretical level, linking the concept of administrative burden to complex digital self-service use from a citizen perspective.

Quality Assurance in Cataract and Lens Surgery with Special Consideration of Subjective Patient Reported Outcome Measures and Clinical Reported Outcome Measures.

Results of medical interventions must be documented and evaluated. In studies, this is done with clinical outcomes data (clinician/clinical reported outcome measure, CROM). In the past, less weight has been given to patient surveys with questionnaires (patient reported outcome measure, PROM). This retrospective study included 104 eyes from 53 patients. Of these, 35 patients had cataract surgery and 15 patients had a refractive lens exchange. The implanted lenses included 62 trifocal IOLs (Asphina trifiocal 839, Zeiss), 34 trifocal toric IOLs (Asphina trifocal toric 939, Zeiss) and 8 bifocal IOLs (Asphina 808, Zeiss) with the same IOL platform. Patients completed a modified questionnaire before surgery and one year after surgery. We made changes to the CatQuest-9SF questionnaire so as to also document side effects. The effort required by the patients to answer the questionnaire was a burden. Transcribing the data into electronic files so as they could be saved and analyzed was a lot of work for the staff. Among the patients, 88.7% were spectacle-independent in everyday life, and 77.5% for reading. 44.4% had a halo problem. 92% reported the operation as a success. 100% had a prediction error of ≤ ± 0.75 dpt. There is a high rate of patient satisfaction with the outcome of the intervention. New questionnaires are needed for new IOLs. The Catquest-9SF is from 2009. Accordingly, revisions and new validation is necessary. Beyond that, only automatic data transfer will reduce the amount of work involved in data input.

Optimization of Phase Determining Method for Automatic Transfer Switch Operation Based on Simulated Annealing

Fast reserve supply input systems significantly increase the reliability of power supply due to the possibility of preserving the technological process in case of emergency situations. The accuracy of determining the phase of the residual voltage on the busbar in process of connecting the power reserve supply provides a way to significantly reduce the starting overcurrents. In this paper, some modifications of the annealing method for determining the phase of the residual voltage on main section of busbar for emergency mode are considered. The obtained simulation results based on MATLAB environment make it possible to carry out a comparative analysis of a number of calculations for phase estimation design of automatic transfer switch operations based on simulated annealing.

THE APPLICATION OF SECTION 197 OF THE LABOUR RELATIONS ACT IN AN OUTSOURCING CONTEXT (PART 1)

Section 197 of the Labour Relations Act (LRA) in both its original form and in its current form caused much confusion and debate. Originally it was interpreted that section 197 allowed for the automatic transfer of employees in cases where there was a transfer of the whole or part of a business, trade or undertaking as a going concern. That meant that the contracts of employment transfer to the new owner and that the employees could not refuse to be transferred. Various judges were tasked with interpreting this section in its original form and thus different interpretations emerged, with the Labour Appeal Court ultimately deciding in the NEHAWU v University of Cape Town matter that employers involved in the transfer can decide between them, not to transfer the employees. The LAC further held that “outsourcing” does not necessarily entail a transfer of a business. Section 197 was amended in 2002 and the effect of the provisions is that the old employer is not required to seek the consent of the employees before their contracts are transferred and that the employment contracts transfer automatically. However, the current section has also raised some difficulties especially relating to: when does a transfer of a business as a going concern take place; what constitutes a “business”; when is an entity part of a business, trade, undertaking or service? A more glaring controversy relates to whether section 197 applies to “second-generation contractingout or outsourcing”. All provisions of the LRA should be interpreted in the context of advancing economic development, social justice, labour peace and democratisation of the workplace. One of the primary objects of the LRA is to give effect to and to regulate the fundamental rights of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996. Thus section 197 is to be interpreted in light of the objectives of the LRA as well as to promote the spirit, purport and objects of the Bill of Rights. The common law and international law are both important sources of comparison. The common law allows employers who transfer businesses free to decide whetheror not the transfer will include the employees of the transferor. International law, particularly the European Union and the United Kingdom, favour the approach that when an entity is transferred, it retains its identity after the transfer and the safeguarding of employee rights in the context of business transfers. European and English jurisprudence have shown that almost any combination of events can constitute a transfer of a business.Case law regarding the current section 197 once again raised debate especially relating to the interpretation of the word “service” which was added to section 197 by the amendment. The LAC in the SAMWU v Rand Airport Management Company ruled that a contract to outsource for example gardening functions is a service within the meaning of section 197. Thus such arrangements could result in the automatic transfer of affected employees from the outsourcer to the contractor.Further confusion and debate have arisen as a result of the decision of the COSAWU v Zikhethele Trade (Pty) Ltd matter which held that there may be automatic transfers in cases of second-generation outsourcing, meaning when the outsourcing contract changes hands from one contractor to another, section 197 would apply and employees concerned would transfer automatically. The implicationsof such an interpretation could have vast consequences. In conclusion, it all boils down to the interpretation and application of section 197. Some authors are of the view that section 197 should be widely interpreted; thus the proper protection of employee rights may require the courts to construe section 197 more widely than narrowly. The preferred interpretation is that of Wallis who is of theview that section 197 should be confined to the transfer of businesses and to that subject alone.

Improving the efficiency of autonomous electrical complexes of oil and gas enterprises

In accordance with the Energy Strategy until 2035, the possibility of increasing the efficiency of energy use of secondary energy resources in the form of associated oil and waste gases has been substantiated by increasing the energy efficiency of the primary energy carrier to 90-95 % by means of cogeneration plants with a binary cycle of electricity generation and trigeneration systems with using the energy of the waste gas to cool the air flow at the inlet of gas turbine plants. The conditions for maintaining the rated power of the main generator with variations in the ambient temperature are shown. An effective topology of electrical complexes in a multi-connected power supply system of oil and gas enterprises according to the reliability condition is presented, which allows increasing the availability factor by 0.6 %, mean time between failures by 33 %, the probability of failure-free operation by 15 % and reducing the mean time of system recovery by 40 %. The article considers the use of parallel active filters to improve the quality of electricity and reduce voltage drops to 0.1 s when used in autonomous electrical complexes of oil and gas enterprises. The possibility of providing uninterrupted power supply when using thyristor systems for automatic reserve input has been proven. A comparative analysis was carried out to assess the effect of parallel active filters and thyristor systems of automatic transfer of reserve on the main indicators of the reliability of power supply systems of oil and gas enterprises.

Numerical modeling of localized fire exposures on structures using FDS-FEM and simple models

This paper investigates different numerical modeling strategies for evaluating temperatures in structures subjected to localized fires. Three simple fire models and two methods to interface computational fluid dynamics models with finite element thermal analyses are reviewed. Based on the field of application of each model, a decision flowchart is proposed to select the fire model and strategy suited to the problem. Validation is conducted against three experiments on steel members subjected to localized fires. Results show that the coupling between computational fluid dynamics and finite element analysis through the adiabatic surface temperature is a versatile method able to capture the member temperature in the different experiments in this study. The use of an automatic transfer interface using a transfer file with gas temperatures and radiant intensities is an efficient alternative when the member is outside the fire area and far enough that it does not significantly influence the fire development. The member should not be present in the FDS model when using the interface method. The simple models tend to yield more conservative predictions compared with the experimental results.

Solid State Switching Control Methods: A Bibliometric Analysis for Future Directions

Recently, the development and controls of solid-state switching have gained significant popularity over the years especially in academic research. The development of control strategies in solid state switching applications to ensure fast switching in a protected distribution system has fueled a great deal of investigation and further developments. Therefore, a critical review and analysis in the field of solid-state switching for distribution systems are provided in this article. The Scopus database is used to compile a list of the most cited published papers in the field of solid-state switching control methods based on the identified criteria. The study explores 120 of the most cited articles emphasizing six keywords such as a solid-state breaker, solid-state transfer switch, static transfer switch, automatic transfer switch, automatic protection switches, and solid-state protection switch. The analysis was conducted using the Scopus database in the fourth week of January 2021. The 120 articles were collected from 24 different journals and 27 different countries. It is reported that 78% of the published papers outline the methodology based on control and test systems whereas 22% of articles are based on review surveys. From that, 73% of articles concentrate on the protection strategy in the system. The main objective of the article is to classify and define the highly cited published articles in the field of solid-state switching control methods as well as to provide direction for future research on fast switching in the distribution system. The analysis also highlights various factors, issues, challenges, and difficulties to identify the existing limitations and research gaps. This review will serve to strengthen the development concepts of solid-state switching control methods towards achieving improved operational performance, energy-saving, economic prosperity, and enhanced power quality. The authors believe that this bibliometric evaluation will allow academic researchers to identify opportunities for growth in the solid-state switching industry.

Methods of improving the power supply reliability of industrial site

Ensuring reliability is one of the most important problems in the creation and operation of any technical system. It is especially relevant for complex systems such as power supply systems. A modern industrial site from the power supply point of view is a complex technical system of hazardous industrial facilities, the technological processes continuity and safety of which directly depends on the power supply reliability. Electricity receivers of the considered industrial site in terms of power supply reliability belong to the second category. The task of ensuring the power supply reliability includes a whole range of technical, economic and organizational measures aimed at reducing damage from disruption of the electricity consumers’ normal operation. In addition, in modern market conditions, the power supply reliability is inextricably linked with the economic performance and industrial enterprises energy security. The paper proposes to modernize the industrial site power supply circuit, using the existing standby diesel power plant, which would automatically provide the industrial site power supply in automatic mode in case of disappearance, decrease, increase in voltage level, phase failure, and the phase sequence violation of the three-phase supply voltage on the busbar sections TP-1, TP-2 site. It is obvious that with the existing power supply scheme of the industrial site, the manual switching sequence, control over the backup diesel power plant operation, the normal power supply scheme restoration, it takes an average of 2.5 hours, which is not desirable, especially in winter. Therefore, it is necessary to introduce at the industrial site production control devices for the reserve automatic transfer, which ensure the power supply restoration to the industrial site in automatic mode.

On the automation-supported derivation of domain-specific UML profiles considering static semantics

In the light of standardization, the model-driven engineering (MDE) is becoming increasingly important for the development of DSLs, in addition to traditional approaches based on grammar formalisms. Metamodels define the abstract syntax and static semantics of a DSL and can be created by using the language concepts of the Meta Object Facility (MOF) or by defining a UML profile.Both metamodels and UML profiles are often provided for standardized DSLs, and the mappings of metamodels to UML profiles are usually specified informally in natural language, which also applies for the static semantics of metamodels and/or UML profiles, which has the disadvantage that ambiguities can occur, and that the static semantics must be manually translated into a machine-processable language.To address these weaknesses, we propose a new automated approach for deriving a UML profile from the metamodel of a DSL. One novelty is that subsetting or redefining metaclass attributes are mapped to stereotype attributes whose values are computed at runtime via automatically created OCL expressions. The automatic transfer of the static semantics of a DSL to a UML profile is a further contribution of our approach. Our DSL Metamodeling and Derivation Toolchain (DSL-MeDeTo) implements all aspects of our proposed approach in Eclipse. This enabled us to successfully apply our approach to the two DSLs Test Description Language (TDL) and Specification and Description Language (SDL).

Digitization of Measurement-Based Care Pathways in Mental Health Through REDCap and Electronic Health Record Integration: Development and Usability Study

BackgroundThe delivery of standardized self-report assessments is essential for measurement-based care in mental health. Paper-based methods of measurement-based care data collection may result in transcription errors, missing data, and other data quality issues when entered into patient electronic health records (EHRs).ObjectiveThis study aims to help address these issues by using a dedicated instance of REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture; Vanderbilt University)—a free, widely used electronic data capture platform—that was established to enable the deployment of digitized self-assessments in clinical care pathways to inform clinical decision making. MethodsREDCap was integrated with the primary clinical information system to facilitate the real-time transfer of discrete data and PDF reports from REDCap into the EHR. Both technical and administrative components were required for complete implementation. A technology acceptance survey was also administered to capture physicians’ and clinicians’ attitudes toward the new system.ResultsThe integration of REDCap with the EHR transitioned clinical workflows from paper-based methods of data collection to electronic data collection. This resulted in significant time savings, improved data quality, and valuable real-time information delivery. The digitization of self-report assessments at each appointment contributed to the clinic-wide implementation of the major depressive disorder integrated care pathway. This digital transformation facilitated a 4-fold increase in the physician adoption of this integrated care pathway workflow and a 3-fold increase in patient enrollment, resulting in an overall significant increase in major depressive disorder integrated care pathway capacity. Physicians’ and clinicians’ attitudes were overall positive, with almost all respondents agreeing that the system was useful to their work. ConclusionsREDCap provided an intuitive patient interface for collecting self-report measures and accessing results in real time to inform clinical decisions and an extensible backend for system integration. The approach scaled effectively and expanded to high-impact clinics throughout the hospital, allowing for the broad deployment of complex workflows and standardized assessments, which led to the accumulation of harmonized data across clinics and care pathways. REDCap is a flexible tool that can be effectively leveraged to facilitate the automatic transfer of self-report data to the EHR; however, thoughtful governance is required to complement the technical implementation to ensure that data standardization, data quality, patient safety, and privacy are maintained.

Applications of DEA and SFA in benchmarking studies in forestry: state-of-the-art and future directions

ABSTRACT The forestry sector is constantly looking for ways for making data-driven decisions and improving efficiency. The application of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) allow the users to go beyond looking at simple key performance indicators. Benchmarking is one of the most common tools in business for improving efficiency and competitiveness. This study searched for benchmarking studies in Web of Science until December 2020. It reviewed 56 benchmarking studies in forestry and discusses the potential advantages of using benchmarking in forestry. More than 80% of the studies apply DEA. This review found that almost half of the benchmarking studies in forestry have attempted to estimate the efficiency of forest management organizations at regional scale, mostly being public or state-owned forest districts. A bit more than one-third of the studies have focused on benchmarking forest industries and one-fifth, benchmarking of forest operations. Forest management organizations mainly applied benchmarking for internal comparison and forest industries entirely focused on competitive benchmarking. Surprisingly, in most cases the studies do not necessarily overlap geographically with forest rich countries (e.g., Russian Federation or Brazil). A number of studies address multiple criteria. The future potential for applying automatic data transfer from harvest machines to interactive benchmarking systems are discussed. Finally, the paper discusses the advantages and weaknesses of benchmarking and future research on improving usefulness and usability of benchmarking in forest businesses.

Telemedicine reduces long term mortality in patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction

Abstract Funding Acknowledgements Type of funding sources: None. Background Telemonitoring was introduced with the potential to improve the medical care, quality of life and prognosis of patients with heart failure (HF). The aim of the study was to assess the effect of home telemedicine (HTM) in long-term mortality in patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF). Methods This is a retrospective study of 452 consecutive subjects with HFrEF who were referred to HTM service. The HTM service was offered to HFrEF patients who: a) have been recently diagnosed with HF, b) have been recently hospitalized due to HF, c) have worsening HF, d) need frequent medication changes, e) are NYHA class II or III. Most patients (n= 352) accepted HTM (HTM-group), but 100 patients refused and received the usual care (UC-group). The HTM group were assessed daily by body weight, blood pressure and heart rate using electronic devices with automatic transfer of data to an online database. A nurse practitioner evaluated the measurements every day using a dedicated clinical user interface. Clinical alerts are dealt with by the HTM nurse calling the patient and then, if necessary, a clinical responder; either a community HF nurse with prescribing qualifications or a cardiologist if long-term changes in therapy are required. Patients in both groups were seen at a specialist HF clinic and the frequency of clinical follow-up was at the discretion of the HF team. The same cardiologists reviewed the patients in both groups. Follow-up period was 60 months. Higher prevalence of male gender was seen in the UC-group (78% vs 67%, p = 0.03). Otherwise there was no significant difference in the demographic characteristics or primary cause of HF between the two groups. Also no differences were seen between the two groups in the treatment with beta blockers, angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors/angiotensin receptor blockers and aldosterone antagonists. Results The mean follow-up period for survivors was significantly higher in HTM-group compared with UC-group (50.6 ± 18.2 vs. 37.8 ± 25.2, p < 0.001). After 3 month of follow-up, the all-cause mortality was significantly lower in HTM-group than in UC-group (2.8% vs. 14%; p <0.01). This significantly lower mortality in HTM-group compared to UC-group was further observed in 6 months follow-up ( 4.5% vs. 22%, p < 0.0009); in 12 months follow-up (9% vs. 31.2%, p < 0.0002); in 18 months follow-up (13.4% vs. 38.2%, p < 0.0001); in 24 months follow-up (15.1% vs. 42%, p < 0.0001); in 36 months follow-up (19% vs. 44.5%, p < 0.0002); in 48 months follow-up (23% vs. 46%, p < 0.001); and finally in 60 months follow-up (25.3% vs. 46%, p < 0.003). Conclusion HTM was associated with improved survival. This was observed from the first months of the study and remained present until the end of the study.The reduced mortality in the HTM patients may reflect the fact that HTM improves patient HF knowledge and self-care behaviors.

Generic Architecture for the Automatic Parametrization of Production Machine Assembly Programs

In a high-mix low volume production environment, time to market is a key factor. However, one bottleneck lies in the often times manual parametrization of machines for new or modified designs. A truly flexible manufacturing environment therefore requires a continuous data flow from the design stages to the shop floor. This paper presents a concept for the automated parameterization of machines at a large automotive plant. Therefore, this paper initially discusses the results of a stakeholder analysis. The stakeholders comprise of different departments related to the product design and manufacturing processes. The requirements resulting from the interviews conducted with the stakeholders are grouped and ordered by priority. Secondly a general architecture for the control interface is presented. It includes multiple submodules, which model the continuous data flow between the departments and the production systems. The first main step of the data flow is the transformation of the information which is presented in various styles depending on the source departments to structured and standardized data. Thereafter machine parameters are generated automatically by a submodule using the structured input data and inference rules. Finally, the architecture supports the automatic transfer of the machine readable output data to the assembly line. To test the architecture a prototype comprising of more than 100 robots in a live production environment is implemented. It allows for a continuous data flow from the design and productions planning department to the robots. This enables a flexible process control, which up to today has supported the fast roll out of more than 100 new product variants. In contrast to the conventional manual setup of the machines for operation, the prototype was able to show that the monetary and time expenditure could be reduced by 95 percent.