Industrial Approach Research Articles

Multivariate barriers to total quality management within the construction industry

This paper outlines the construction industry's approach to quality. Bearing in mind the uniqueness of the construction industry, problem areas encountered when addressing total quality management (TQM) within the industry are considered and the structure chosen to dissipate the effects of these areas is depicted. The paper discusses TQM's progress in an industry which, historically, has suffered severe problems in all issues concerning quality. A need to consider the human factor, and specifically personality types, is accented as imperative to the success of holistic TQM. Case study data shows the industry's awareness of TQM and its effects on the organization and individuals involved in implementation of TQM.

Oilfield Environmental Control Technology: A Synopsis

Summary This paper shows, in a systematic way, that the long-term solution to the environmental issue in petroleum engineering is the development of a new area: environmental control technology (ECT). ECT is defined as intrinsic in and integrated with an oilfield process. Its preventive function is contrasted to the remediating nature of conventional waste-management technology (WMT). This paper has two objectives: to identify and qualify ECT for petroleum engineering and to overview recent ECT developments, particularly in oilfield production operations. Introduction In the 1980's, low oil prices forced oilfield technology to focus on economic efficiency and productivity. Simultaneously, environmental regulatory pressure added a new factor to petroleum engineering economics: the cost of working within the constraints of an environmental issue. The industry is absorbing this cost while revising oilfield technology to reduce the environmental impact. The new area, ECT, has the potential to become a widely accepted way for the oil industry to address the environmental issue. The API is currently working on a supporting agenda for reauthorization of the U.S. Clean Water Act. One important issue of the new act introduces the concept of pollution prevention to the permit procedure. In regulatory language, pollution should be prevented through source reduction, which necessitates improvements to oilfield processes to reduce waste generation. API supports the concept but favors the inclusion of other preventive measures in this act, such as recycling, reuse (beneficial use), and treatment (to comply with discharge criteria).These and similar past regulatory actions have altered the industry's approach to the oilfield environmental issue. As a result, the remediation approach represented by WMT is being replaced with a preventive approach (ECT). The heart of ECT is prevention of environmental impact. The other features need further clarification. Identification of ECT A general definition of ECT is presented in the appendix, along with a description of its basic methods. Ref. 1 discusses the position of ECT among other techniques used by the oil industry to tackle the environmental issue. (The nontechnical means are social, legal, commercial, scientific, and logistic.) The technical approach to the environmental issue usually is undertaken after the nontechnical means become redundant or uneconomical.

A Painter in Hollywood: Vincente Minnelli's "An American in Paris"

Between 1957 and 1962 the critics of Cahiers du cinbma discovered Vincente Minnelli as an auteur. According to the critics of Cahiers, the auteur's signature can be detected in how traits peculiar to single director manage to reappear across different genres subject to the formulae of the industry.' More prudently than the French critics, the Italian Roberto Campari and the American Stephen Harvey propose that Minnelli's authorial signature is the product of dialectic between his collaborators in the studio system and his directorial personality. This combination of efforts produces signature characterized by a lush and daring use of color, the seamless fusion of music and camera movement, and decorative scheme that mates the cast with inanimate objects in voluptuous counterpoint.2 While Minnelli's style can be seen as an epitome of M-G-M's, it is also unique. According to Harvey, it is difficult to distinguish between Minnelli as an artist only apparently at home in Hollywood, and Minnelli as one of the most imaginative interpreters of the industry's approach. Even in the late fifties, when steady commitment to one studio had become unusual, Minnelli remained faithful, salaried M-G-M employee. During this period, Minnelli directed several of his most important musicals and melodramas: Gigi (1958), Some Came Running (1959), and Home from the Hill (1960). Harvey concludes that it would be too simplistic to assume that Minnelli's attachment to the highly professional working methods of M-G-M guaranteed perfect fit with his own style: If the idiosyncratic beauty of Minnelli's style transcended M-G-M's trademark gloss, the fundamental pessimism of his viewpoint just as surely sabotaged their upbeat ethic.3 Minnelli's signature carries over from the melodramas to the musicals, so that one genre functions as the foil of the other. Hence Minnelli's pessimism is latent even under the happy surface of An American in Paris, fairy-tale musical he directed the year of his difficult divorce from Judy Garland.4 Vincente Minnelli tackled the theme of painting as creativity, whether he was directing melodrama about Vincent Van Gogh going mad or musical about mediocre painter in love with French girl. In short, Minnelli is torn between celebratory view of art in An American in Paris (1951) and one that sees art as terrifying disease in Lust for Life (1956).

Approaches to Teaching Freedom of Expression: Industry's Team Approach to Classroom Projects

Approaches to Teaching Freedom of Expression: Industry's Team Approach to Classroom Projects

Italian industry's approach to space

European space activities began in the 1960's. The development of what was initially scientific research and which later spread to the enthusiastic involvement of Europe's most advanced industry is by now familiar history. The organization of ELDO and ESRO, which eventually gave way to today's ESA, occured in a span of less than a decade. Many major European countries also commenced their national space programmes during this period. This report examines the space initiatives taken by Italian industry.

How Pipeline Operations Could be Affected by New Data Communications Standards

The far-reaching effects that changes in data communications standards could have on the pipeline industry's approach to operations control and management is reviewed. Some suggestions are made on steps that can be taken to help protect current investments in centralized control systems from premature obsolescence.

Biomedical Institutions, Biomedical Funding, and Public Policy

This is one of those books where a prospective editor, having persuaded a publisher that an audience awaits, invites or reprints a selection of articles around a general topic. The 11 chapters of this volume, some reprinted from major medical journals, appear without editorial comment. They cover a wide range—from a speculative essay comparing creativity in research and art, to the details of how Baltimore City Hospital pays its medical faculty. A technical article on prenatal diagnosis of the genetic disorders of hemoglobin is followed by a Genex Corporation report on the commercial potentials of recombinant DNA and by an account of how private foundations work, and how one of them, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has decided its priorities (which, incidentally, do not include biomedical research). Additional chapters explain the research interests of the World Health Organization, how the pharmaceutical industry's approach to research differs from that of the

Extracting Geothermal Energy Can Be Hard

The initially high expectations of the mid-1970's for the rapid development of geothermal energy have been lowered. One reason is continuing uncertainty about the extraction of geothermal energy. Drillers can have a good idea of which areas have concentrations of geothermal energy beneath the surface and still have trouble bringing up enough energy to make a power plant worthwhile. The extraction problem has been highlighted by the recent termination of a federal geothermal demonstration project at the Baca field of the Valles Caldera, New Mexico, the sixth largest geothermal province in the United States. The problem at Baca is not necessarily insoluble, but it is tending to accentuate industry's cautious approach to geothermal exploration.

Markets and Marketing in the British Motor Industry before 1914 with Some French Comparisons

In an important article dealing with the formative years of the British motor industry Professor Saul concluded that its crucial weakness is to be found not in the size of the market but in the industry's approach to it. In order to develop the arguments shall focus first upon evidence relating to the initial conceptualisation of the market for motor cars in the two countries and to the initiatives which promoted further market development. The origins of the motor industry explain why the marketing practices customary in the engineering trades were adopts in the marketing of motor cars, not the least relevant factor being the engineering origins of the firms which took up motor car production. 'Democratisation', is relative and in Britain did not extend further than the professional and business sections of the community. Reports of the popularity of low–priced cars in the United States raised expectations of a similar trend in European countries.

Training the boss

Sharp criticisms of British industry's approach to management education and training are made in a report from the Institute of Manpower Studies, published this month by the National Economic Development Office The Training of British Managers: a study of need and demand, price £2, HMSO).

Design of video security systems for Pay-TV

This paper describes the requirements for developing video security systems for the new Pay-TV entertainment medium, and the specific design parameters necessary to comply with the FCC Standards and Bell System Practices, where the facilities of A. T.& T. are employed. Techniques of how the picture and/or sound are held secure, so that the entertainment offered will be available only to those willing to pay, and methods for reliable periodic collection of money for entertainment, as well as determining accurately each day how many subscribers purchased each program, are described to the extent that the designer will understand the concepts he must employ in approaching the end goals of effective video security and reliable billing. How the designer is responsive to the commercial requirements of the quality entertainment producers of Pay-TV and the Pay-TV operators who want to make the entertainment available only to those subscribers who indicate their willingness to pay is presented in a practical format showing actual design practices. This report defines and references the industry's sophisticated approaches, but clearly indicates that a video and/or audio security system for Pay-TV need not meet the difficult requirements of a military security system; however, it must minimize the theft of the scrambled broadcast or coaxial subcarrier transmission to a degree which will assure that the system be commercially successful.