Technical Priorities Research Articles

Quality Matrix-Based Product Innovation in Birkinpet Pet Harness Apparel

This study employs the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) method to develop BirkinPet pet harness apparel, focusing on customer needs and competitive advantages. A House of Quality (HoQ) matrix was constructed using responses from 96 participants, evaluating the relationship between Customer Importance and Technical Importance to identify key technical priorities for immediate implementation in BirkinPet’s production process. The primary HoQ matrix results indicate that lightweight, comfort, and safety (481.5), design for various activities (416.1), and ergonomic and comfortable design (389.9) are the most important attributes to customers. The main technical priorities include ensuring the product is safe and strong (4.99) and providing a variety of sizes and options (4.86). The novelty lies in the comprehensive and structured application of QFD, emphasizing innovation in designing products that align with current market trends and customer preferences. By integrating comfort, safety, and flexible design, BirkinPet successfully creates a high-quality product that meets customer needs, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty while strengthening its competitive position in the pet accessories market.

The future of global river health monitoring

Rivers are the arteries of human civilisation and culture, providing essential goods and services that underpin water and food security, socio-economic development and climate resilience. They also support an extraordinary diversity of biological life. Human appropriation of land and water together with changes in climate have jointly driven rapid declines in river health and biodiversity worldwide, stimulating calls for an Emergency Recovery Plan for freshwater ecosystems. Yet freshwater ecosystems like rivers have been consistently under-represented within global agreements such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. Even where such agreements acknowledge that river health is important, implementation is hampered by inadequate global-scale indicators and a lack of coherent monitoring efforts. Consequently, there is no reliable basis for tracking global trends in river health, assessing the impacts of international agreements on river ecosystems and guiding global investments in river management to priority issues or regions. We reviewed national and regional approaches for river health monitoring to develop a comprehensive set of scalable indicators that can support “top-down” global surveillance while also facilitating standardised “bottom-up” local monitoring efforts. We evaluate readiness of these indicators for implementation at a global scale, based on their current status and emerging improvements in underlying data sources and methodologies. We chart a road map that identifies data and technical priorities and opportunities to advance global river health monitoring such that an adequate monitoring framework could be in place and implemented by 2030, with the potential for substantial enhancement by 2050. Lastly, we present recommendations for coordinated action and investment by policy makers, research funders and scientists to develop and implement the framework to support conservation and restoration of river health globally.

Integration Strategies for Sustainable Positioning of Shipping Companies in the Maritime Trade Market System

Introduction. The maritime transport of individual countries, operating in a single space of the World Ocean, determines the tasks and problems of creating standard requirements for the reliability of cargo flows and system security of operation. This significantly differentiates the conditions for the development of maritime transport as a subsystem of the global maritime transport market between its individual structures, on the one hand, and national maritime transport complexes, on the other. This is what determines the expediency of various integration processes in the system of the maritime trade market.
 Aim and tasks. The study examined the role of integration technologies in the global maritime trade market and the analysis of the development of the country's maritime transport complex in relation to its real needs for participation in integration processes, as well as possible strategies for integration principles and finding ways to implement such strategies in the activities of the country.
 Results. The study resulted in the identification of three approaches to the forms of integration in the maritime trade market. The first form includes the processes of creating the gross national product based on the international division of labor, when the global sectoral equilibrium is achieved by combining the technology of producers of one country with the resources and territory of another state. The second form of integration is the M&A strategy for the further development of shipping companies and other enterprises of the maritime complex. The third form is the interaction of individual maritime transport enterprises in intermodal connections. The implementation of all the above forms of integration is in line with globalization trends in the socio-economic development, achievements of technological progress and strategic interests of shipping companies.
 Conclusions. The development of maritime transport in terms of integration characteristics and technical priorities reflects the principle of sustainability. At the same time, activities are separated in the system of achieving a balance in the state of the main components of the transport services market according to the criteria for optimizing the investment flow. The latter necessitates a constant search for optimization of the fleet's carrying capacity and cargo terminal throughput. The main thing is to study the optimization of development from the perspective of both macroeconomic and business structures.

Numerical Investigation of Recommended Operating Parameters Considering Movement of Polymetallic Nodule Particles during Hydraulic Lifting of Deep-Sea Mining Pipeline

Previously conducted studies have established that pipeline hydraulic transport systems are currently the most promising deep-sea mining systems, and the pipeline transport performance of polymetallic nodules is one of the technical priorities. In this paper, a coupled CFD–DEM approach is adopted to numerically calculate the solid–liquid two-phase flow of seawater with polymetallic nodules. Small-scale experiments were conducted to validate the coupled model. Particle dynamics analysis was carried out under different inlet flow rates, feed concentrations and nodule fragmentation levels. The simulation results show that different operating parameters have significant effects on the pipeline transportation process. With low inlet flow rate, high feed concentration, and high percentage of large particles, the particle distribution and motion characteristics show a trend that is not conducive to safe transport. A set of recommended operating parameters for hydraulic transport of polymetallic nodule pipelines was summarized.

Nanoscale deposition of Group IVB elements on anodized surfaces to reduce friction

Reduction of dry friction losses is among top technical priorities. Recently, nanoscale deposition of Ti layers on anodic alumina demonstrated unusually low dry friction, but no clear comparison to other elements had been provided. In this study, magnetron sputtering and Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) were used to form nanometric layers of Cu, Cr, Hf, Nb, Ti, Zr and their oxides on several types of anodic alumina. Elements of IVB group were more effective than layers of Cu, Cr or Hf, which are widely used in anti-wear coatings. Only layers of 15–75 nm thickness remained effective, while 180 nm or thicker layers did not reduce friction significantly. Properties of materials within nanometric layers appeared to contribute to friction reduction much more compared to insignificant effects of hardness, roughness or substrate interactions. Also, inert substrates might represent a favorable matrix for studying the fundamentals of dry friction on deposited nanoscale structures.

Cultivating Resilience in the Biodiversity Heritage Library During the Global Pandemic: Improving access to existing content

The events of 2020, including the COVID-19 pandemic and social justice demonstrations around the world, helped the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) refocus our priorities for implementing our 2020–2025 Strategic Plan, which was adopted in April 2020. BHL’s natural ecosystem relies on virtual coordination across our global community. For this reason, much of the work of the consortium could continue during lockdowns and telework mandates at many of our partner institutions. Though most digitization projects were placed on hold, staff were able to shift priority to metadata enhancements to improve access and discoverability of existing content. Long-planned improvements in the use of persistent identifiers were pushed to the forefront of technical development. Improvements to the data model and user interface to better support born-digital content and articles were also prioritized in the 2021 Technical Priorities. Back-end improvements to the BHL website, currently under development, will also facilitate easier metadata import and updates, making it faster and easier to add article-level metadata, which will improve search and discoverability for articles within the collection. These technical improvements will continue to define BHL as a tool to connect biodiversity data. Part of our collaborative resilience is our ability to adapt and adjust to changing priorities. Over the past year, BHL has been working to review and update our Collection Development Policy. Social justice movements and discussions concerning the harmful content in BHL’s collection are helping to inform the review of our collection development policy in ways we wouldn’t have anticipated prior to 2020. Our review now includes strategies to identify gaps in and improve representation of biodiversity information from underrepresented regions, languages, cultures, and perspectives. We are also working with colleagues to support larger efforts within the library profession to improve and broaden metadata such as subject headings. We will continue to address the problematic historical legacy of natural history collections through actions defined in our strategic plan. The isolation and work from home orders of 2020 and early 2021 provided opportunities for some to expand into deep research and contribute to collaborative projects as work assignments became digital and thus more versatile. For example, transcription projects were accelerated because staff had more time to contribute to these resource-intensive activities. One result of this work is that more handwritten materials such as field notes and correspondence are now available for full-text searching and taxonomic name recognition within BHL. Another strategic goal of BHL is to grow consortial partnerships and alliances to foster cross-institutional collaboration. BHL sought new partnerships that would integrate BHL data into existing and emerging biodiversity projects. This cross-institutional collaboration is another way to cultivate resilience and sow the seeds of sustainability. In this talk, we will describe how BHL shifted its focus to reflect on and respond to global events of 2020. We will share discussions around acknowledging and addressing the harmful legacy content in BHL collections, new technical developments, and examples of collaborative telework projects.

Quality improvement of the primary cable of the handbrake lever: a QFD approach

Quality function deployment is one of the most used tools for the quality improvement of products or services. According to the literature, manufacturing is one of the industries that has benefited most from its employment. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to illustrate the usability of the quality function deployment in improving the quality of the primary cable of the handbrake lever. In this way, the technical priorities of this product were established by comparison with those of the main competitors in the market and the target values of each technical characteristic of the product were determined. In addition, the attention of the manufacturer of the primary cable of the handbrake lever can be also focused on the fulfillment of the customer expectations.

Examining health sector application and utility of program-based budgeting: County level experiences in Kenya.

IntroductionIn 2012, Kenya enacted a new Public Finance Management Act to guide the public‐sector planning and budgeting process. This new law replaced the previous line item budgeting, with a new program‐based budgeting (PBB) process. This study examined the experience of health sector PBB implementation at the county level in Kenya.MethodsWe carried out a review of the literature documenting the health sector application and utility of PBB in low‐ and middle‐income countries. We then collected empirical data to examine the experience of health sector application of PBB at County Level in Kenya.ResultsIn the financial year 2017/18, counties utilised the PBB approach for health sector planning. The PBB approach was perceived by key stakeholders; to have improved the alignment of technical priorities with budgetary allocation, and to have increased transparency, accountability and openness of the process. Its challenges included lack of clear tools and guidelines to support implementation, low capacity at county level, political interference and the organisation of the public sector electronic financial management system around line item budgeting system.ConclusionPBB is potentially a useful tool for aligning health sector planning and budgeting and ensuring the Annual Work Plan is more result oriented. However, realisation of this goal would be enhanced by the developing clear tools and guidelines to support its implementation, building capacity for county health sector managers to better understand the PBB application, and reforming the public‐sector budgetary management system to align it with the PBB approach.

A social-economic-technical framework for reinforcing the automated distribution systems considering optimal switching and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles

This paper proposes a hybrid efficient stochastic framework for optimal operation of automated distribution grids considering the social, economic and technical priorities. To this end, optimal feeder reconfiguration is regarded as a key solution for altering the network topology and improving the above targets. Considering the wide popularity and high penetration of the plug-in hybrid electric vehicles in the future grids, three different charging schemes including controlled charging, uncontrolled charging and smart charging are introduced and compared with each other. In addition, different types of non-dispatchable renewable power sources including wind turbines and solar panels are considered to let the analysis be more practical. In order to capture the uncertainties existing in the nature of the problem, a hybrid data driven approach based on machine learning and unscented transform is proposed. The machine learning based approach, i.e. support vector machine, will help to estimate the standard deviation of the uncertain parameters. In order to make a global search in the multi-objective space, a new optimization method based on flower pollination algorithm and a new three-stage modification method are introduced to solve the problem. The quality and capability of the proposed framework are examined on an IEEE test system.

Матеріалознавство в Україні

In the short historical essay, the ways of formation of Materials Science in Ukraine are considered, and tendencies of its development over the World were taken into account. The outstanding human resources and excellent raw deposit capabilities of Ukraine have led to creating Ukrainian scientific schools back in the days of the Russian Empire, which were comparable to the Ural and another world schools of metallurgists and metal scientists. The further development of science on materials in Ukraine is closely related with establishing the Academy of Sciences in 1918. From the first twelve members of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, three of them namely V.I. Vernadsky, P.A. Tutkovsky and S.P. Tymoshenko, had represented the natural sciences. The election of E.O. Paton to the Academy in 1929 for "technical sciences" specialty had initiated the usage of promising achievements of fundamental sciences for development of applied ones. Since that, the famous Institutes of Ferrous Metallurgy (1936), Metal Ceramics and Special Alloys (1955) and others were founded. The idea to develop the new area of knowledge, which would combine the different types of interatomic bonding to be resulted in new materials and would not be preferable to metallic materials only, has been already in time, namely in 1963. B.Ye. Paton jointly with I.M. Frantcevych had created the Department of Physical and Technical Problems of Materials Science, which included a few institutes namely: electric welding (Paton Welding Institute, PWI), cermets and special alloys (Institute for Problems of Materials Science (IPMS since 1964), foundry (problems of casting since 1964, and Institute of Physics and Technology Metals and Alloys (PTIMA since 1996), mechanical engineering and automation (Institute of Physics and Mechanics (IPM since 1964). And although the institutions are quite different in their profiles, their uniting direction is materials science. As early as 1963, V.N. Yeremenko was elected as the first academician for the "materials science” specialty. Therefore, the issue of a new collection of scientific papers under the title "Progress in Materials Science" is natural and vitally required. It is corresponding to global trends in the formation of scientific and technical priorities in developed countries and is as the task for Ukraine too.

Technical assistance needs for realizing person-centered thinking, planning and practices in United States human service systems

PurposeThe United States’ National Center on Advancing Person-Centered Practices and Systems provides technical assistance to human service systems on person-centered thinking, planning and practices. To apply for the Center's technical assistance, 33 state human service systems submitted applications and participated in interviews in which they detailed technical assistance needs. This technical paper examines themes that emerged from these technical assistance applications and interviews. These themes offer a view into barriers, obstacles and priorities for human service systems as they work toward more person-centered practices. Common themes point to key areas that, if enhanced, could result in a more person-centered system overall.Design/methodology/approachThe application process generated 33 applications containing technical assistance goals and priorities, summaries of recent and ongoing initiatives to advance person-centered approaches, measurement methods and anticipated challenges. Using thematic analysis, the authors organized the information into seven themes.FindingsApplicants identified seven themes to improve person-centered thinking, planning and practices: Staff Training and Competencies, Participant Engagement, Measurement and Quality Improvement, Cross-System Consistency in Planning and Practice, Payment and Managed Care, Cultural and Linguistic Responsiveness and Other Practice-Related Goals. They also articulated contextual factors that help or hinder systems efforts and a vision for an ideal person-centered system.Originality/valueThe themes provide a unique window into human service system administrators' priorities for achieving more person-centered human service systems and the conditions that may promote or hinder systems change.

Quality Function Deployment for Quality Performance Analysis in Indonesian Automotive Company for Engine Manufacturing

The research aimed to improve the quality problem from the previous plant that contributed to the Rate of Quality (RQ) and Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) value in Cylinder Block Machining (CBM). The research was done in one of an automotive company in Indonesia. It had been applying Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) with Kaizen spirit to make continuous improvement even though this company had reached a world-class level on the Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance (JIPM) standard. To express the needs and wants of the current machining plant and improve quality problems from the previous process in the casting plant, the researchers used Quality Function Deployment (QFD) method. From the result, it is known that shrinkage defect at a casting product becomes the priority of the kaizen team to achieve next process customer satisfaction in a machining plant to increase the RQ and OEE value. By implementing improvement based on the highest value of Technical Priorities (TP) from House of Quality (HOQ), it can increase RQ value in CBM from 96,4% in December 2018 to 97,9% in February 2019. Then, OEE value increases from 92% to 93% within two months.

Design an innovative waste recycling trash bin based on the requirements from customers (Binusian) in Bina Nusantara University

The problem regarding waste recycling is still difficult to do, especially in an environment where the level of public awareness is still less concerned with the importance of cleanliness. At Bina Nusantara University there are organic and nonorganic trash bins, but the function is still not optimal due to the unfavorable interest of Binusian to use it or to carry out recycling activities. The survey was conducted using a questionnaire to 114 Binusian respondents qualitatively to get responses from 14 attributes related to recycling care and the design of the trash. The response from these 14 attributes will be the customer voice that is processed using Quality Function Deployment (QFD) to determine technical priorities that can be used to meet customer requirements. From the planning matrix, the factors that must be improved are the availability of organic and nonorganic waste bins, as well as improvements to the design of existing trash bins at Bina Nusantara University. Implementation of technical requirements in the form of rewards for recycling activities carried out especially for plastic waste, making redesigns for unique and innovative bins with 70% stainless steel and 30% fiberglass, and making a system that is integrated with accounts for rewarding is expected to be able meets 14 customer requirement attributes.

Interdisciplinary integration on sustainable development issues

In order to achieve sustainable development, we need a deep understanding of both social and humanitarian processes and relationships in living and nonliving nature. The development of scientific research areas that are related to sustainability are very important. Unfortunately, sustainable development is not among scientific and technical priorities in Russian Federation. This study analyzes the dynamics of PhD and Doctoral dissertations on sustainable development performed in various areas of science in the USSR and Russia in 1987–2019. The majority of dissertations (1 322 in total ) were in the area of economics (85.4 %), while significantly fewer were in philosophy (2.9 %), technical (2.3%), and geographical (2.2 %) sciences. There are almost no dissertations in the fields of biological and chemical sciences, pharmaceutics and medicine. Our data indicate a significant imbalance and economic bias in the study of sustainable development issues. In this regard, it can be assumed that interdisciplinarity, which can be implemented in the framework of convergent and transdisciplinary approaches, is one of important methodological problem of sustainable development. Examples of relevant interdisciplinary projects are considered.

Changes in State Technical Assistance Priorities and Block Grant Funds for Addiction After ACA Implementation.

Objectives. To assess states' provision of technical assistance and allocation of block grants for treatment, prevention, and outreach after the expansion of health insurance coverage for addiction treatment in the United States under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Methods. We used 2 waves of survey data collected from Single State Agencies in 2014 and 2017 as part of the National Drug Abuse Treatment System Survey. Results. The percentage of states providing technical assistance for cross-sector collaboration and workforce development increased. States also shifted funds from outpatient to residential treatment services. However, resources for opioid use disorder medications changed little. Subanalyses indicated that technical assistance priorities and allocation of funds for treatment services differed between Medicaid expansion and nonexpansion states. Public Health Implications. The ACA's infusion of new public and private funds enabled states to reallocate funds to residential services, which are not as likely to be covered by health insurance. The limited allocation of block grant funds for effective opioid medications is concerning in light of the opioid crisis, especially in states that did not implement the ACA's Medicaid expansion.

Szekspir nasz powszedni albo praktyka sensownego czytania w szkole (dziś, tj. „w czasach zarazy cyfrowej” oraz relacji globalnych, a także niezależnie od jakichkolwiek plag czy kataklizmów)

The paper is based on the assumption that the contemporary educational system, including its general approach to literature, is characterized by being totally old-fashioned, and its results are completely opposite to what the authors of the relevant programmes hoped to achieve, and this is the reason why it desperately needs re-evaluating and revising. The text documents various motivations of interpreting William Shakespeare’s romantic comedy, The Tempest, as an example of a valuable and meaningful work of fiction. Thus ‘t is a good starting point for a constructive reflection on how to create conditions suitable for studying literature-based texts in the classroom as well as on teachers’ training which would respect both the up-to-date cultural context and the value of humanistic education, paramount for the development of human identity, and which is nowadays widely contested by the present interim economic and technical priorities.

\u201cSometimes it is difficult for us to stand up and change this\u201d: an analysis of power within priority-setting for health following devolution in Kenya

BackgroundPractices of power lie at the heart of policy processes. In both devolution and priority-setting, actors seek to exert power through influence and control over material, human, intellectual and financial resources. Priority-setting arises as a consequence of the needs and demand exceeding the resources available, requiring some means of choosing between competing demands. This paper examines the use of power within priority-setting processes for healthcare resources at sub-national level, following devolution in Kenya.MethodsWe interviewed 14 national level key informants and 255 purposively selected respondents from across the health system in ten counties. These qualitative data were supplemented by 14 focus group discussions (FGD) involving 146 community members in two counties. We conducted a power analysis using Gaventa’s power cube and Veneklasen’s expressions of power to interpret our findings.ResultsWe found Kenya’s transition towards devolution is transforming the former centralised balance of power, leading to greater ability for influence at the county level, reduced power at national and sub-county (district) levels, and limited change at community level. Within these changing power structures, politicians are felt to play a greater role in priority-setting for health. The interfaces and tensions between politicians, health service providers and the community has at times been felt to undermine health related technical priorities. Underlying social structures and discriminatory practices generally continue unchanged, leading to the continued exclusion of the most vulnerable from priority-setting processes.ConclusionsPower analysis of priority-setting at county level after devolution in Kenya highlights the need for stronger institutional structures, processes and norms to reduce the power imbalances between decision-making actors and to enable community participation.

Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs): the development and characteristics of a global inventory of key sites for biodiversity

SummaryImportant Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs) are sites identified as being globally important for the conservation of bird populations on the basis of an internationally agreed set of criteria. We present the first review of the development and spread of the IBA concept since it was launched by BirdLife International (then ICBP) in 1979 and examine some of the characteristics of the resulting inventory. Over 13,000 global and regional IBAs have so far been identified and documented in terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems in almost all of the world’s countries and territories, making this the largest global network of sites of significance for biodiversity. IBAs have been identified using standardised, data-driven criteria that have been developed and applied at global and regional levels. These criteria capture multiple dimensions of a site’s significance for avian biodiversity and relate to populations of globally threatened species (68.6% of the 10,746 IBAs that meet global criteria), restricted-range species (25.4%), biome-restricted species (27.5%) and congregatory species (50.3%); many global IBAs (52.7%) trigger two or more of these criteria. IBAs range in size from < 1 km2 to over 300,000 km2 and have an approximately log-normal size distribution (median = 125.0 km2, mean = 1,202.6 km2). They cover approximately 6.7% of the terrestrial, 1.6% of the marine and 3.1% of the total surface area of the Earth. The launch in 2016 of the KBA Global Standard, which aims to identify, document and conserve sites that contribute to the global persistence of wider biodiversity, and whose criteria for site identification build on those developed for IBAs, is a logical evolution of the IBA concept. The role of IBAs in conservation planning, policy and practice is reviewed elsewhere. Future technical priorities for the IBA initiative include completion of the global inventory, particularly in the marine environment, keeping the dataset up to date, and improving the systematic monitoring of these sites.

Improving Search Efficiency in the Biodiversity Heritage Library Corpus

Biodiversity literature and archival collections are not only indispensable in taxonomic research, they provide crucial information for understanding of museums’ natural history collections. Literature and archives document collecting events resulting in specimen collections, contain original descriptions based on those specimens, and provide a wealth of other contextual information for the study of life on earth. The Biodiversity Heritage Library is committed to improving research efficiency by providing open access to a growing body of biodiversity literature and archives. While descriptive metadata is widely available for both specimen collections (i.e., DarwinCore) and literature (i.e., MARCXML), connections between the two collection types cannot generally be found at these descriptive levels thus hindering efficient discovery of relevant materials. The integration of name finding services, powered by Global Names Architecture, provides a significant value-add through page-level access to mentions of a given taxon name. Yet how might one search based on a museum code, a common name, or a place name? This presentation will share how BHL’s top technical priorities for 2018 will help facilitate more efficient searching and discovery of information in the pages of the BHL corpus. Specifically, updates on BHL’s top two priorities – implementation of full text search and incorporation of available crowdsourced transcriptions—will be covered.

In situ measurement with diffusive gradients in thin films: effect of biofouling in freshwater

Concerning in situ passive sampler deployment, several technical priorities must be considered. In particular, deployment time must be sufficiently long not only to allow a significant quantity to be accumulated to facilitate analysis but also to ensure that the signal is above the quantification limit and out of the blank influence. Moreover, regarding the diffusive gradient in thin films (DGT) technique, deployment time must also be sufficiently long (at least 5days) to avoid the interactions of the solutes with the material diffusion layer of the DGT and for the steady state to be reached in the gel. However, biofouling occurs in situ and modifies the surface of the samplers. In this article, we propose a kinetic model which highlights the biofouling effect. This model was able to describe the mitigation of the flux towards the DGT resin observed on Cd, Co, Mn, Ni and Zn during a 22-day deployment in the Seine River. Over a period of 22days, biofouling had a significant impact on the DGT concentrations measured, which were decreased twofold to threefold when compared to concentrations measured in unaffected DGTs.