Academic literature on the topic 'Means-end chain analysis'

To solve the constrained clustering problem, this paper improves the K-means and proposes a constrained K-means algorithm (CK-means). CK-means algorithm takes into account both clustering analysis and constraints, and can effectively deal with clustering problems with constraints, such as distribution center location problem with warehouse capacity constraints, vehicle routing problem with capacity constraints, etc. It has higher practical value and a wider range of applications. There are two core innovations of the CK-means algorithm: firstly, incorporating constraints into the K-means. The second is a search strategy based on sample weights. In addition, this paper also applies the CK-means algorithm to the location problem of distribution stations at the end of JD Logistics’ supply chain. The experimental results show that the CK-means can solve the clustering problem with constraints with effect.

The concept of lean thinking is—despite its prominence as waste reducer and value creator—still mainly applied to the manufacturing environment. Whilst investigations on applicability to the service industry are advancing fast, little has been distributed for the area of procurement. This development is opposed by trends of increasing degree of outsourcing and related high portions of procurement of up to 60% of a company’s total value creation. The mismatch in terms of lack of strategic attention on lean procurement on the one hand and the responsibility of this function for the majority of a company’s value creation on the other, combined with the simultaneous trend of establishing “miracle cures” in the form of e-procurement gave rise to the interest in determining the stake of buy-side systems in the leanness of procurement processes. For this purpose, a case study approach was adopted focusing on the central questions of what lean means for procurement, which measures could portray leanness in this instance, how the stake of buy-side systems can be reflected in the performance indicators with separate consideration of repetitive processes in operational and strategic purchasing, in order to finally attribute a clear enabler role to IT for achieving leanness in operational procurement. This finding has been reached by the means of an objective research approach, relying on quantitative methods such as KPI measurement for data collection and regression analysis for the interpretation of correlation between the variables. As such, this chapter has not only a high value for practitioners by providing a baseline for benchmarking lean performance of e-procurement, by supporting system investment decisions, or by simply facilitating decisions on adapting existing IT solutions. It also proves as enrichment to the existing theoretical body of knowledge filling into the aforesaid gaps of lean procurement and putting—at least for procurement processes—an end to the discussion as to whether ERP systems and lean thinking are reconcilable or not.

The Southeast Asia airline is one of the most well-known in the aviation industry where airlines represent unique culture for the value-added service standard to customers. Through the means-end theory method, the purpose of this study is to explore the value that passengers create in the decision making on Southeast Asia airlines that would result in understanding the attribute and structure of choosing Southeast Asia airlines. This study aimed to (1) investigate customer attributes in choosing Southeast Asia airlines, (2) understand the crucial value-added characteristic of Southeast Asia airlines, and (3) contribute a value-added framework for Southeast Asia airline passengers. The qualitative method is administered in this study. The interview is conducted in an interview from the mean-end-chain of the passenger. The analysis results in the expression of passenger attributes, consequences, and value of the Southeast Asia airlines and the contributions of the new framework of passenger added value.

In modern times, due to the widespread use and use of cloud and web technologies, mobile and sensor environments, and social networks and online banking, cybersecurity is developing as a scientific field of interest to a large number of researchers. The rapid increase in Internet use day by day makes the solution and analysis of issues related to detecting intrusions into workstations or servers even more relevant. In order to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and accessibility of data, it is necessary to eliminate vulnerabilities that could allow a successful attack on servers in a timely manner. The risks and consequences of vulnerabilities arising from the disruption of the function of the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol can significantly affect the security status of an organization. In this study, the Fake SMB Server Attack process as a means of capturing confidential information by taking advantage of the security vulnerabilities of Active Directory (AD) is studied using the Metasploit Framework tool and network traffic is analyzed using the Cyber ​​Kill Chain (CKC) method. Following the recommendations given at the end of the section will help significantly reduce the risk of successful attacks by attackers who intrude into workstations and servers.

Supply chains are the backbone of the global economy. They are the physical and logical network of organizations, people, activities, information and resources involved in the source, production, and delivery of goods and services from suppliers to customers. Supply Chain Management (SCM) is the art or science of getting products from manufacturers to customers. Mastering Supply Chains is viewed as a key driver of sustainable competitive advantages, as it creates real value, differentiates the firm in the eyes of customers, and impacts positively the bottom line. Improving sustainability and performance of supply chains has become a major research and innovation asset for both academics and industries. Dealing with sustainability and performance issues by means of academic research, communication, dissemination, training and support from early stages of the research and innovation process are pivotal for creating an enabling environment and an innovative framework, as well as for removal of barriers requiring a fully integrated approach at the global, national and regional levels. Hence, there is an increasing need to address research and innovation at the supply chain level – the traditional unit of consideration has been the firm - above the level of individual companies, both in the analysis of supply chain performance as well as in the design of new business models, processes and supporting information technology systems.

The paper discusses characterising features of the end-of-life vehicles EU regulation, with account of the process transparency and knowledge build-up, to tailor economic instruments with reverse logistics profitability. In the short future, these issues will affect the automotive market, and the recovery (reuse/recycle) targets will become competition prerequisites for the carmakers survival. For explanatory purposes, the investigation is especially limited to consider the dismantling facility, with, in foreground, facts and technicalities arising at local and regional scales, and, in background, the whole forward and backward supply chain and related logistics problems. The basic technicalities, leading to the build-up of the reference knowledge for the most effective setting of car-dismantling facilities, are explored by means of simulation results. These lead to consider to develop automotive systems with recovery in mind, according to the carmakers responsibility for the free-take-back of the end-of-life vehicles.

A key assumption in the process of optimized design of RF systems is the efficient transfer of power from the transmitter source to the load (i.e., the end antenna). Unless the transmitter is located directly next to the load, a transmission circuit comprised of multiple cascaded or forked segments connects one to the other. An example of such transmission network is the RF transmission chain of the Communication-Based Train Control (CBTC) trackside antenna system. The system design requirement and validation process necessitates development of means for realistic evaluation and analysis of the reflection and insertion loss values offered by the trackside RF chains of a radio-based CBTC system. The aim of this research is to present a comparative study of three different models developed to quantitatively assess reflection and insertion losses in a general multi-stage RF transmission network. To provide a more realistic and credible assessment, the comparison has been further substantiated with measurement data.

In this paper, a pattern recognition method is put forward to identify damping coefficients of rod pumping system of directional well by using characteristics space mapping. The 24-direction chain code is presented to encode the curve of dynamometer card. The parametric equation of the dynamometer card curve is transformed into Fourier series whose coefficients can be computed according to the curve’s chain codes. By means of those Fourier coefficients, shape characteristics of the curve are extracted. Euclidean distance is introduced as the measurement of similar degree between the shape characteristics of measured dynamometer card and that of simulated dynamometer card. Changing the value of viscous damping coefficient and Coulomb damping coefficient in the simulation program, different simulated dynamometer cards are obtained. Substituting their shape characteristics to the Euclidean distance, respectively, a series of distances are acquired. When the distance is little than the given error, the corresponding values of the damping coefficients in the simulation program are regarded as real damping coefficients of the rod pumping system of directional well. In the end, an example is provided to show the correctness and effectiveness of the presented method.

Abstract. New paradigms based on Circular Economy (CE) principles are needed for boosting the ecological transition and improving the energy and material efficiency. In this paper, a novel remanufacturing process chain for End-of-Life (EoL) automotive panels is first presented. The core of the recycling strategy is the reshaping of curved EoL automotive sheets through flattening by means of a hydraulic press. Flattening experiments together with press power consumption measurements have been performed on thin steel parts. While the experimental procedure demonstrated the technical feasibility of flattening “small-scale” steel parts, a more complete analysis on environmental sustainability was required. For this purpose, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the remanufacturing process chain proposed was set up. The results of the study demonstrated that flattening is a viable solution for reshaping EoL automotive panels, and that, for one kg of reshaped steel, approximately 2.2 kg CO2 and 24 MJ could be saved.

Multibody dynamics simulation technology can provide a great help to understand and analyze motorcycle dynamics. In fact, its application in this field has grown very fast in the last years. However, apart from the mathematical model of the vehicle, a virtual rider is essential in order to properly simulate a motorcycle. This is due to the unstable nature of two-wheeled vehicles, which makes them very difficult to simulate by using open-loop maneuvers. The problem of developing a virtual rider for motorcycles has already been covered in literature but most of the proposed control algorithms achieved their purpose without considering the physiological limits of the rider. The objective of the research activities presented here are the preliminary development of a realistic virtual rider based on an experimental campaign and its subsequent simulation together with a detailed multibody model of a motorcycle. Special emphasis was put on making the rider model as simple as possible to facilitate the posterior design of the controller. Real rider movements were measured under laboratory conditions by means of the Motion Analysis technique. Several volunteers with different riding experiences, gender and anthropometry were involved in the experiments in order to provide a valid dataset for the analysis. For the present research, the virtual rider controls the direction of the motorcycle by means of both a torque on the handlebars and the movement of his body. The upper part of the rider’s body was modeled as an inverted pendulum. With regard to the longitudinal dynamics, the motorcycle is controlled by means of the brake torques and by the engine torque, which is transmitted to the rear wheel by means of a simplified model of the chain. First results of the developed virtual rider are presented at the end of this paper.

Abstract Advanced classical Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) effectively combines various methods for quantitative risk evaluation, such as event trees, fault trees, and Bayesian networks. PRA methods and tools provide the means for the qualitative reliability evaluation (e.g., cut sets) and the computation of quantitative reliability metrics (e.g., end states probabilities). Modern safety-critical systems from various industrial domains tend toward a high level of autonomy and demand not only reliability but also resilience, the ability to recover from degraded or failed states. The numerical resilience analysis of such dynamic systems requires more flexible methods. These methods shall enable the analysis of the systems with sophisticated software parts and dynamic feedback loops. A suitable candidate is the Dual-graph Error Propagation Model (DEPM) that can capture nontrivial failure scenarios and dynamic fault-tolerance mechanisms. The DEPM exploits the method for the automatic generation of Markov chain models and the application of probabilistic model checking techniques. Moreover, the DEPM enables the analysis of highly-customizable system resilience metrics, e.g., “the probability of system recovery to a particular state after a specified system failure during a defined time interval.” In this paper, we show how DEPM-based resilience analysis can be integrated with the general PRA methodology for resilience evaluations. The proposed methodology is demonstrated on a safety-critical autonomous UAV system.

The paper focuses on the activities pursued by Westinghouse in the development and licensing of POLCA-T code Control Rod Drop Accident (CRDA) Methodology. The following aspects of CRDA Methodology are considered: • Parameter Sensitivities based on Phenomena Identification and Ranking Tables (PIRT), • Qualification data base, • Cycle specific analysis, • Limiting initial conditions for transient simulation and CRDA transient simulation, • Sensitivity studies, • Uncertainty analysis and • Estimation of the methodology conservatism. The qualification data base of the methodology consists of single parameter confirmation, separate effects and integral test. It includes the PHOENIX and POLCA7 codes qualifications; POLCA-T qualification against the NEACRP-L-335 3D LWR Core Transient benchmark; simulations of the Peach Bottom EOC 2 Turbine Trip tests and SPERT-IIIE power excursion tests. The comprehensive CRDA methodology that utilizes PHOENIX4/POLCA7/POLCA-T calculation chain foresees complete cycle-specific analysis. The methodology consists of determination of candidates of control rods (CR) that could cause a significant reactivity excursion if dropped throughout the entire fuel cycle, selection of limiting initial conditions for CRDA transient simulation and transient simulation itself. The primary parameter utilized to determine the most limiting rod drop positions and candidates is the dropped control rod incremental reactivity worth. Example of scoping calculations covering three cycle exposures beginning-of-cycle BOC, middle-of-cycle (MOC), and end-of-cycle EOC and reactor states from cold critical to the end of followed CR sequence or up to 10% of rated power are presented. The dynamic response to the dropped control rod and the subsequent consequences to the fuel are evaluated by POLCA-T code. Selection of the limiting initial conditions covers the states along the lower limit of the typical plant startup region. Considered conditions start from 1 bar pressure and 20°C inlet temperature and go up to 70 bar and 274°C. It was observed that there are initial conditions that produce an extreme peak power value. It was also realized that there are initial conditions that produce an extreme peak fuel enthalpy value. Due to the complicated feedback mechanisms those initial conditions are not necessarily the same for the extreme values of the peak power and the fuel enthalpy. The Westinghouse methodology utilizes state-of-the-art methods. Unnecessary conservatisms in the methodology have been avoided to allow the accurate prediction of margin to design bases. This is mainly achieved by using the POLCA-T code for dynamic CRDA evaluations. The code belongs to the same calculation chain that is used for core design. Thus the very same reactor, core, cycle and fuel data base is used. This allows also reducing the uncertainties of input data and parameters that determine the energy deposition in the fuel. Uncertainty treatment, very selective use of conservatisms, selection of the initial conditions for limiting case analyses, incorporation into POLCA-T code models of the licensed fuel performance code are also among the means of performing realistic CRDA transient analyses.

Over the recent decades, the changes in the paradigm of international trade have been observed. As the result of decreasing of trade barriers as well as the reduction in trade costs allowed companies to divide their production into stages and to locate it in different countries according to their competitive advantage. Eventually, the production process has become more fragmented, both geographically and vertically. It means that intermediate products are shipped across boarders many times and every exporting economy provides some value added according to its competitive advantage. As a result, global value chains have become one of the most important feature of international trade. Following (Gereffi & Fernandez-Stark, 2011), in this study global value chains are defined as “the full range of activities that firms and workers do to bring a product from its conception to its end use”. Humphrey and Schmitz (2002) pointed out four types of upgrading in global value chains: product, process, functional and chain. Product and process upgrading involve companies retaining their positions in global value chains by enhancing productivity gains through adopting new product processes or “new configurations of product mix”. Thus, functional upgrading involves a slicing up the global value chains into new activity which generates higher value added, e.g. own brand manufacturing. In turn, chain upgrading involves a going up to new activity, which needs higher skills and capital and value added. Milberg and Winkler (2013) offered similar classifications of upgrading. Production fragmentation has caused a rapid increase in trade in intermediate goods as often companies offshore an intermediate stage of production process. Offshoring production has been typical to manufacturing (Timmer, et al., 2012), however, services have been often overlooked, but play a major role, especially in supporting global value chains (Kommerskollegium 2013). In turn, Digital Silk Road, announced in 2015, has become a significant part of Chinese Belt and Road Initiative strategy. China has implemented this strategy as a part of its long-term technological plan, under which China provides support to its exporters, including many well-known technology companies and builds a network of cooperation with selected countries in the field of technology, including ICT infrastructure, services, 5G networks, e-commerce, etc. China's rapid technological changes must not go unnoticed by trading partners, including analysed European countries, which, to maintain international competitiveness, are increasing the technological advancement and enhancing market protection against Chinese technology. Until recently, the value added from China to European countries was concentrated mainly on medium technology industries and value added from Europe to China focused more on advanced goods and services. Nowadays, there is a redirection of Chinese value added to high-tech activities (including service activities), which reflects China's ambition to build an economy that leads to innovation and industry 4.0. The transition of the CEE states’ economic and political systems initiated in the early 1990s, earned them the EU membership in 2004. The accession to the EU’s structures meant that these countries achieved the free-market economy status and they should be treated as the full member of the global business networks. Moreover, the decline in trade costs (transport and transaction), greater openness of their market and the removal of trade barriers have all helped the CEE states to join global value chains. Hence, the CEE economies are going to be more heavily involved in global production linkages. Many empirical studies have presented the close and dynamic integration of these countries with the EU market (especially the EU-15) and in a more limited scope with the whole global economy as well (Behar and Freund 2011). Generally, democratisation, the strengthening of political and economic relations (particularly with the EU), and the modernisation of many sectors (including financial sector, more advanced industries), were common elements of the CEE countries long-term development policies. One of their priorities was the redirection of foreign trade towards the EU and joining the global production linkages where China has become the core producer. Recently, the role of the economy in global value chains is more determined by the advancement of value added that it offers. Companies move toward services and innovations in the business model (Nenenen & Storbacka, 2010) and introduce industry 4.0 (Bundesministerium fur Bildung und Forschung, 2016). A symptom of these novelty is a concept of servicification of manufacturing (Neely et al. 2011) and cross-sectoral connections, which have reconstructed traditional global value chains (Naude et al. 2019) and, together with Industry 4.0, is expected to change the landscape of global manufacturing. As a result of facilitation of manufacturing, economies placed in the downstream market can improve their role in global value chains. In Europe, this can be an opportunity for most Central and Eastern European countries. Analyzing changes in CEE’s role in technological global value chains, we should take into account its two most important value-added suppliers: China and Germany, as well as their most important value-added buyer - Germany. These three economies established a sort of value added flows triangle. The regional supply chains built by Germany in the CEE allowed it to maintain a comparative advantage in sectors important for the economy, while helping the CEE countries join global value chains, positively influencing economic growth, but also reducing them to entities operating in less advanced stages of production (Jacoby, 2010; Fortwengel, 2011). Today, Germany also cooperates strongly with China (as a result of Digital Silk Road), and the CEE economies (especially the Visegrad Group) are increasingly dependent on Chinese value added, still linked to German value added. The most visible connections can be found in automotive and electronics. Hence, the question is: how strong are these links in servicification of manufacturing and whether there are visible trends in value-added flows in between this triangle in the era of industry 4.0 and Chinese Digital Silk Road. The research question seems to be relevant, thus in the subject literature, little is known about the mentioned relations (Roland Berger, 2021). The research method based on the analysis of data from the OECD Trade in Value Added databases, containing the world input-output tables for the period 2005–2018. The system of balance equations in the input-output model for one economy has been adopted to a multi-economy model. The model is described in more detail in (Koopman et al. 2013 or Hummels et al, 2001) and is based on the decomposition of gross exports. The method includes not only estimates of total value added in global value chains, but also calculations at both the mezoeconomic level and cross-sectoral flows of value added (including servicification of manufacturing). The results of analysis showed that most relations between economies continued to deepen the imbalance in flows of value added. The CEE economies are making their manufacturing increasingly dependent on advanced services (both from Germany and China). On the other hand, the share of CEE services to Chinese and German manufacturing is decreasing or remains steady. However, some trends could be observed in the last years, especially between Germany and China. German manufacturing is starting to rely more on Chinese value added (information and communication technologies services and the subgroup computer programming, consultancy and information services activities in manufacturing, information and communication technologies services' value added in transport equipment), although previously Germany provided more of these services to China. In telecommunications in manufacturing between CEE and Germany, the trend has turned against CEE. However, there was no direct compensation between pairs of economies, but the decrease in German value-added flows to China resulted in a much larger increase in value-added from China in German manufacturing. If the presented changes in flows were to reflect the effectiveness of Chinese industry 4.0 and Digital Silk Road. These strategies serve their purposes and increases not only the advancement of Chinese value-added exports, but also makes important economies dependent on this added value. On the contrary, the industry 4.0 strategy in CEE has not improved its position in the triad. Germany has still a strong position as a provider of value added, but its dependence on foreign value added is high, which derives from the links with CEE.

The European Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles (2022) aims to ensure that by 2030 garments have a longer life, are made as much as possible from recyclable material, and are free of harmful substances. For gar­ment producers, this means compliance with mandatory requirements along the value chain focusing on the entire lifecycle of garments, while supporting the green and digital transitions within the industry ecosystem. Compliance with the new environmentally friendly standards required for garment exports in the European markets demands an improved control environment and con­solidated internal audit procedures within manufacturing enterprises. The ob­jective of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of the current internal audit procedures in garment manufacturing enterprises located in the Western Bal­kan region and exporting to end customers in the European market and oth­er international markets. In doing so this paper analyses a sample of thirty en­terprises according to 5Cs elements of internal audit. The 5Cs in the internal au­dit include the criteria, conditions, causes, consequences, and corrective actions within the sample of the enterprises. Based on 5Cs elements new improvements in the standard operating internal audit procedures in garment manufacturing enterprises are proposed in line with new European strategies.

Objectives 1. Determine the serotypic identities of 40 recent IBV isolates from commercial chickens raised in the USA and Israel. 2. Sequence all IBV field isolates using PCR product cycle sequencing and analyze their S 1 sequence to detennine their homology to other strains in the Genbank and EMBL databases. 3. Select vaccinal strains with the highest S 1 sequence homology to the field isolates and perform challenge of immunity studies in chickens in laboratory trials to detennine level of protection afforded by the vaccines. Background Infectious bronchitis (IB) is a common, economically important disease of the chicken. IB occurs as a respiratory form, associated with airsacculitis, condemnation, and mortality of meat-type broilers, a reproductive form responsible for egg production losses in layers and breeders, and a renal form causing high mortality in broilers and pullets. The causative agent is avian coronavirus infectious bronchitis virus (IBV). Replication of the virus' RNA genome is error-prone and mutations commonly result. A major target for mutation is the gene encoding the spike (S) envelope protein used by the virus to attach and infect the host cell. Mutations in the S gene result in antigenic changes that can lead to the emergence of variant serotypes. The S gene is able to tolerate numerous mutations without compromising the virus' ability to replicate and cause disease. An end result of the virus' "flexibility" is that many strains of IBV are capable of existing in nature. Once formed, new mutant strains, often referred to as variants, are soon subjected to immunological selection so that only the most antigenically novel variants survive in poultry populations. Many novel antigenic variant serotypes and genotypes have been isolated from commercial poultry flocks. Identification of the field isolates of IBV responsible for outbreaks is critical for selecting the appropriate strain(s) for vaccination. Reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) of the Sl subunit of the envelope spike glycoprotein gene has been a common method used to identify field strains, replacing other time-consuming or less precise tests. Two PCR approaches have been used for identification, restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) and direct automated cycle sequence analysis of a diagnostically relevant hypervariab1e region were compared in our BARD research. Vaccination for IB, although practiced routinely in commercial flocks, is often not protective. Field isolates responsible for outbreaks may be unrelated to the strain(s) used in the vaccination program. However, vaccines may provide varying degrees of cross- protection vs. unrelated field strains so vaccination studies should be performed. Conclusions RFLP and S1 sequence analysis methods were successfully performed using the field isolates from the USA and Israel. Importantly, the S1 sequence analysis method enabled a direct comparison of the genotypes of the field strains by aligning them to sequences in public databases e.g. GenBank. Novel S1 gene sequences were identified in both USA and Israel IBVs but greater diversity was observed in the field isolates from the USA. One novel genotype, characterized in this project, Israel/720/99, is currently being considered for development as an inactivated vaccine. Vaccination with IBV strains in the US (Massachusetts, Arkansas, Delaware 072) or in Israel (Massachusetts, Holland strain) provided higher degrees of cross-protection vs. homologous than heterologous strain challenge. In many cases however, vaccination with two strains (only studies with US strains) produced reasonable cross-protection against heterologous field isolate challenge. Implications S1 sequence analysis provides numerical similarity values and phylogenetic information that can be useful, although by no means conclusive, in developing vaccine control strategies. Identification of many novel S1 genotypes of IBV in the USA is evidence that commercial flocks will be challenged today and in the future with strains unrelated to vaccines. In Israel, monitoring flocks for novel IBV field isolates should continue given the identification of Israel/720/99, and perhaps others in the future. Strains selected for vaccination of commercial flocks should induce cross- protection against unrelated genotypes. Using diverse genotypes for vaccination may result in immunity against unrelated field strains.