Search results

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact that crisis had on quality management and basic business processes using INSEAD’s industrial excellence framework (IEF) towards large Greek industrial units. This study proposes a modified version of the IEF which can help firms to operate through a turbulent environment.

Data that were collected during the current financial crisis were compared with a matched sample of business units surveyed a decade earlier. The variables that were used to measure performance were grouped into two categories, quality management and process improvement.

Through the examination of these cases, the authors identify the characteristics that empowered those BUs so as to remain alive during the turbulence. According to the results, the survivors train their staff systematically, have closer relationships with their suppliers, assess their processes and follow up with action plans. Findings also suggest cultural differences between survivors vs non-survivors. Survivors display a cultural profile typical to adhocracy since they describe themselves as more flexible and externally focused instead of being stable and internally focused. These findings are discussed and avenues for future research are presented.

The results of the study can be applied by quality managers of industrial organizations to achieve higher performance and overcome a turbulence of the external environment.

Previous research on the business excellence frameworks neglects the essential issue of sustainability and how an organization can survive a crisis. The study provides new insights into the long-term benefits of applying an excellence framework.

This is the eighth article on science, technology and medicine (STM) databases in a continuing series of articles summarising and commenting on new database products. Two companion articles will appear in the next two issues of this journal, one covering social sciences, humanities, news and general (SSH) (Online & CDROM Review, vol. 20, no. 5) and the other covering business and law (BSL) (Online & CDROM Review, vol. 20, no. 6). These articles are based on the newly appearing database products in the Gale Directory of Databases. The Gale Directory of Databases (GDD) was created in January 1993 by merging Computer‐Readable Databases: A Directory and Data Sourcebook (CRD) together with the Directory of Online Databases (DOD) and the Directory of Portable Databases (DPD).

David Tuffield, former UK marketing manager for Augat/Isotronics, has been appointed European marketing manager to head the company's plans to increase penetration into this expanding hybrid micropackaging industry. He will be responsible for the complete marketing and sales effort for micropackaging products providing the interface between US manufacturing facilities and Augat subsidiary product managers.

The Institute of Offshore Engineering, IOE, was founded at Heriot‐Watt University in Edinburgh in 1972 and from the start the provision of information has been one of its main activities. The first Information Officer was appointed in 1973, at the same time as the first engineers and clerical staff.

One of the most outstanding features of the post‐war world is the overwhelming wish on the part of the under‐developed and emergent nations to develop their own industries and join the ranks of the industrial society. It is an essential pre‐requisite to any programme for raising living standards in those countries. For one thing it is the only way that reasonably‐paid jobs can be provided in sufficient numbers, and then again, a rising standard of living requires the production of the material goods on which it is based and which can also form the basis for trade with other nations. This drive to more industrial self‐sufficiency has created, throughout the world, an enormous demand for trained personnel, particularly personnel with technical training at the technician and technologist level, and at the craftsman level too. The demand for trained office workers grows at the same time and there has been created a vast demand for language training in these countries. Britain has made a distinguished contribution to the satisfying of this need and the meeting of this need has already enabled Britain to build up a successful export trade in training technology covering both the supply of training equipment and the provision of complete systems and services, including the staff to go with it. Britain is now the most advanced teaching equipment and materials supplier in the world. Today this world‐wide service covers all grades of employee from shop‐floor workers to management. A great deal of the initiative has come from the commercial companies specialising in training equipment and services; much of their success rests on the fact that they work together within a co‐ordinating organisation, which they created and maintain, called ICETT, The Industrial Council for Educational and Training Technology Ltd. So successful has this venture been that 90 per cent of the output of these companies is sold outside Britain. This is an active, vigorous selling exercise in which Britain leads the field. And yet little is heard about it. In the article that follows ICETT tells its own story.

A previous attempt to implement the use of historical measures of asset management effectiveness – as part of a value improvement model (VIM) for repetitive processes – had not been 100 percent successful within an airport operational engineering environment. Taking into account the more holistic approach realised through applying a soft systems methodology (SSM), the purpose of this paper was to use the CATWOE (Customers, Actors, Transaction, World View, Owner and Environment) tool to gain an understanding of the root definition of the problem statement developing a conceptual model used to facilitate an improvement to the implementation process.

The research methodology taken incorporated an action research approach combining case study research with an action research process of planning, observing and reflecting summarized as taking an action case research design.

This research has developed a visual and systematic framework that enables managers to understand, analyse and improve value in their asset management repetitive processes. The CATWOE root definition tool has been used to create a conceptual model of the problem area providing a holistic view of the stakeholders and the internal and external environmental constraints that the VIM for asset management sits within.

The research was completed in‐situ at a single airport focused on a single group of assets managed by a single group of stakeholders. Future research should look to further develop the VIM and CATWOE approach in other asset management environments such as manufacturing as well as asset intensive service industries.

This research has taken a soft systems approach and successfully applied it to the implementation of hard systems measurements of asset management effectiveness within an airport operational engineering environment. Other managers with asset management responsibilities will find this approach useful in achieving their core objective to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their assets and the teams employed to maintain them at minimal total cost.

Spurious frequencies (spurs) resulting from phase truncation are one of the main signal integrity issues for direct digital synthesizers (DDS). The standard approach in DDS design consists of truncating the phase word output from the phase accumulator, in order to minimize the size of the lookup table. This process generates spurs and degrades the quality of signals at the output of a DDS. In principle, since the bit width of the digital‐to‐analog converter (DAC) is narrower than that of the lookup table, the latter can be compressed without using phase truncation. The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel spur‐free truncation method for compressing the sine lookup table in a DDS structure.

In this paper, a novel spur‐free truncation method for compressing the sine lookup table in a DDS structure is proposed. First, the paper discusses the origins of spurs in direct digital synthesizers; next, methods for avoiding large sine lookup tables are analyzed to help generate spur‐free outputs via truncation.

By introducing a comparator and an adder into the traditional DDS architecture, the sine lookup table can be compressed without significant hardware change in the design. Simulation results using MATLAB and implementation results on FPGA evaluation platform show that the novel structure can eliminate the truncation spurs without increasing the size of the lookup table. Previous works on compression algorithm of lookup table are still available to the novel structure.

A novel approach for the reduction in size of digital synthesizer lookup table is proposed in this work. Size reduction is achieved without producing truncation spurs. The method exploits the property that the bit width of a DAC will generally be smaller than the bit width of a phase accumulator. A comparator or an adder are introduced to the traditional structure of a DDS to help achieve the size compression. Simulations in MATLAB verified that the novel structure can eliminate truncation spurs in the output signal without increasing the size of the lookup table.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a system for estimating the position of the active magnetic bearing (AMB) shaft. A new approach using the static and dynamic inductances and complex analytic signal to simplify the estimation procedure. Finite element (FE) simulations are introduced as a part of the system synthesis.

The paper presents an AMB displacement estimation system. The system is created with three inductive sensors. The position is computed from refined static and dynamic inductance obtained from complex analytic signals of flux and current. FE simulation is used to relate refined inductances to the displacement and to verify the model.

This paper shows the applicability of complex analytic signal transformation on estimation systems. The use of new refined inductance is presented in contrast to the classical approach of static and dynamic inductances. The paper shows that classical approach of static and dynamic inductance is not usable for the presented estimation system.

For the practical implementation of the presented system, it is necessary to know the exact dimensions of the AMB stator and the voltage and frequency used to supply the inductance estimation system.

The paper presents a system for estimating the displacement of AMB. The paper introduces the application of complex analytic signal to the estimation of AMB displacement. The mentioned signal is used to compute the new refined inductances. The comparison to the classical approach of static and dynamic inductances is given in this paper. The paper introduces FE simulations to the estimation system synthesis.