Main Client Research Articles

Comparativo entre Práticas de Gestão de Projetos na Indústria de Autopeças

The auto parts, according to their main client, the assembly of vehicles, are dozens of projects each year that range in complexity and size. The observation of these companies shows that most of the time failures are observed with typical problems of project management, poorly developed scopes, delays, communication problems, quality, cash flow and so on. If you look at the auto parts and his influence in the auto industry, we could observe the existence of structured practices for managing projects of new products, which of course are to ensure the proper management of projects and consequently the achievement of goals set. This report aims to compare two practices in a simplified form of project management, The APQP which is used by the automotive industry and auto parts and prepared by the PMBOK in wide use in the market.

Innovation policies in Brazilian and Dutch aerospace industries: How sectors driven by national procurement are influenced by its S&T environment

To stimulate the development of new technologies is nowadays one of the main goals of public policies in developed and emerging countries. However, certain high-tech sectors are mainly driven by government procurement, increasing the active role of government in investments and research. In this sense, this paper aims to identify, compare and discuss mechanisms used to foster innovation in specific high-tech sectors in which government is the main client. This research analyses the innovation mechanisms in the space industry in an emerging country and a developed country, taking Brazil and The Netherlands as contrasting examples. A case study research was conducted, in which representatives in companies and research centres with space related activities were interviewed, comprising twelve organizations in both countries. Results of the Dutch space industry demonstrated the role of committees involving government, industry and researchers in space technology. These committees discuss which the technological pathways of space industry are, aligning scientific research with companies' needs. In Brazil, the introduction of the Innovation Act in 2004 began to stimulate interaction between university, industry, and government. However, these relationships are mainly informal and incipient. As a conclusion, it could be observed that while in The Netherlands different agents join efforts in order to plan the sector's technological development; in Brazil such relationships are still incipient. This difference could be explained by a modest technological development of Brazilian companies and research institutes, which mainly import products from foreign companies. Learning from the Dutch experience, in order to improve the Brazilian space sector it is necessary to foster S&T activities through joint activities between universities, companies and government.

Strategic corporate governance stakeholder complexities in strategic decision implementation (sdi): The shipbuilding industry in Abu Dhabi

This paper explores the complexity of SDI and the conflicting roles of government as the main client, partner and stakeholder in the naval shipbuilding industry in two main shipyards in United Arab Emirates’ capital, Abu Dhabi. This industry was recently established in this highly Westernized part of the Middle East, and constructs naval vessels under the auspices of Abu Dhabi government. The industry envisaged developing private clients in the future, but before achieving this, some issues identified in this study need to be resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the industry and the clients. The literature indicates that strategic decisions taken by one partner in the enterprise can lead to problems that are difficult to resolve. Hence, to gain an in-depth understanding of the complexities, an explorative qualitative research with a case-study approach was carried out over a period of two years in order to track progress in this industry. It was found that government collaboration can lead to many challenges in strategy implementation within the industry itself due to a lack of communication and coordination between the two. The main managerial actors were interviewed to obtain a sense of their involvement and their individual perception of control in the implementation process to the outcomes of which they were wedded, and the extent to which they felt they were successful. To provide specific focus, this article focuses exclusively on the impact of government salaries and policies on shipbuilding strategy and implementation within two shipyards. Strategy appears easier to formulate than to implement. It was found that there were contradictions in strategies as devised by the industry and the policies which the government wished it to implement. The article makes recommendations about three prime ways in which the industry and its main sponsors, now and in the future, may more harmoniously collaborate to attain mutual success. Reciprocal communication lies at the core of the solution. The article is limited by its constraint of using only two cases, and the findings are indicative of a greater need to examine similar policy, formulation, and implementation issues in Abu Dhabi specifically, and between industry/client generally wherever such a situation may occur.

Understanding the Stakes of High-Frequency Trading

Recent regulatory changes, known as Reg NMS in the United States or MiFID in Europe, together with the effects of the financial crisis (mainly its impact on liquidity), induced major changes on market microstructure in two main aspects: • the fragmentation of the liquidity around several trading venues, with the appearance of newcomers in Europe like Chi-X, BATS Europe, or Turquoise, some of them being not regulated or “dark; • the rise of a new type of agents, the high frequency traders, liable for 40% to 70% of the transactions. These two effects are linked since the high frequency traders, being the main clients of the trading venues, have an implicit impact on the products offered by these venues. Combining a survey of recent academic findings and empirical evidences, this paper presents what we consider to be the key elements to understand the stakes of these changes, and also provides potential clues to mitigate some of them. A first section is dedicated to exposes the recent modifications in market microstructure. The second one explains the role of the price formation process and how, interacting with liquidity supply and demand, high frequency traders can reshape it. The next section discloses the various strategies used by these new market participants and their profitability. A final section discusses recent tools designed in order to assess and control the high frequency trading activity.

Inglés

Chronic diseases are the leading cause of mortality in the world, representing 60% of all deaths. The remote project aims to establish a multidisciplinary and integrated approach to utilize information and communication technologies for addressing real needs of elderly people, especially of citizens at risk due to geographic and social isolation in combination with specific chronic conditions. More specifically, remote offers a set of services oriented to maintain the independence of the persons who face chronic diseases and live alone. remote provides four different kinds of services, related to different areas such as environmental home control, schedule control, mental health and physical health. This paper is focussed on the services related to the physical health. An activity advisor, a nutritional advisor and a medical advisor will be analyzed. All services are based on client-server architecture, compound by the server side and two main clients, one for the elderly and another for the doctors who take care of them. Nowadays, the pilot phase of remote has just started. Remote counts with several pilots, in sites like Norway, Romania, Germany, Israel and Spain in which the elderly participants present different conditions. Also, the pilot sites count with medical doctors specialized in different areas, such as nutrition or physiotherapy. This situation allows testing the services in a wide variety of cases. In this paper we will analyze the results achieved so far in the pilot phase.

A Survey of Music Therapy Methods and Their Goals According to Their Main Clients.

A Survey of Music Therapy Methods and Their Goals According to Their Main Clients.

Migrants' entrepreneurship in transnational social fields: research in the Italian context

The aim of the article is to analyse the development of transnational economic activities run by migrants in Northern Italy. It is based on qualitative empirical research conducted in the three most important cities in northern Italy: Milan, Genoa, and Turin. The article describes different kinds of transnational economic activity, identifying the subject of transnational transactions; the main clients (immigrant population or native population); the goods or services exchanged and their transnational impact; the expected social effects; and their positioning on a scale of transnational involvement. The empirical cases considered are overland courier services on routes from Milan to Eastern Europe, shops owned by immigrants who offer ‘ethnic’ products in Milan and Genoa, and phone centres run by immigrants in Turin. In the conclusion, the reactions of the receiving society and the question of public regulation are examined.

Struktur und Kooperation

Structure and cooperation: two principles for the consultation of families with antisocial children and adolescents Families with anti-social children and adolescents are the main clients of mental health hospitals for children and the social services. This article suggests possibilities for intervening in this sort of family and offers two principles for family therapy consultation. These principles are: structure before substance and cooperation before change.They are commented from the perspective of Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory. This shows that these two principles are more important than any other psychotherapeutic intervention.

A hierarchical architecture for improving scalability and consistency in CVE systems

Existing client/server architecture with a multiple server has the capacity constraint of users due to the fixed number of servers. A hierarchical architecture based on the tailoring tree model for improving scalability and consistency in the collaborative virtual environment (CVE) is described. In our architecture, the main server, region servers and clients maintain the state of the CVE together. In order to improve the scalability and consistency, computing resources and communication resources should be effectively assigned. Two algorithms are proposed to solve the resource assignment problem in the hierarchical architecture: a dynamic clustering algorithm partitions the virtual environment according to the current load, which can effectively assign computing resources; a time-bounding-box-based filtering scheme is used to reduce the traffic, which can effectively assign communication resources. Experimental results show that the hierarchical architecture with our algorithms has a reasonable assignment of computing resources and communication resources at the same time, and, indeed, improves the scalability and consistency.

Blackbox and Scenario-Based Testing of Online Games Using Game Description Language

In this letter, we propose blackbox and scenario-based testing of multiplayer online games as well as simple load testing. Game testing is done from outside the source code, and the access to the source code is not required to testers because the game logic is described with a game description language and virtual game map. Instead of using a subset of the main game client for the test client, only game packet protocols and the sequence of packets are analyzed for new game testing. In addition, complex and various scenarios can be tested through combining defined actions. Scenario-based testing helps testers mimic real testing environments instead of doing simple load testing and improves the productivity of game testing.

Extension Forestry and Family Forest Owners: A Data Source

Family forests account for 92% of private forest owners in the United States and 62% of private forestland acres. These are the main clients of Extension forestry. The most recent National Woodland Owners Survey (NWOS) was completed in 2006, and, besides the published results, the U.S. Forest Service has developed NWOS Tablemaker, which can develop useful tables from these data. Tables can be developed to illustrate family forest ownership trends, demographic characteristics, forest management and timber harvesting activities and plans, and forest management information sources. This is an ideal tool to get a "handle" on family forest owners.

Knowledge is not Power

The discipline of sociology, as an officially funded area of research and teaching, was created in Iran five decades ago primarily as an instrument to help solve state problems. Today the state remains the main sponsor and client of sociological research. The absence of independent sources of research funding outside the government has left sociology dependent on state agencies and organizations. This situation has significant effects both on sociology and on the direction of policy-making in Iran. State-sponsored research is almost exclusively quantitative, narrowly problem-oriented, secretive and unable to offer concrete policy solutions. Lack of competition and the absence of non-governmental sources of funding have led to the marginalization of disinterested and fundamental research. Independent, critical sociology has always existed but it is in need of greater support. The situation in Iran is not unique: it reflects, in a magnified way, problems faced by sociologists in many other countries as they come under increasing pressures to undertake applied and policy-relevant research. The article concludes with five specific suggestions on how to improve the current state of sociological research.

Communication At The Science - Policy Interface In The Forestry Sector Of Ghana

What does the forest science-policy interface in Ghana look like? For some time now policy makers have blamed research scientists for not living up to expectation since they do not see what scientists do and what impact their work has on national development. In other parts of the world, this is also the case where it appears there is poor communication between scientists and the intended users of their research results. The forestry science/policy interface in Ghana has not been systematically examined. To enlighten stakeholders, a study was conducted among forestry research scientists of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), and some university researchers and policy and implementing partners in the forestry sector. The research focused on communication channels and their effectiveness, institutional arrangements and how they affect the interface between science and policy actors. In Ghana, the Forestry Research Institute of Ghana (FORIG) which mainly hosts forestry scientists is administratively under a different Ministry from the Forestry Commission which is the main client of research results. Interviews were conducted with 82 people; 45% being researchers and 55% being policy actors. Researchers mainly used publications and informal meetings to receive information from policy and end- users while policy actors mainly depended on meetings and official requests in receiving information. The study concludes that institutionalising communication channels such as informal network and face-to-face interaction seems to be more beneficial to both scientists and policy actors than just an administrative integration of their respective agencies.Keywords: Science-policy interface, scientific communication, Ghana forest sector, communication channels, effectiveness

CMS conditions database web application service

The web application service is part of the condition database system of the CMS experiment.The application server is built upon condition python API in the CMS offline software framework and serves applications and users not involved in the event-processing.The main client of the application server is the condition database web GUI, which currently exposes three main services: the Tag Browser, the Global Tag, the Historic Chart condition date in terms of their version (TAG) and the interval of validity (IOV).The global tag component is used by physicists to inspect the organization of the tags in a given data taking or data production, while production managers use the web service to produce such tag hierarchy. The History chart plotting service creates dynamic summary and distribution charts of the payload data in the database. Fast graphical overview of different information greatly contributes in monitoring and validating the calibration data stored in the condition database.

병원부설 피부미용실과 자영 피부미용실에 관한 소비자의 선호도 비교 연구

병원부설 피부미용실과 자영 피부미용실의 경영형태에 알맞은 적절한 경영 전략과 경쟁력을 강화시키고자 2009년 9월16일부터 10월 16일까지 경상북도 구미시와 울산광역시에 거주하는 병원부설 피부미용실과 자영 피부미용실 이용 고객 600명을 설문조사한 결과, 병원부설 피부미용실의 주 고객은 여드름, 모공, 피지 등과 같은 피부 트러블이 있는 20대의 회사원 여성이었다. 반면에, 자영 피부미용실은 30대와 40대의 전업주부나 자영업자인 여성들이 주고객이었으며 주름이나 탄력 저하로 방문하는 것으로 나타났다. 병원부설 피부미용실과 자영 피부미용실 이용고객은 피부 미용실을 선택할 때 관리 효과를 가장 우선적으로 고려하는 것으로 나타났으며, 국가자격증을 취득한 피부미용사가 피부미용 업무를 담당해야 한다고 응답하였고, 위생적인 최신시설 및 기자재 확충 그리고 피부미용사의 자격 면에서는 병원부설 피부미용실 보다 자영 피부미용실이 더 많은 개선이 요구 되었다. 이 조사에 따르면 병원부설 피부미용실과 자영 피부미용실의 차별화 된 서비스의 제공을 확립하여 경쟁력을 갖추는데 기본 자료가 되고, 향후 더 많은 전략과 구체적 방안이 제시되어야 할 것이다. To build up the marketing strategy and competitiveness which are suitable for hospital-annex skin care shop and independent skin care shop, 600 people, who are living in Gumi and Ulsan city, Gyung-Buk and also, clients of both skin care shop, were participated from Sept. 16th to Oct. 16th, 2009. The main clients of hospital-annex skin care shop were women in 20s, who have skin trouble with pimples, pores and sebum. On the other hand, the clients of independent skin care shop were mainly women in their 30s or 40s. They were housewives or self-employed. The reason to visit skin care shop was because of wrinkles or lack of elasticity. When they chose skin care shop, first of all, they considered the effect of the care and they wanted a licensed aesthetician to care their skin. In the aspect of sanitary facilities, equipments and the licensed aestheticians, the independent skin care shops were needed to be more improved than hospital-annex skin care shop. According to this survey, hospital-annex skin care shop and independent skin care shop need to provide differentiated service and this result would be the basis to have competitiveness. Also, in the future, more strategies and concrete method should be presented.

Report on the European working group on internal erosion, St. Petersburg

This article reports on the seventh meeting of the working group, which was held on 27–29 April 2009 in St. Petersburg, hosted by VNIIG institute. There were 28 attendees from the UK, Canada, France, Sweden, Austria, Netherlands, Czech Republic and Poland and 12 attendees from Russia comprising, as in previous meetings, a mixture of researchers, practising engineers and dam safety managers. The workshop included 27 presentations and a visit to the hydraulic and soils laboratory of VNIIG. The participants included the authors of the current paper, which summarises the main points of relevance to dam engineers in the UK. The slide presentations are available on the VNIIG website http://www.vniig.ru/en/news/news25.htm . Selected summaries of work that had progressed since the intermediate report published at the European conference in Freising in September 2007 and presented in 2008 at Obergurgl in Austria and in 2009 at St. Petersburg are noted in the paper. VNIIG is a Russian research and development institute which carries out analysis and model testing in the fields of hydraulics, soil mechanics, concrete materials and safety of existing structures. One of its main clients is RusHydro, which was founded in 1921 and is the second largest generator in the world in terms of installed capacity, with 49 plants and 24 GW installed capacity.

Perspectives pour la gestion de la ressource en france

At the scale of France, quantitative assessments show that the available water resources can globally satisfy the current needs. The rare cases of conflicts of use result mainly from a non-optimized management of the resources. The qualitative assessment indicate that about 30 % of surface water bodies and 40 % of ground water bodies risk not reaching the good quality status by 2015 (deadline set by the WFD). Nitrates and pesticides are a major cause of the failure to reach the good status.The perspectives for active quantitative management depend on economic parameters specific to each use of the resource. An overview of various methods of active quantitative management points at the interest of developing temporary storage and reinfiltration, rather than water transport or desalinization. The promoted saving of drinking water is generally an inappropriate alternative, as it has a non-targeted impact and a collective cost.For qualitative issues, the active management must take place at catchment scale, with actions complementary to the existing legal tools. For nitrate and pesticide, a variety of preventive and curative tools has been applied with various levels of success ; the depuration capacities of wetlands should be put more into use.Be it quantitative or qualitative, the active management of water resources is still hindered by administrative (who must be the main client ?) and technical (univocal relation between actions undertaken and results observed ? delays in obtaining results ?) issues.

Profissionalização por gênero em escritórios paulistas de advocacia

The article analyzes the differences in the professionalization of men and women lawyers in a survey of 216 young professionals from Sao Paulo law firms. It shows how professionalism and gender relations combine to stratify legal practice and differentiate careers according to a 'sexed script,' whether in terms of being a partner or an associate, or in terms of the size of the firm where people work (small, medium or large) and the main clients they represent (individuals or companies).

Current status and potential of care farms in the Netherlands

Surveys among care farmers and data from the National Agricultural Census were analysed to describe the care-farming sector in the Netherlands. The number of care farms increased from 75 in 1998 to 591 in 2005. Care farming is the fastest growing sector of multifunctional agriculture. In 2005, nearly 10,000 clients made use of care farms, of which 8000 used non-institutional care farms. The main client groups were mentally challenged clients, psychiatric clients, autistic persons, elderly people and youths. The average annual revenue of care activities on a non-institutional care farm was about € 73,000, which amounts to annual revenues of € 37.1 million for the total Dutch non-institutional care-farming sector. The annual revenue for care activities was considerably higher than for other extended activities. Care farming resulted in 473 additional jobs in 2005. The prospects of care farming are positive and the growth in number of care farms is expected to continue.

Entrepreneurial Structure Qualitative Analysis: The Case of Seville (Spain)

In the field of territorial economic growth, it is possible to identify important characteristics in the entrepreneurial structure, such as the structure of the size of firms, main activity sectors, or the degree of innovation. However, other lesser known characteristics are important also, such as functional dependency, which considers the relationship between small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and suppliers and clients belonging to any territorial field or productive dependency, which considers the level of concentration in terms of buying and selling in connection with the main suppliers and clients, respectively. In order to empirically contrast the importance of these entrepreneurial characteristics and try to relate them with territorial economic growth, a sample of 400 enterprises in the province of Seville (Spain) is used.