Performance Evaluation Of Techniques Research Articles

ASTROLABE

Building abstract system-level models that faithfully capture performance and functional behavior for embedded systems design is challenging. Unlike functional aspects, performance details are rarely available during the early design phases, and no clear method is known to characterize them. Moreover, once such models are built, they are inherently complex as they mix software models, hardware constraints, and environment abstractions. Their analysis by using traditional performance evaluation methods is reaching the limit. In this article, we present a systematic approach for building stochastic abstract performance models using statistical inference and model calibration, and we propose statistical model checking as a scalable performance evaluation technique for them.

Novel load emulation technique for performance evaluation of isolated solar PV system under varying load conditions

Solar Photo Voltaic (SPV) sources are widely used in present scenario of energy crisis for various applications including grid connected PV plants and grid isolated standalone applications. The performance of solar PV system is highly dependent upon the operating conditions of source and loads especially in standalone applications. The effect on various types of loads on standalone system can be easily analyzed at design stage and testing stage by using load emulation technique, where a virtual load is used to replace actual load, giving more flexibility and accuracy to loading conditions. Here a novel load emulator model is presented which can provide accurate variation in load power factor and THD compared to existing models. The converter decouples the current in to in phase and out of phase components and the in phase component can be regenerated. The model is simulated using MATLABTM simulation and the results are validated by comparing with experimental results obtained by loading SPV inverter with actual load. Hence the proposed load emulator is very useful in design and development of application specific solar PV systems and also for performance analysis of such systems based on various standards.

Legendre wavelet embedded NeuroFuzzy algorithms for multiple FACTS

Since their inception, damping of Low Frequency Oscillations (LFOs) has been a critical issue in electric power systems. Voltage Source Converter (VSC) based Flexible AC Transmission Systems (FACTS) have a renowned capability for rapid regulation of various network quantities and combat LFOs when equipped with efficient supplementary damping control. This work is a design paradigm shift from conventional Takagi-Sugeno Kang (TSK) based control to advanced control based on Legendre wavelet neural networks. The parameters of the proposed control are updated using adaptive learning rates based on Lyapunov stability criteria. The contributions of this framework are the damping performance improvement with fast convergence. The proposed control scheme has been tested for different contingencies and various operating conditions. The nonlinear time domain simulations and different performance evaluation techniques show that the proposed hybrid control paradigm gives better performance in transient and steady-state regions.

Traditional and Currently Developed Management Accounting Practices - A Greek Study

This study investigates the extent to which Greek firms have implemented various traditional and currently developed management accounting practices, the benefits received from those practices and the intentions to focus on specific practices in the future. The findings indicate, that, overall the rates of adoption of traditional management accounting practices were marginaly higher than the currently developed techniques. However, there were techniques such as budgeting and formal strategic planning, which were more widely practiced than those found in previous surveys. Also evidence suggests that firms are willing to place greater emphasis in the future on currently developed techniques instead the traditional ones, particularely performance evaluation techniques and strategic management accounting.

Nonlinear Static Pushover Analysis of Cold-Formed Steel Storage Rack Structures

ABSTRACT Individual components of cold-formed storage rack system are most vulnerable to local and torsional buckling under gravity as well as lateral loads.The capacity-based design of cold-formed storage rack system consists of deterministic allocation of strength and ductility in the structural elements and performance evaluation by suitable techniques. Nonlinear time history analysis (NTHA) and nonlinear static pushover analysis (NSPA) are most commonly followed techniques for seismic performance evaluation of any structural systems. Although, NTHA is the most accurate method of seismic demand prediction and performance evaluation, it is computationally heavy and even requires the selection and employment of an appropriate set of ground motions. This paper deals with analytical investigation of efficient configuration of conventional pallet racking system on the basis of seismic performance by using NSPA. This analytical study on conventional pallet racking system subjected to lateral loads is focused: i) to identify the local buckling failure modes of components of storage rack systems, ii) to evaluate the effect of local buckling on ultimate lateral load carrying capacity, and iii) to propose structural alterations for components of rack system so as to obtain most efficient configuration of conventional pallet racking system. Two different configurations of conventional pallet racking system are modeled and analyzed on the general purpose FE platform under monotonic unidirectional lateral loads. The results of NSPA show that pallet racking system with horizontal and inclined bracing is more efficient as evidenced from good estimates of the overall displacement, base shear and yielding capacities.

Occupants’ Perception of Quality Design and Standard in Building Services for Effective Property Management

Building performance evaluation techniques are hardly applied to occupied premises in property management practice in Nigeria. It undermines occupiers’ satisfaction as well as occupiers’ perception and action toward facilities. Tenants’ decision to stay or leave a property and the reason for conflict of interest over rent increment could be adduced to poor service quality and dissatisfaction. The need to measure occupiers’/customers’ satisfaction in dwelling houses also arises because it is now universally accepted that users have become more astute and their rising expectations need to be met. The specific objective of the study is assessment of occupiers’ satisfaction using quality performance criteria under the SERVICE QUALITY DIMENSIONS in selected high-rise buildings. The study adopted a cross-sectional research design approach. The data were collected through the aid of questionnaire survey to investigate 54 quality service and property performance indicators and were analyzed quantitatively. 106 questionnaires were returned from the 207 tenants of the selected buildings representing 51.2% response rate. The mean item score (MIS) for satisfaction level for each indicator was calculated and expressed in percentages to arrive at importance index for the purpose of ranking in line with the highest derived satisfaction level of the respondents. The study found that tenants are highly dissatisfied with communication, and lack of interaction becomes a major reason for non-satisfaction of service quality. Out of 52 indicators, only 8 environmental indicators show no significant difference between expectation and perception. Tenants were least satisfied with communications, service management, water quality and cost. Property management service delivery in Nigeria is not customer/user driven with 44 out of 52 indicators having significant differences between tenant expectation and perception of service quality and delivery. The study recommends improvement in communication gap, definition of occupier’s service standards for adequate service delivery and reduction of unsatisfactory service designs and quality.

Models for optimization and performance evaluation of biomass supply chains: An Operations Research perspective

The production of biofuels, bioenergy and chemical intermediates from biomass is a promising solution to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions. While a significant research effort has been devoted to biomass production and conversion processes, the importance of logistics was detected more recently. Indeed, efficient supply chains are essential to provide conversion facilities with sufficient quantities of quality biomass at reasonable prices. As large territories and hundreds of biomass producers are involved, quantitative models are very useful to evaluate and optimize the resources required, the associated costs, the energy consumptions and the environmental impacts. This article surveys the recent research on models for biomass supply chains, from an Operations Research perspective. 124 references, including 72 published since 2010, have been analyzed to present the structures and the activities of these chains, a typology of decisions in three levels (strategic, tactical and operational), and a review of models based either on performance evaluation techniques (e.g., simulation) or mathematical optimization. A conclusion underlines the contributions and shortcomings of current research and suggests possible directions.

Security Trade-Off and Energy Efficiency Analysis in Wireless Sensor Networks

With a rapid progress of numerous applications in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), performance evaluation and analysis techniques face new challenges in energy efficiency area in WSN applications. One of the key issues is to perform the security trade-off and energy efficiency analysis. In this paper, the energy analysis module for the QoP-ML (quality of protection modeling language) is proposed by means of which one can analyze the influence of various security levels on the energy consumption of a protocol. Moreover, an advanced communication module is proposed as an extension of the QoP-ML language, which enhances the abilities to analyze complex wireless sensor networks. The case study of WSN deployed on the Jindo Bridge in South Korea was carried out and the lifetime of protocols with various security levels was simulated. The results show that the introduction of various security levels can entail large differences in performance and energy consumption, and hence result in different lifetime. Therefore, the designers of WSN protocols should search for balance between the required lifetime and security level. The introduced QoP-ML extension, along with the AQoPA (automated quality of protection analysis) tool, has been developed to meet the above requirements.

A new classifier for breast cancer detection based on Naïve Bayesian

Breast cancer is known as the most common invasive cancer type among women and automatic breast cancer detection systems are in demand. Thus, various machine learning and pattern recognition techniques have been proposed to detect breast cancer. One of these techniques is the Bayes classifier. Naïve Bayesian (NB) is known to be a simple classifier, which is based on the Bayes theorem. There have been so many applications used in literature. In this paper, a new NB (weighted NB) classifier was proposed and its application on breast cancer detection was presented. Several experiments were conducted to evaluate the performance of the weighted NB on the breast cancer database. The experiments were realized with 5-fold cross validation test. Moreover, various performance evaluation techniques namely sensitivity, specificity and accuracy are considered. According to the experiments, the weighted NB obtained the following evaluation values. The calculated sensitivity, specificity and the accuracy values are 99.11%, 98.25%, and 98.54% respectively. Moreover, a comparison with the existing methods in the literature was presented. As a result, the performance of weighted NB is better than regular NB and many other existing methods.

Real-time event classification in field sport videos

The paper presents a novel approach to real-time event detection in sports broadcasts. We present how the same underlying audio–visual feature extraction algorithm based on new global image descriptors is robust across a range of different sports alleviating the need to tailor it to a particular sport. In addition, we propose and evaluate three different classifiers in order to detect events using these features: a feed-forward neural network, an Elman neural network and a decision tree. Each is investigated and evaluated in terms of their usefulness for real-time event classification. We also propose a ground truth dataset together with an annotation technique for performance evaluation of each classifier useful to others interested in this problem.

Cellular Production Lines With Asymptotically Reliable Bernoulli Machines: Lead Time Analysis and Control

Cellular lines are production systems consisting of cells comprised of machines performing similar operations. These systems are notorious for having excessively long lead time $(LT)$ that are often an order of magnitude longer than the total processing time by all machines in the system. The main goal of this paper is to carry out an analytical investigation of this phenomenon and offer methods for its alleviation. To accomplish this, we develop a technique for performance evaluation of cellular lines with asymptotically reliable Bernoulli machines and use it for analysis and control of $LT$ .

Book Reviews

In Book Reviews, we review an extensive and diverse range of books. They cover theory and applications in operations research, statistics, management science, econometrics, mathematics, computers, and information systems. In addition, we include books in other fields that emphasize technical applications. The editor will be pleased to receive an email from those willing to review a book, with an indication of specific areas of interest. If you are aware of a specific book that you would like to review, or that you think should be reviewed, please contact the editor. This is the last collection of book reviews edited by Graham Rand. He thanks the editor-in-chief of Interfaces, Srinivas Bollapragada, for giving him the opportunity to make this contribution to the journal, the publications staff at INFORMS, particularly Alice Mack and Kelly Kophazi, who have been so helpful, and all those who wrote the 116 book reviews that he commissioned during the past four years. The following books are reviewed in this issue of Interfaces, 45(1), January–February 2015: An Introduction to Traffic Flow Theory, Lily Elefteriadou; Sustainability Appraisal: Quantitative Methods and Mathematical Techniques for Environmental Performance Evaluation, Marina G. Erechtchoukova, Peter A. Khaiter, and Paulina Golinska; and Essays in Production, Project Planning and Scheduling: A Festschrift in Honor of Salah Elmaghraby, P. Simin Pulat, Subhash C. Sarin, Reha Uzsoy.

Riset Akuntansi Managemen: Telaah Tiga Perspektif

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the development of management accounting research from three perspectives: reserach topics, theoretical foundations, and research methods. We base our discussion on previous literature reviews in the US, Australia, China, Finland, and other countries. We propose research opportunities in the field of management accounting in Indonesia. We argue that certain topics such as budgeting, performance evaluation, and management accounting techniques implementation are still interesting topics to study further in Indonesia context. As many studies have supported theoretical and practical development, we conjecture that management accounting research in Indonesia should be conducted to answer the question of ‘what does happen’ instead of ‘what should happen’. In line with the conjecture, we contend that research is to focus on practicality aspects and the endeavor to find new frontiers in management accounting practice.Keywords: management accounting research, management accounting theory

The effects of total quality management on the business performance: An application in the province of Kütahya

Abstract The quality and the satisfaction of the employees for increasing productivity, their motivation and rewarding, the use of performance evaluation and performance measurement techniques, elimination of errors and mistakes in the organization, concentrating on team work, benefitting from the experience of successful organizations, making the strategic planning and such like targets underline at the sense of Total Quality Management (TQM). With this study, the correlation of TQM components with the organization performance have been examined individually in order to understand the effects of the executives, employee, customers and processes on the business performance at the TQM. The correlation of TQM with the business performance was analysed by means of data based on conducting a questionnaire. According to regression analysis results which was carried out to present the performance features of organizations concerning TQM criteria (education, leadership, continuous improvement, internal customer and external customer), it was observed that the criteria related with leadership and education have a stronger correlation with the performance. Accordingly organizations should give the necessary education and training about the quality to their employees and support the improvement under the leadership of the top management.

Evaluation of Sewerage System Sustainability Technically Around Condominiums Areas: A Case Study in Debre Berhan, Ethiopia

Sewage discharges from centralized water-borne collection systems can pollute surface water, and discharge from sewers; septic tanks and pit toilets pollute living environment and groundwater which directly affects the health of poor people at downstream [13]. Poor sanitation facilities and low sewerage system continues to be a critical problem in rural and urban areas of Ethiopia. This study aims to evaluate the sewerage system in terms of technical aspect by identifying the cause and extent of failures on the schemes then forwarding the mitigation measures for the problem explored. This study is conducted in Debre Berhan town from February, 2014-January, 2015. In order to gather information’s for the study, the researchers used pre-prepared questionnaire (for the condominium lives), soil sampling and the other was data collection checklists (variable and context information checklists), semi open ended interview and physical instruments such as GPS, Axes soil sample bags. From the study, some important conclusions are made. The technical performance evaluation indicators show that sewerage system especially around condominium area is poorly implemented, inadequate in quantity, or poorly constructed or both. Of the total users around 31.54% have no any awareness about sewerage system operation, sanitation and hygiene. Of constructed floor drainage ditches only 24.8% have good appearance and functional, in the rest of scheme, the structure is destructed and non-functional. Only 36.47% of septic tanks, gives good function for users properly as required, in the rest of the schemes, there is many defects and problems observed. The technical problems noticed in the sample sites are includes O&M, construction, and design respectively put in the order of causing considerable failure.

A cross-efficiency fuzzy Data Envelopment Analysis technique for performance evaluation of Decision Making Units under uncertainty

The paper presents a novel cross-efficiency fuzzy Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) technique for evaluating different elements (Decision Making Units or DMUs) under uncertainty. In order to evaluate the performance of several DMUs while dealing with uncertain input and output data, the presented technique employs triangular fuzzy numbers. A fuzzy triangular efficiency is associated to each DMU through a cross evaluation obtained by a compromise between suitably chosen objectives. Results are then defuzzified to provide a ranking of the DMUs. The proposed method is applied to the performance evaluation of healthcare systems in a region of Southern Italy. The DMU data uncertainty derives from ongoing reforms and the reported assessment is conducted firstly in order to evaluate and rank the efficiency of the considered healthcare systems, and subsequently to assess the evolution of the performance of one of the most affected among these DMUs by the reform plans. The case study demonstrates the model ease of application, its discriminative power among DMUs when compared to a more classical fuzzy DEA approach, and the usefulness in planning and validating targeted reforms in the case of healthcare systems.

Technical performance evaluation of the MyT4 point of care technology for CD4+ T cell enumeration.

ObjectiveThough absolute CD4+ T cell enumeration is the primary gateway to antiretroviral therapy initiation for HIV-positive patients in all developing countries, patient access to this critical diagnostic test is relatively poor. We technically evaluated the performance of a newly developed point-of-care CD4+ T cell technology, the MyT4, compared with conventional CD4+ T cell testing technologies.DesignOver 250 HIV-positive patients were consecutively enrolled and their blood tested on the MyT4, BD FACSCalibur, and BD FACSCount.ResultsCompared with the BD FACSCount, the MyT4 had an r2 of 0.7269 and a mean bias of −23.37 cells/µl. Compared with the BD FACSCalibur, the MyT4 had an r2 of 0.5825 and a mean bias of −46.58 cells/µl. Kenya currently uses a CD4+ T cell test threshold of 350 cells/µl to determine patient eligibility for antiretroviral therapy. At this threshold, the MyT4 had a sensitivity of 95.3% (95% CI: 88.4–98.7%) and a specificity of 87.9% (95% CI: 82.3–92.3%) compared with the BD FACSCount and sensitivity and specificity of 88.2% (95% CI: 79.4–94.2%) and 84.2% (95% CI: 78.2–89.2%), respectively, compared with the BD FACSCalibur. Finally, the MyT4 had a coefficient of variation of 12.80% compared with 14.03% for the BD FACSCalibur.ConclusionsWe conclude that the MyT4 performed well at the current 350 cells/µl ART initiation eligibility threshold when used by lower cadres of health care facility staff in rural clinics compared to conventional CD4+ T cell technologies.

Life cycle assessment (LCA) for biofuels in Brazilian conditions: A meta-analysis

Abstract The key objective of this study is to evaluate and compare the main environmental life cycle impacts and energy balance of ethanol from sugarcane and biodiesel from soybean and palm oil, in the Brazilian conditions. The methodological tool used was the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), in Well-To-Tank (WTT) perspective. A process based on cradle-to-gate attribution LCA method, was applied as the technique to assess the health and environmental impacts of ethanol and biodiesel production systems. The environmental assessment was carried out using the SimaPro 7.0.1 software and the CML 2 baseline 2000 methodology, developed by the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML). The assumed common analysis base in this paper was 1.0 MJ of energy released by combustion of the analyzed biofuels. The environmental impacts were quantified and ranked in categories of impacts: Abiotic Depletion Potential (ADP), Global Warming Potential (GWP), Human Toxicity Potential (HTP), Acidification Potential (ACP) and Eutrophication Potential (ETP). In addition, the results were compared by meta-analysis with previous published studies. The Net Energy Relation (NER) in the life cycle of biofuels is an important indicator of the technical and environmental performance evaluation of biofuels production. In this study the NER of ethanol and biodiesel from soybean and palm oil were estimated and compared with previous published studies. Direct and embodied energy inputs, based on defined system boundaries, were used to estimate the energy requirement of crops production, juice/oil extraction, and ethanol/biodiesel industrial production. It is possible to conclude, that biofuel production systems with higher agricultural yields and extensive use of co-products in its life cycle present best environmental results. The analysis of obtained results shows that the choices of co-products allocation method, transport distance and inventory database of the country, have significant influence on the results of the life cycle environmental performance of biofuels.

An evaluation of the world's major airlines' technical and environmental performance

In this empirical study, we apply bootstrapped data envelopment analysis (DEA) models under variable returns to scale to examine both the environmental and technical efficiencies of airlines. Using the regional classification of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), we chose 48 of the world's major full-service and low-cost carriers from six different regions, and then estimated their performance over the period 2007–2010. Our empirical results show that many of the most technically efficient airlines are from China and North Asia, whilst many of the best environmental performers are from Europe. We also found that although the number of environmentally oriented full-service carriers is increasing, low-cost carriers are still more environmentally oriented. Our findings show that almost all the low-cost carriers are technically operating under increasing returns to scale in all the studied years. However, this result was quite the opposite of what we found for the largest airlines.

침윤소화약제 성능평가를 위한 축소실험의 타당성 분석

현재 국내의 침윤소화약제 기술기준은 표면장력에 대한 기준만 존재하여 이를 통한 약제의 성능평가는 어려운 실정이다. 따라서 침윤소화약제의 성능평가 기법을 제시하기 위해 축소모형 실험 장치를 통한 최적화된 성능평가 방법을 제시하고자 한다. 본 연구는 해외 기준인 NFPA 18의 실험과 자체 제작된 축소모형 실험 장치를 이용한 실험의 결과 비교분석을 통해 자체 제작 축소모형 실험 장치실험 결과의 타당성을 규명하고자 한다. 목화솜을 대상으로 침투성능만을 평가하는 NFPA 18 실험과 목분을 대상으로 침투성능과 소화성능을 모두 평가하는 축소모형 실험을 비교분석한 결과 NFPA 18의 실험과 자체 제작 축소모형 실험에서 모두 소화용수의 침투성에 관한 변별력을 확인할 수 있었다. 또한 자체 제작 축소모형 실험에서는 T/C를 통한 내부온도 측정을 통해 보다 명확한 변별력을 나타냄을 확인하였다. A current standard exist only on the surface tension in the current domestic wetting agent technology standards, so it is difficult to the performance evaluation of the wetting agent through the standard. So this study presents the optimized performance evaluation methods by scale model experimental equipment in order to present techniques for performance evaluation of wetting agents. The purpose of this study is to investigate validity of experimental results of the self-designed scale model experiment equipment by a comparative analysis of experimental results of the NFPA 18 experiment and the experiment using the self-designed scale model experiment equipment. As a result of a comparative analysis of experimental results of the NFPA 18 experiment that evaluate only the permeation performance on the contton and the experiment using the self-designed scale model experiment equipment that evaluate the permeation performance and fire extinguishing performance on wood flour, the discrimination of the permeation performance was confirmed in both the NFPA 18 experiment and the self-designed scale model experiment equipment. And a result of self-designed experiment equipment have clear discriminatory more than NFPA 18 by internal temperature measurement using the thermocouples.