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The 1997-98 financial crisis has had a profound effect on how East Asian economies the role of the IMF and its strategic interests relative to those of the United States in the international financial regime. It has prompted them to create a regional mechanism for financial and monetary cooperation, ranging from deeper policy dialogue and surveillance, to a system of financial cooperation, and common exchange rate arrangements. This paper analyses the economic and strategic motivations behind this and outlines recent developments in financial cooperation in East Asia to provide possible directions for the future.

A network of bilateral swap arrangements under the Chiang Mai Initiative(CMI) needs stronger policy dialogue and surveillance to develop into a regional financing facility, a sort of East Asian IMF. The facility plays a role as an regional lender of last resort, providing short-term funds to a member country facing a temporary liquidity shortage and for market intervention to stabilize foreign exchange rate. East Asian countries need to achieve regional exchange rate stability. In the long run, the region may develop a common currency arrangement, but it cannot be expected in the very near future because there is no convergence of macroeconomic conditions, economic structure and systems. A realistic approach would be for East Asian developing countries to adopt a currency basket system to minimize the impact of dollar/yen exchange rate volatility on their economies. Strong political will and a vision for regional integration will be required to introduce it.

Technology has always inspired social change, but its scale and complexity have begun to bewilder even the politicians and policymakers. Several recent national foresight studies point to a need for socio‐organizational or “soft” technologies to help Europe manage change and respond to major new economic opportunities. Research is required in fields such as neuro‐linguistic programming, the psychology of knowledge management and the ergonomics of the man‐machine interface. “Electronic pets” showed that we can learn to love machines – now the challenge is to embed technology in such a way as to marry science with society.

A solution algorithm which enables various rheological models of combined one‐dimensional consolidation and creep to be accommodated in a unified approach, is used to solve three models which have appeared in the literature. The theories are those of Tan, Gibson and Lo, and Schiffman, Ladd and Chen. Comparisons between these hereditary rheological models are performed and assessments of the various features of the models presented.

A number of U.S. studies have documented an optimistic bias in analysts’ forecasts of earnings. This study investigates whether the optimistic bias and asymmetric behavior of forecast errors found in most U.S. studies exists in Japan. We find that for firms reporting profits, Japanese analysts’ forecasts have much greater accuracy and exhibit a small pessimistic bias in comparison to firms reporting losses, where analysts’ forecasts exhibit extremely poor accuracy and an extremely significant optimistic bias. The lack of ability to forecast losses is due to their transitory nature and not due to earnings management. Forecast accuracy and bias are not related to firm size, but are related to the magnitude of reported lossess and profits.

The Building Bridges service was implemented as the result of an assessment of the psychological and mental health needs of black and minority ethnic children and families in Liverpool. This article describes the development of the service, and draws links between the existing literature, government legislation and implications for CAMHS.

This paper presents a technique for mapping the modelling of manufacturing processes, in which process maps are used to represent information on the models and modelling technique (including assumptions used), process and equipment parameters, physical sub‐processes, process variables, and the process performance in terms of quality and/or defects. The mapping approach uses the top‐down methodology, in which any manufacturing process can be represented in a structured, multi‐layered manner, with each layer representing a different level of the modelling spectrum. This structure is designed to provide a clear overview of the process and sub‐processes, and their interactions, while the finer details of the modelling process are still presented at the lower levels of the map. This mapping approach is illustrated with the modelling of the Printing of Solder Paste for the reflow soldering of SMT devices. This case study shows how the mapping process can be used to identify the key research issues, specify the experimental work required, and also identify the analytical modelling techniques which are appropriate for each process (and sub‐process).

This paper examines the rôle that the squeegee plays in the solder paste printing process. Although the printing of solder paste is only one stage of many in the surface mount assembly process, it is crucial to deposit the correct amounts of solder paste cleanly onto the substrate. The amount of solder paste deposited affects the reliability and strength of the reflowed solder joint. Surface mount component lead pitches are continually being reduced due to the requirements of packing more and more components into a given space on the PCB, and this necessitates a proper understanding of the printing process and in particular of the squeegee which plays an important part in determining paste heights and the occurrence of defects. The paper outlines a model which predicts scooping and skipping in the stencil printing of solder pastes used in the reflow soldering of surface mounted devices. The model is based on the forces acting on the squeegee blade, which determines the paste flow pattern ahead of the squeegee, and on the stencil aperture geometry. The paper also examines the interactions between the paste properties and squeegee material properties. These interactions produce printing defects such as scooping, skipping and wet bridging. Results of an experimental comparison of different types of squeegee blade used in the stencil printing of solder pastes for reflow soldering in SMT, as well as the experimental results for squeegee deformation into stencil apertures, were used for validating the model. The empirically enhanced model which results takes into account the force on the squeegee due to solder paste flow and some of the non‐Newtonian properties of the solder paste. The main utility of the proposed model is the control of solder paste printing quality.

The paper describes analyses which have been developed to determine the cost of assembly using a multi‐arm assembly robot fed by a wide variety of different feeding systems and for a wide range of product styles, mixes, and batch sizes.