Policy Deployment Research Articles

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF LEAN MANUFACTURING AUDITS IN MEASURING OPERATIONAL PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS

The hypothesis that lean manufacturing audits are an effective way to measure improvements in operational performance was tested using 64 manufacturing sites owned by a FTSE 100 company. Commonly-used lean characteristics were evaluated: policy deployment, standardised work, visual management and housekeeping, quick changeover techniques, total productive maintenance, continuous improvement ( kaizen ), error proofing, cultural awareness, material control, and levelling ( heijunka ). Operational performance was assessed employing commonly-used operational performance measures: on-time-delivery, inventory turns, and direct labour utilisation. The findings are that lean manufacturing audits are effective in measuring improvements in operational performance provided that the audit scope and the lean characteristics are aligned up front.

The solar power policies and markets of Asia and Europe

This article examines and compares the design and roll-out of solar policies of three major markets in Asia and Europe in 2012. The photovoltaic (“PV”) and concentrated solar power (“CSP”) policies of India, Thailand, Malaysia, in Asia and Germany, Italy and Spain in Europe are analysed on the basis of policy documents publicly available on web portals of the relevant government authorities in the respective countries in addition to independent reports and studies. The aim here is to measure and compare the form and quantum of state support extended to the solar power generation sector in these six fairly comparable countries in Asia and Europe, provide an overview of the design and deployment of solar power policies and estimate the costs of carbon mitigation through solar power in the six countries. The countries were chosen on the basis of available information and data in English from primary sources such as government policy documents, announcements and reports, and the scale of solar power policies and their relative maturity.

Trade-offs in designing water pollution trading policy with multiple objectives: A case study in the Tai Lake Basin, China

Abstract The design of an emissions trading system crucially depends not only on cost-efficiency but also on the nature of the pollutant being regulated and traded. Because the water quality impacts of the pollution discharged by polluters are closely related to the polluters’ locations, a water pollution trading system for non-uniformly mixed pollutants such as chemical oxygen demand (COD) may cause violations of predetermined water quality standards over the length of a river. Trading ratios are a way of ensuring the equivalency of the potential water quality impact between an allowance generated in one location and used in another location in a watershed. This research proposed a zonal-based trading ratios (ZTR) system to improve cost-efficiency while meeting environmental constraints. An artificial market for COD trading in the Wujingang watershed in Tai Lake Basin was constructed by applying an agent-based model. A Water Quality Analysis Simulation Program (WASP) model was introduced to predict the water quality impacts of the water pollution trading market on the river system. The results show that a simply designed tradable discharge permit (TDP) system for the Tai Lake Basin without trading ratios has the potential to decrease water quality in some locations. A trading market restricted by ZTR is more efficient in creating trade-offs between achieving cost-efficiency and meeting water quality standards. Thus, the integration of trading ratios in pilot programs for water pollution trading policy deployments in the Tai Lake Basin and throughout China is suggested to minimize adverse water quality impacts.

EHealth in Europe – Status and Challenges

To present European reflections on the concept of eHealth and emerging challenges related to further development of eHealth in Europe. A survey with 10 questions was distributed to representatives of the national member associations of the European Federation of Medical Informatics (EFMI). The results document a shift from a constricting ICT-orientation to development of the entire health system where eHealth strategies, organizational change, and appropriate technological infrastructure are singled out as important aspects. There are urgent needs to ensure that eHealth strategies and policies for further design and deployment of eHealth applications support sociable services and innovations in health care.

Performance Evaluation of Enhancedgreedy-Two-Phase Deployment Algorithm

Firewall is one of the most widely utilized component on any network architecture, since that a deployment is a very important step to turn the initial policy to a target policy. This operation must be done without presenting any risks or flaws. Much resear ch has already addressed theconflict detection of policies and optimization, but in our paper we will focus on researches that talk about strategies for the security of policy deployment, some researchers have proposed a number of algorithms to solve this problem, we will discuss one of these algorithm then we propose an amelioration of this strategy. In [1], we have proposed a correct algorithm for the deployment type I.But in this work we will study the performance evaluation of the new solution called “Enhanced-Two-Phase-Deployment”. We show that the proposed solution is most efficient.

Achieving Price Stability in Nigeria: Monetary Policy Rate Approach vs. Foreign Exchange Policy Approach

Earlier studies have reached a consensus that monetary policies generate more economic activities than fiscal policies in developing economies. This study has bridged the existing gaps in earlier studies by addressing the question of which of the instruments of macroeconomics is more effective in achieving price stability remains largely unanswered. The study observed that the presence of exogenous factor was responsible for the inability of the tight monetary policies of the CBN to mob excess liquidity from the economy. In the same vein, the exogenous factor destabilizes the steady economic growth that would have emanated from a relaxed monetary policy. The study also found foreign exchange rates (fx) to be a more effective instrument to achieving price stability than monetary policy rates (mpr). The Nigerian economy is largely import dependent with most of the importation being consumable goods and services and less of productive (capital) goods. The impact of changes in fx are more pronounced on the economy than changes in the interest rates. The attainment of price stability would become feasible if the apex bank accords priority to the formulation and deployment of foreign exchange policies that are sound in principle and effective in practice.

User-oriented service and policy innovation in shared research equipment infrastructure: an application of the QFD and Kano's model to the Gyeonggi Bio-Center

The asymmetry of knowledge with regard to user requirements for a shared research equipment service makes it difficult to develop user-oriented strategies and policies. To resolve this issue, we developed a framework using the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) process and Kano's model for application to a case study on innovation in the shared research equipment service at the Gyeonggi Bio-Center. Kano's model allows us to define which service quality requirements are attractive, one-dimensional or must-be qualities in the shared research equipment service. The QFD process has rarely been applied to the shared research equipment service (which is closely related with technology infrastructure policy). The newly developed framework consists of three actors: ‘user’, ‘service institution’ and ‘provincial government’. The QFD process in the framework is performed by a two-step deployment of service deployment and policy deployment that bridges the knowledge gap among the three actors in the regional innovation system. Alternatives and implications for shared research equipment service with a focus on user-friendliness have been systematically produced through application of the suggested framework.

Knowledge and utilization of information communication technology (ICT) among health science students at the University of Gondar, North Western Ethiopia

BackgroundDespite the relatively huge ICT investment and policy deployment in higher institutions in Ethiopia, there is still scant information about the success of implementation of the Information Communication Technology (ICT) in the higher education. This study, therefore, was carried out with an aim to assess knowledge and utilization of Information Communication Technology (ICT) among medicine and health science students and its associated factors in Gondar College of Medicine and Health sciences, University of Gondar.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted at the College of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Gondar, Ethiopia. Data regarding socio-demographic characteristics of the students, level of knowledge and utilization of ICT were collected by means of a self-administered questionnaire. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 13.ResultsA total of 1096 students responded giving a response rate of 97.8%. The mean age of the study participants was 20.3 (±1. 3) years. Females constitute only 26% of the respondents. The majority (79%) were fulltime students. Only half of the respondents (51%) had ICT knowledge and only 46% students utilized ICT while 47% of the respondents never used electronic communication (e.g. email or chat room) and 39% of the respondents never used Microsoft office (e.g. word ® or WordPerfect ®). ICT knowledge [AOR = 2.5, 95% CI: 1.7-3.5], family educational background [AOR = 4.36, 95% CI: 2.16-8.80], and perceived quality of training [AOR = 1.9, 95% CI: 1.3-2.8] showed strong and positive associations with ICT utilization. Students from urban areas were more likely to utilize ICT compared with those from rural areas [AOR = 2.7, 95% CI: 2.097, 3.497], and information technology training was found to be positively associated with ICT utilization [AOR = 2. 07, 95% CI: 1.18, 3.62].ConclusionsThe result showed that students’ knowledge was inadequate and utilization of ICT was poor. Therefore, the university should sustain professional development to improve teaching, to raise student performance and equip the college with student centered ICT computer labs to increase students’ ICT utilization.

Achieving Price Stability in Nigeria: Monetary Policy Rate Approach vs. Foreign Exchange Policy Approach

Earlier studies have reached a consensus that monetary policies generate more economic activities than fiscal policies in developing economies. This study has bridged the existing gaps in earlier studies by addressing the question of which of the instruments of macroeconomics is more effective in achieving price stability remains largely unanswered. The study observed that the presence of exogenous factor was responsible for the inability of the tight monetary policies of the CBN to mob excess liquidity from the economy. In the same vein, the exogenous factor destabilizes the steady economic growth that would have emanated from a relaxed monetary policy. The study also found foreign exchange rates (fx) to be a more effective instrument to achieving price stability than monetary policy rates (mpr). The Nigerian economy is largely import dependent with most of the importation being consumable goods and services and less of productive (capital) goods. The impact of changes in fx are more pronounced on the economy than changes in the interest rates. The attainment of price stability would become feasible if the apex bank accords priority to the formulation and deployment of foreign exchange policies that are sound in principle and effective in practice.

The two faces of market support—How deployment policies affect technological exploration and exploitation in the solar photovoltaic industry

The recent years have seen a strong rise in policies aiming to increase the diffusion of clean energy technologies. While there is general agreement that such deployment policies have been very effective in bringing technologies to the market, it is less understood how these policies affect technological innovation. To shed more light on this important question, we conducted comparative case studies with a global sample of 9 firms producing solar photovoltaic (PV) modules, complemented by in-depth interviews with 16 leading PV industry experts. We propose that, on the one hand, policy-induced market growth serves as an important catalyst for innovative activity as it raises the absolute level of firm investments in technological exploration. On the other hand, however, deployment policies create an incentive for firms pursuing more mature technologies to shift their balance between exploitation and exploration toward exploitation. Firms focusing on less mature technologies cannot tap the potentials of exploitative learning to the same extent as those with more mature technologies. Therefore, stimulating strong market growth may raise the barrier to market entry for less mature technologies. We conclude that, when designing deployment policies, great care should be taken to avoid adverse effects on technological diversity and a premature lock-in into more established technologies.

Declaration and Translation of Spatial Access Control Policy

Access control service is used to solve the controllability problem of data and service, access control system is finally deployed in the form of policy. The description forms of policy are different in the stage of configuration and deployment. Safety policy translation model is used to realize configuration policy and automatic translation of deployment policy. However, currently it lacks automatic translation model. What’s more, automatic translation models are different according to different access control models. In this paper, a spatial access control model is proposed through the object-oriented idea. In addition, the spatial access control policy elements are declared, and they are translated through compiling principle. Finally, the configuration policy is translated to deployment policy which is described by XACML through the policy translation rules.

Minimum-Cost QoS-Constrained Deployment and Routing Policies for Wireless Relay Networks

With the continued evolution of wireless communication technology, relaying is one of the features proposed for the 4G LTE Advanced (LTE-A) system. The aim of relaying is to enhance both coverage and capacity. The idea of relays is not new, but relaying is being considered to ensure that the optimum performance is achieved to enable the expectations or good quality of service (QoS) of the users to be met while still keeping capital expenditure (CAPEX) within the budgeted bounds of operators. In this paper, we try to stand for an operator to propose a solution that determines where and how many relays should be deployed in the planning stages to minimize the development cost. In the planning stages, we not only derive a multicast tree routing algorithm to both determine and fulfill the QoS requirements to enhance throughput, but we also utilize the Lagrangian relaxation (LR) method in conjunction with optimization-based heuristics and conduct computational experiments to evaluate the performance. Our contribution is utilizing the LR method to propose an optimal solution to minimize the CAPEX of operators to build up a relay network with more efficiency and effectiveness and the QoS can be guaranteed by service level agreement.

Road Side Unit Deployment: A Density-Based Approach

Currently, the number of vehicles increases every year, raising the probability of having accidents. When an accident occurs, wireless technologies enable vehicles to share warning messages with other vehicles by using vehicle to vehicle (V2V) communications, and with the emergency services by using vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) communications. Regarding vehicle to infrastructure communications, Road Side Units (RSUs) act similarly to wireless LAN access points, and can provide communications with the infrastructure. Since RSUs are usually very expensive to install, authorities limit their number, especially in suburbs and areas of sparse population, making RSUs a precious resource in vehicular environments. In this paper, we propose a Density-based Road Side Unit deployment policy (D-RSU), specially designed to obtain an efficient system with the lowest possible cost to alert emergency services in case of an accident. Our approach is based on deploying RSUs using an inverse proportion to the expected density of vehicles. The obtained results show how D-RSU is able to reduce the required number of RSUs, as well as the accident notification time.

Policy options for deploying anti-malarial drugs in endemic countries: a population genetics approach

BackgroundAnti-malarial drugs are constantly exposed to the threat of evolving drug resistance so good stewardship of existing therapy is an essential component of public health policy. However, the widespread availability of numerous different drugs through informal providers could undermine official drug deployment policies. A policy of multiple first-line therapy (MFT) is compared with the conventional policy of sequential drug deployment, i.e., where one drug is used until resistance evolves and then replaced by the next drug in the sequence.MethodsPopulation genetic models of drug resistance are used to make the comparison; this methodology explicitly tracks the genetics of drug resistance (including, importantly, recombination in the sexual stage, intrahost dynamics, and direction of linkage disequilibrium).ResultsA policy of MFT outlasts sequential application providing drug usages are low to moderate, and appears not to drive widespread multi-drug resistance. Inadequate dosing is an even more potent driver of drug resistance than the MFT/sequential policy decision.ConclusionsThe provision of MFT as a deliberate policy can be encouraged provided overall treatment rates are low or moderate (less than around half of malaria infections are treated) and the ad hoc provision of MFT through the private sector may be tolerated. This must be fully supported by education to ensure people take adequate doses of each of the drugs.

English

This article deals with the lessons to be learned from the Grootboom’s judgment, twelve years after the judgment, which declared the State’s housing policy to be unreasonable and thus invalid, was delivered by the Constitutional Court. It also deals with the right of everyone to have access to adequate housing, children’s rights to basic shelter, and prisoners’ rights to adequate accommodation and legislations and policies which deal with the right of access to housing. The South African Constitution entrenches housing as a specific socio-economic right. This right is also provided for in the White Paper on Housing and in the Housing Act (1997). The main challenges to the protection and enforcement of housing rights in South Africa are corruption, nepotism and the cadre deployment policy of the ruling party and the numerous community protests regarding poor service delivery indicate the extent to which this right is not being realized. Key words: Challenges, housing policy, basic socio-economic amenities, jurisprudence, South Africa.

Spectrum: Lightweight Hybrid Address Autoconfiguration Protocol Based on Virtual Coordinates for 6LoWPAN

Stateless address autoconfiguration protocols allow nodes to select addresses and validate the uniqueness of a selected address by duplicate address detection (DAD). The considerable cost of DAD results from the message complexity increase in multihop network topologies, such as wireless sensor networks. This paper proposes a lightweight, hybrid address autoconfiguration protocol, called Spectrum, that deploys IPv6-compatible addresses into 6LoWPAN networks in a distributed manner. Spectrum creates the virtual coordinate system on the network and deploys addresses based on the location of the nodes. The deployment policy based on the virtual locations of the nodes reduces the DAD cost in the initial configuration as well as the cost for additional configurations of newly arrived nodes. The authors implemented and tested the proposed scheme in a real environment. Simulations and experiments confirmed a reasonable message cost for both stateful and stateless autoconfigurations.

Local government broadband policies for areas with limited Internet access

Despite their wide diffusion in developed countries, broadband services are still limited in areas where providing them is not profitable for private telecom carriers. To address this, many local governments in Japan have implemented broadband deployment projects subsidized by the national government. In this paper, we discuss local government broadband policies based on survey data collected from municipalities throughout the country. With the support of national promotion policies, broadband services were rapidly introduced to most local municipalities in Japan during the 2000s. Local government deployment policies helped to reduce the number of areas with no broadband access. A business model based on the Indefeasible Right of Use (IRU) contract between a private telecom carrier and a local government has been developed in recent years. Even local governments without the technical capacity to operate a broadband business can introduce broadband services into their territory using the IRU business model.

Equity dimensions of micro-generation: A whole systems approach

Micro-generation represents one technology ready option for making the low carbon transition. Energy choices we make in the present have implications for future generations. Existing methods for formulating energy policy and assessing the suitability of micro-generation technology often concentrate upon a subset of issues relating to specific economic criteria or policy targets or on one technology, but often fail to adopt a whole systems approach or consider present or future equity issues. Important factors are often overlooked leading to poorly implemented policy or unsatisfactory technology deployment. There is a clear need for a process or assessment methodology that focuses upon equity while making choices relating to micro or small-scale generation projects. This paper describes an integrated whole systems methodology developed heuristically by a wide range of interdisciplinary stakeholders for use by groups of decision makers when assessing the equity aspects of micro-generation projects. The paper discusses the desirable attributes that this type of assessment should have and outlines the merits of the whole systems approach. Steps taken to develop, test, and refine the methodology using case studies are discussed. The equity issues arising from each case study are examined in wider context by quantifying the impact micro or small-scale generation could have within English households of varying age and tenure in a range of settings including a real community case study. This provides a snapshot of where equity issues manifest themselves and considers the numbers of households they affect. Using the methodology and focusing upon equity has allowed recommendations to be made that could inform future energy policy.

Profitability of Flower Production and Marketing System of Bangladesh

This study examines the production and profitability of some selected flowers in comparison with their competing crops. The study also attempts to identify the value chains and channels of flower marketing in Bangladesh. Stratified random sampling method was used to collect Primary data collected from the 32 farmers of Guptergaon under Phulpur Upazila in Mymensingh district and from the 21 flower traders, retailers and wholesalers of different flower trading zones in Dhaka city. The study reveals that gross margins of flower and vegetables per hectare were Tk.1,359,824.20 and Tk.46,362.14, respectively. The average marketing margin of three intermediaries i.e., BRAC, wholesaler-cum-retailer and retailer in Dhaka city, were Tk. 187.56, Tk. 638.39 and Tk.689.72 per 100 flowers, respectively. Lack of mother stock and their high price, price of fertilizer and insecticides, lack of scientific knowledge & training, attack by pest & disease, lack of extension work came out as major financial and technical problems of the flower farmers while inadequate & underdeveloped transportation & communication system, low market price, lack of market information, unstructured market are among major market related problems. On the other hand marketing intermediaries specified price instability, lack of adequate market information, lacking storage facilities, unsold flower, inadequate shop-space, demand fluctuation, strikes as their problems and constraints. Pertinent recommendations for facilitating flower production and developing an improved marketing system in Bangladesh include - a concentrated effort by the government and non-govt. agencies to provide appropriate trainings to farmers and traders, to provide appropriate production assistance and storage facility & to build countrywide permanent trading infrastructure, deployment of an Market Information System (MIS) and deployment of Entrepreneur-friendly SME and credit policies and packages for ensuring a balanced growth of the floriculture industry. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/bjar.v37i1.11179 Bangladesh J. Agril. Res. 37(1): 77-95, March 2012

The Two Faces of Market Support

The recent years have seen a strong rise in policies aiming to increase the diffusion of clean energy technologies. While there is general agreement that such deployment policies have been very eff...