Set Of Sub-processes Research Articles

A model for implementing soundscape maps in smart cities

Abstract Smart cities are required to engage with local communities by promoting a user-centred approach to deal with urban life issues and ultimately enhance people’s quality of life. Soundscape promotes a similar approach, based on individuals’ perception of acoustic environments. This paper aims to establish a model to implement soundscape maps for the monitoring and management of the acoustic environment and to demonstrate its feasibility. The final objective of the model is to generate visual maps related to perceptual attributes (e.g. ‘calm’, ‘pleasant’), starting from audio recordings of everyday acoustic environments. The proposed model relies on three main stages: (1) sound sources recognition and profiling, (2) prediction of the soundscape’s perceptual attributes and (3) implementation of soundscape maps. This research particularly explores the two latter phases, for which a set of sub-processes and methods is proposed and discussed. An accuracy analysiswas performed with satisfactory results: the prediction models of the second stage explained up to the 57.5% of the attributes’ variance; the cross-validation errors of the model were close to zero. These findings show that the proposed model is likely to produce representative maps of an individual’s sonic perception in a given environment.

Genetic algorithms in supply chain management: A critical analysis of the literature

Genetic algorithms (GAs) are perhaps the oldest and most frequently used search techniques for dealing with complex and intricate real-life problems that are otherwise difficult to solve by the traditional methods. The present article provides an extensive literature review of the application of GA on supply chain management (SCM). SCM consists of several intricate processes and each process is equally important for maintaining a successful supply chain. In this paper, eight processes (where each process has a set of sub-processes) as given by Council of SCM Professionals (CSCMF) are considered. The idea is to review the application of GA on these aspects and to provide the readers a detailed study in this area. The authors have considered more than 220 papers covering a span of nearly two decades for this study. The analysis is shown in detail with the help of graphs and tables. It is expected that such an extensive study will encourage and motivate the fellow researchers working in related area; to identify the gaps and to come up with innovative ideas.

Cost modelling in maintenance using time-driven activity-based costing

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the possibility to use time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC) in maintenance cost modelling. It deals with three questions: how maintenance activities could be described? How could TDABC system model the complex maintenance processes? How could TDABC improve maintenance decision-making? This contribution is illustrated using the experience of a materials production company. The model is proposed using the process approach to describe maintenance process. The research illustrates that maintenance process cannot be modelled as a function but as a set of sub-processes. This document is one from the few papers that experiment TDABC in industrial sector. The proposed model can be used to support managers initially to identify maintenance activities and organise maintenance department. The model provides the possibility to predict the benefit costs for improvement actions before their establishment. This paper complements current discussion on the use of TDABC in the industrial costing especially maintenance costing.

A compatibility-based procedure designed to generate potential sanitation system alternatives

Regarding multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA), the problem of generating alternatives has not received the attention it deserves. Most research is currently devoted to the problem of alternative selection, where it is assumed that a set of appropriate alternatives is already given. This paper addresses the generation of potential alternatives in the domain of sanitation systems planning and decision-making. A compatibility assessment procedure is proposed to determine the set of technically feasible or potential sanitation system alternatives. This is based on a clear definition of such an alternative containing sub-processes that include a user interface, storage, conveyance treatment and reuse/disposal. A newly developed compatibility matrix is applied to identify incompatibilities between the options of the sub-processes. A potential sanitation system alternative is therefore defined by the absence of two-by-two incompatibility between all its options. The compatibility assessment acts as a first filter on the set of sanitation system alternatives to eliminate those that are inoperable before the feasibility assessment. The objective of both steps is to obtain a set of alternatives that are of reasonable and manageable size from which the final solution may be selected.

An agent-oriented approach to process partition and planning in migrating workflow systems

Mobile agents act as the task executors in migrating workflow system. As the size of workflow is increased by including many tasks and branches, multiple mobile agents should be used where each agent is responsible for a branch of the workflow process and fulfills the workflow goal by cooperating with its partners. In this case, the workflow process needs to be partitioned into a set of sub-processes before execution so that each sub-process can be assigned to one mobile agent. This paper proposes a structured process partition approach that includes process structure partition and Quality of Service(QoS) objective partition. The former partitions a structured process into a set of sub-processes with dominant relations and each sub-process consists of a sequence of tasks. The latter distributes QoS objectives, such as the expected budget or deadline of the whole workflow, over all of the sub-processes. In addition, a sub-process execution planning algorithm with QoS objective based on Markov Decision Process (MDP) is also put forward in this paper. The experiment results show that the effects of workflow partition method and MDP based process planning method are sound.

FMEA-based portfolio approach to service productivity improvement

The conceptual approach has contributed significantly to service productivity, but it should be complemented by practical deliverable methods. This paper proposes a systematic framework for improving service productivity by employing the failure mode and effect analysis-based portfolio approach. By structuring and decomposing a service into a set of sub-processes, failure and innovation modes are identified and evaluated using different constituents, such as the severity and occurrence of failure mode, and the impacts and feasibilities of innovation modes. Innovation and failure portfolios are constructed, clarifying the values of opportunities. To illustrate the function of the proposed approach, hospital service is used as an example.

Comment certaines organisations innovent dans la durée

This paper aims at better understanding how some firms have built and maintained capabilities to innovate repeatedly in the long run. We deal with large organizations that delivered successful innovations again and again over decades. We aim at identifying the underlying strategic and organizational dynamics that made it possible to maintain this ability over time. We first review the literature on innovation and intrapreneurship. We then present the results of four case studies of companies known for their long and solid track record regarding innovation. From this, we infer a theoretical comprehensive framework designed to capture how innovating repeatedly within existing organizations can be institutionalized via a set of sub-processes. We finally present a simplified version of the model stressing the role of managerial leaders.

Application of life cycle assessment to the production of man-made crystal glass

This paper presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) of the manufacturing process of crystal glass products in order to evaluate the potential environmental impacts due to a crystalware company located in Colle di Val d’Elsa, Siena (Italy). Since there is not any published research specifically focussed on crystal production to our knowledge, outcomes from this study would represent a first documented evidence gathered from an LCA of crystal glass products. Once a detailed description of the production process was provided, different categories of impacts were assessed and analysed. Outcomes allowed us to identify ‘weak points’ in the production process and propose possible solutions for decreasing the risk of negative effects on the environment. According to the LCA methodology, the whole life cycle of crystal glass was structured into four primary phases—raw materials acquisition, crystal glass manufacturing, product utilisation and final disposal—each of which includes a set of sub-processes. Through an accurate life cycle inventory, primary data, relative to the year 2006, were elaborated through the EDIP database. The calculation of impacts was aided by GaBi4 software with reference to a functional unit corresponding to 1 kg of crystal glass products. Relative to the CML2001 problem-oriented approach, a set of impact categories was used for the classification and characterisation of the life cycle impact assessment. Potential category indicators were finally accounted for and normalised in accordance with the CML Western Europe method. The following ten impact categories were assessed: (1) depletion of abiotic resources, (2) acidification, (3) eutrophication, (4–6) ecotoxicity (marine and freshwater aquatic as well as terrestrial, respectively), (7) climate change (greenhouse effect), (8) human toxicity, (9) stratospheric ozone depletion and (10) photo-oxidant formation. Results showed that among the main phases, crystal glass manufacturing is the one with the highest environmental impact and emissions to air, mainly due to an intensive use of energy and materials. In particular, some sub-processes within the manufacturing stage, such as melting in furnaces, acid polishing, cutting and forming, were found to hold a high responsibility for most of the environmental effects. The main effects depend on CO2, NOx and SO2 emissions, heavy metals emissions and use of non-renewable resources. In particular, the latter is due to the processes of extraction, refining, transport and use of fuels such as natural gas. Results were analysed relative to each of the main processes involved in the crystal glass life cycle and critical points were investigated in order to inform the administrators of the crystalware company and address future choices towards a more sustainable production. Some technical solutions were proposed in order to improve environmental performances. Impacts due to the use of lead in the mixture were widely treated in literature and briefly discussed here. An accurate energy and material flow inventory allowed us to assess the potential environmental impacts of the crystal glass production in Colle Val d’Elsa, including the effects of processes occurring within the industrial plant and those due to the import of products and services from outside. Through the case study, we aimed to provide an exhaustive description of the main steps in the process and clear results relative to different impact categories. Outcomes showed that some procedures could be implemented in order to decrease these impacts. The use of lead is an irreplaceable characteristic of crystal products, but also a critical point to deal with. Nevertheless, the high quality of man-made crystal products makes the use of lead acceptable. The LCA of crystal glass products presented in this paper provided an accurate description of processes and procedures that can mirror a traditional production in a broader sense. This paper can therefore represent a valuable reference for future studies on crystal glass production processes. The LCA method was performed for identifying critical aspects in the production process from an energetic and environmental viewpoint and was useful for constructing a model of the crystal glass production in Colle di Val d’Elsa. This can be a starting point for processing an environmental product declaration.

Neural-network-driven Fuzzy Reasoning of Dependency Relationships among Product Development Processes

Product development process can be viewed as a set of sub-processes with stronger interrelated dependency relationships. In this article, the quantitative and qualitative dependency measures of serial and parallel product development processes are analyzed. The neural-network-driven fuzzy reasoning mechanism of dependency relationships is developed in the case that there is no sufficient quantitative information or the information is fuzzy and imprecise. In the reasoning mechanism, a three-layer feedforward neural network is used to replace fuzzy evaluation in the fuzzy system. A hybrid learning algorithm that combined unsupervised learning and supervised gradient-descent learning procedures is used to build the fuzzy rules and train membership functions. Results show that the proposed method can improve the reasoning efficiency, reduce the cost and complexity degree of process improvement, and make a fast response to the dynamic development environment.

Software Process Modeling Using Role and Coordination

The term software process joins all activities that have to be achieved in order to develop software. It has been shown that modeling such processes is difficult and expensive task. It's confirmed by diversity of software processes modeling approaches which are however, not satisfactory. This study deals with an area of growing importance and presents a role- and coordination- based approach to specify and model methodological aspects of this processes, by formally defining the policy that lead the process, such as rules which determine activities and their organization and the component mechanisms, such as tools that realize activities and operate on objects according to policy. The purpose of role modeling is to achieve separation of concerns, allowing the designer to consider different aspects, or the same aspect at different levels of detail. The originality of our approach is to consider a process as a coordination of a set of sub-processes. This have include profits; among which, the modular distribution of methodologies upon implicated sub-processes, the construction and the realization of component methodologies and the association of version of behaviors to the same process.

Proper Orthogonal Decomposition-Based Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation of Dynamic Wind Load Effects on Structures

Multicorrelated stationary random processes/fields can be decomposed into a set of subprocesses by diagonalizing their covariance or cross power spectral density ~XPSD! matrices through the eigenvector/modal decomposition. This proper orthogonal decomposition ~POD! technique offers physically meaningful insight into the process as each eigenmode may be characterized on the basis of its spatial distribution. It also facilitates characterization and compression of a large number of multicorrelated random processes by ignoring some of the higher eigenmodes associated with smaller eigenvalues. In this paper, the theoretical background of the POD technique based on the decomposition of the covariance and XPSD matrices is presented. A physically meaningful linkage between the wind loads and the attendant background and resonant response of structures in the POD framework is established. This helps in better understanding how structures respond to the spatiotemporally varying dynamic loads. Utilizing the POD-based modal representation, schemes for simulation and state-space modeling of random fields are presented. Finally, the accuracy and effectiveness of the reduced- order modeling in representing local and global wind loads and their effects on a wind-excited building are investigated.