Search results

Resin plant generally comprises a reaction vessel, a heating system, a cooling system, equipment for the supply of chemicals to the reactor and ancillary vessels for the handling of by‐products of reaction.

The purpose of this paper is to capture the status of implementation of Six Sigma in various manufacturing industries and also examine the success of the Six Sigma by using different performance indicators.

The methodology of critical review involves the selection and classification of 112 research articles on the implementation of Six Sigma in different manufacturing industries. The selected articles are categorized by the following: articles distribution based on the year of publication, publication database, various journals, contribution of authors, continent, scale of industry, implemented approaches, focused industry, tools and techniques used in phases of Six Sigma methodology, and performance indicators used in Six Sigma implementation. Then after, future scopes of research opportunities are derived based on significant findings.

The literature revealed that: Very few work was undertaken on the implementation of Six Sigma in various manufacturing industries like ceramic, paper, gems and jewelry, cement, furniture, stone, fertilizer, forging, paper and surface treatment industries. Most of the researchers have considered very few performance indicators to identify the improvement after Six Sigma implementation. But, there is no clue regarding overall improvement in different perspectives after the implementation of Six Sigma. The financial indicators, personnel indicators, process indicators and customer indicators are useful to measure the overall improvement after the implementation of Six Sigma in the manufacturing sector.

The study was carried out on the implementation of Six Sigma methodology in various manufacturing industries, and various performance indicators were identified while implementing the Six Sigma methodology. Case studies pertaining to service industries were not covered here.

Very little research has been carried out to measure the overall success of implementing Six Sigma methodology in manufacturing industries. This paper will provide value to students, researchers and practitioners of Six Sigma by providing insight into the implementation of Six Sigma in manufacturing industries.

This paper reports on the preliminary findings of an exploratory study on environmental decision making in the context of largely small serviced accommodation establishments. It focuses on the motivations of owner‐managers for becoming environmentally involved and their reasons for joining an environmental accreditation scheme. The study was conducted in Scotland using face‐to‐face in‐depth interviews with members of the Green Tourism Business Scheme, an environmental accreditation scheme for tourism businesses. Initial analysis suggests that involvement in environmental activities may be driven by economic as well as ethical considerations. The results point to the role played by personal values and beliefs in small firms’ decision making and the need to gain a greater understanding of the complexity of motives that drive the small hospitality business owner.

To examine how the synergy of open access and open source have been used at Edinburgh University Library to design and implement an e‐thesis service, and to offer a comfortable theoretical framework to aid others.

The concepts of open access and open source are introduced and compared to show the conceptual relationship between them and the natural partnering of these approaches to information freedom. The development of the open access repository (Edinburgh Research Archive, ERA) and the related open source software (Tapir for DSpace) are then examined as an opportunity for other implementers and developers to gain insight, both technical and non‐technical.

That open access and open source are a natural and forward looking way to develop e‐theses and other research material repositories. The discussion of developing open source and the brief study of the creation of ERA show us that this approach is both warranted and useful.

It shows how institutions can leverage open source technology successfully, and further consideration must be given to this development methodology.

Software and documentation outcomes available for the community have been produced should aid the further research in this area and provide a good starting point for institutions.

We discuss for the first time both the theoretical aspects and the practical considerations surrounding an e‐theses archive which is of value to any group of information professionals considering similar activities.

The purpose of this case study is to demonstrate a current model, as well as explore future models, for integrating institutional repositories (IRs) in higher education goals at the University of Toledo.

This is a case study that uses literature review as an exploratory framework for new approaches while reflecting on existing literature to present the current practical framework for using IRs.

The digital environment has pushed academic institutions toward new strategies for curating their record on scholarship and preserving their heritage collections, using their IRs. Innovative approaches are also vital to curating the IR content digitally to facilitate access to those contents in ways that was not possible a few decades ago. Surveys and existing literature point to increasing uses of IRs despite abstinence from considering open access for scholarly activity among faculty concerned about copyright, plagiarism and sustainability. Staffing and funding IR initiatives are important factors in sustaining the curation of scholarship in the digital environment.

IRs with open access publishing, expert gallery and digital library features place academic libraries in a central role as partners in digital scholarship.

This case study presents an original approach to incorporating the IR into the curation of digital content while also considering potential uses of knowledge management approaches for data and knowledge sharing in an academic environment.

To describe the key findings of the UK JISC‐funded Electronic Theses project that was led by The Robert Gordon University, as well as the results of associated projects that formed part of the JISC‐funded “FAIR” programme, and the way in which the recommendations will be taken forward.

The research involved: an assessment of existing best practice relating to the production, management and use of e‐theses; the use of questionnaires to obtain feedback from potential users; the identification and testing of potentially useful software; consideration of the elements required in a metadata core set, and discussions with representative bodies to ensure that the model recommended for use in the UK had support from the key stakeholders.

Information is provided about the value of the NDLTD web site, the suitability of DSpace and EPrints software for institutional e‐theses repositories, and the recommended infrastructure for the operation of an e‐theses service at national level. Details are included about the agreed metadata core set for UK e‐theses, and advice is provided about administrative, legal and cultural issues.

The JISC‐funded EThOS project is taking forward many of the recommendations from the Electronic Theses project.

The research results described in this paper will be of use to institutions, which are aiming to establish their own e‐theses collections. The details provided about the UK approach towards the management of e‐theses may be of use in countries, which have not yet made their theses available in electronic format.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the Electronic Theses and Dissertations program implemented and managed by the Indiana State University since 2009. The paper illustrates issues relating to the background, policies, platform, workflow and cataloging, as well as the publication and preservation of graduate scholarship.

The authors examined many aspects of the Electronic Theses and Dissertations program and addressed issues dealt before, during and after the publication of the electronic theses and dissertations collection. The approaches the authors utilized are literature review and personal management experience from working on the program.

Implementing an Electronic Theses and Dissertations program involves providing a series of management services. These services include developing relevant policies, implementing an archiving and publication platform and creating submission and publishing workflows, as well as cataloging, disseminating and preserving the student collection. Openly publishing the collection through a range of access points significantly increases its visibility and accessibility. Adopting several archival and preservation strategies ensures the long-term readiness of the collection.

This paper will provide useful practices for implementing an ETD program to those institutions new to the ETD initiative process. It also contributes to the current body of literature and to the overall improvement of ETD programs globally.

To examine the relationship between deposit of electronic theses in institutional and archival repositories. Specifically the paper considers the automated export of theses for deposit in the archival repository in continuation of the existing arrangement in Wales for paper‐based theses.

The paper presents a description of software that makes use of the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI‐PMH) as the first stage in the automatic import and ingest of items between institutional and archival repositories. The implications of this approach on the management of the institutional repository are also considered.

The paper shows that OAI‐PMH is a useful approach to harvesting the metadata for items to be imported into an archival repository. This reduces the difficulty of maintenance of the import and export software components albeit at the possible expense of necessitating certain requirements on the management of the institutional repository.

The research shows that institutions can make use of OAI‐PMH as a part of an automated export/import process, encouraging the preservation of multiple copies of digital items for increased safety of the content.

The software has been developed and is being tested. It is proving capable of performing the required harvesting but the relative imprecision of searching in OAI‐PMH has implications for the management of the exporting repository. These are discussed.

The paper presents a description and discussion of novel software components that enable the use of OAI‐PMH as the first stage in the export and import of digital items between repositories, independently (as far as is practicable) of the software used by the repositories themselves.

The purpose of this paper is to report the benefits of scientific communication model of open access (OA) repositories to e-theses. Specifically, the study focusses on the benefits of accessibility, dissemination, visibility and impact of PhD e-theses deposited in repositories.

The study analysed a random sample of 125 PhD e-theses deposited in an OA repository, specifically in the institutional repository (IR) of the University of Salamanca (Gredos). It tracked the sample for analysing on one side the visits and downloads of the e-theses, whose data are obtained from the statistics module of the repository, and on the other side the data citation provided by Google Scholar Citation on these e-theses. To analyse the differences between the indicators (visits, downloads and citations) in different knowledge areas, the Kurskall-Wallis test has been used.

The results indicate that OA IRs become an advantageous channel of scientific communication to grey literature like dissertations and PhD theses, because it increases visibility and use and also produces a significant citation rate.

The paper uses metrics that are used in IR to measure the visibility and impact of a type of grey literature that is very difficult to track because it is unpublished. The dissemination of the grey literature through OA repositories makes it possible. The value of the work lies in the empirical evidence obtained from the analysed PhD e-theses of Gredos repository.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically explore issues in humanitarian aid and disaster relief (HADR) missions and examine the effects of selected factors on mission success. The paper focusses on organisational perspectives of the Malaysian army due to their extensive experience in HADR operations.

Interactions among three broad factors namely human resource, logistics and coordination, as well as their effects on mission performance, were examined. A qualitative approach was chosen because it allowed for an exploratory yet a more in-depth analysis of the issues.

Results suggest that while the effects of logistics and coordination on mission success appear to be direct, human resource influences it in a more indirect manner. Additionally, from a military viewpoint, HADR teams are also challenged by factors which are less controllable such as public support and local infrastructure.

The study has contributed to knowledge by proposing a more refined model of HADR operations performance which highlights relationships not adequately studied before. Based on the model, a quantitative study can be undertaken in the future to determine the relative effect of each factor.

Among the areas of HADR operations that will benefit from the study are human resource and cross-cultural management, communication and interpersonal relations and information technology.

Military perspectives of HADR missions are shared in the paper, which enrich current understanding of issues faced in such operations. The paper should also serve as an impetus for greater empirical research among scholars concerned with organisational perspectives in HADR operations performance.