Journal articles on the topic 'Renwal Manufacturing Company'

This research tests the difference of cash holdings based on high and low corporate leverage for a sample of manufacturing company enlisted in Indonesian Stock Exchange over the pe- riod 2005-2007. Population of this research is all of manufacturing company at Indonesian Stock Exchange. Sampling methods use purposive sampling method. Hypothesis test use Mann- Whitney analysis. The results show that there are significance difference of cash holding among high leverage and low leverage firm. Firm with high leverage hold lower level of corpo- rate cash holdings. Keyword: cash holding, dummy, leverage.

Corporate entrepreneurship (CE), which embodies a company’s innovation and venturing activities, is necessary in today’s competitive markets. CE is important for organizational renewal, the creation of new business, and improved performance. CE, however, requires strong and continued support from the company’s top executives. Data from 231 medium-size manufacturing companies show that commitment to CE is high when: (1) executives own stock in their company; (2) the board chair and the chief executive officer are different individuals; (3) the board is medium in size; and, (4) outside directors own stock in the company. The relationships between the ratio of outside directors and CE, and institutional ownership and CE, are mixed. CE is also positively associated with future company performance.

The article analyses the dynamics of development of the Russian market of passenger cars and light commercial vehicles, investigates the strategy and competitive advantages of Sollers group of companies, which is successfully operating despite volatility of development of the Russian car market, as well as the need for a radical renewal of the model range of the company’s cars, the presence of excess production capacity and the departure from Russia of three foreign partners of Sollers group of companies in joint ventures: Fiat, SsangYong and Ford. Particular attention in the article is paid to Ford, a joint venture partner with Sollers PJSC, which left the Russian domestic market in 2019. This event, which had a negative impact on partners and clients of the company, was caused by severalcircumstances. Besides, the article identifies the main directions of development of joint ventures Mazda Sollers and Ford Sollers (in terms of Ford Transit minibus, the only locally manufactured Ford model) and the possibility of expanding their export potential, including due to export of engines, spare parts and components.The article pays close attention to introduction of new technologies in Sollers PJSC and other companies, development of digitalisation in development and production of new models, creation of its own telematics platform that allows to connect a car to the Internet and control it remotely, including starting the engine.The author examines in detail a new consumption model in the car market associated with refusal of buyers to own a car and with emerging choice of new services regarding subscription and exchange of cars, their development in foreign and domestic markets, as well as offers the analysis of successes and failures of foreign automakers in providing subscription services.The main purpose of the article is to study the strategy of Sollers PJSC in the domestic and foreign markets, auxiliary purposes refer to the analysis of the domestic market, change in the consumption model and provision of new services, study of reasons for departure of foreign partners of the company.

<em>This study</em><em> aims to provide empirical evidence on the influence of company growth, profitability, and investment opportunity set (IOS) on the application of the accounting conservatism principles. We measure accounting conservatism using total accrual (earnings before extraordinary items + depreciation – cash flow from operation). We purposively select our sample of 114 manufacturing firms listed in the Indonesian Stock Exchange (IDX) in the years 2012-2013. After running the tests of classical assumptions, our multiple regression analysis partially shows that company growth, profitability, and investment opportunity set positively affect accounting conservatism.</em><br /><br /><p align="center"><strong>Abstrak</strong></p><p align="center"><strong> </strong></p>Dalam penyajian laporan keuangan yang berkualitas, perusahaan dihadapkan oleh pertimbangan yang salah satunya adalah penerapan konservatisme akuntansi. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk memberikan bukti empiris pengaruh <em>company</em> <em>growth, profitability, </em>dan <em>investment opportunity set </em>(IOS) terhadap penerapan prinsip konservatisme akuntansi. Konservatisme akuntansi dalam penelitian ini diukur menggunakan perhitungan total akrual. Total akrual adalah selisih antara laba sebelum <em>extraordinary item </em>ditambah dengan depresiasi dikurangi dengan arus kas operasi untuk mengetahui apakah perusahaan menggunakan konservatisme akuntansi tinggi atau rendah di dalam perusahaan. Sampel yang digunakan sebanyak 114 perusahaan manufaktur yang terdaftar di Bursa Efek Indonesia (BEI) di tahun 2012 dan 2013.<em> </em>Metoda pemilihan sampel yang digunakan yaitu <em>purposive sampling.</em> Alat analisis yang digunakan untuk pengujian adalah regresi linier berganda yang sebelumnya harus lolos uji asumsi klasik. Hasil pengujian secara parsial menunjukkan <em>company growth</em>, <em>profitability </em>dan <em>investment opportunity set </em>berpengaruh positif signifikan terhadap konservatisme akuntansi.

AbstractThis study aims to analyze the impact of agglomeration in the form of localization economies and urbanization economies on the productivity of manufacturing industrial companies in Indonesia. Unlike previous studies, this study will look at the effect of technology level on the relationship between productivity and agglomeration by classifying research samples into low-tech and high-tech industries. In addition, this study also improves the estimation technique by addressing the endogeneity problem that has the potential to arise in estimating the relationship between productivity and agglomeration to be overcome by using instrument variable (IV). The study was conducted in two stages of estimation using company-level panel data from 2010 to 2014. First, productivity was measured at the company level using Total Factor Productivity (TFP). Then, the company productivity is estimated together with the company and industry characteristic variables, including the agglomeration measurement variable which represents localization economies and urbanization economies. The regression results show a positive impact from localization economies and a negative impact from urbanization economies.AbstrakPenelitian ini bertujuan menganalisis dampak aglomerasi berupa localization economies dan urbanization economies terhadap produktivitas perusahaan industri manufaktur di Indonesia. Berbeda dengan penelitian terdahulu yang juga meneliti dampak aglomerasi industri terhadap produktivitas perusahaan, pada penelitian ini akan melihat pengaruh tingkat teknologi terhadap hubungan produktivitas dan aglomerasi dengan mengklasifikasikan sampel penelitian ke dalam industri berteknologi rendah dan industri berteknologi tinggi. Selain itu, peneltian ini juga memperbaiki teknik estimasi dari penelitian sebelumnya dengan menangani masalah endogenitas yang berpotensi muncul dalam mengestimasi hubungan produktivitas dan aglomerasi akan diatasi dengan penggunaan instrument variable (IV). Penelitian dilakukan dalam dua tahap estimasi dengan menggunakan data panel level perusahaan dari tahun 2010 sampai 2014. Pertama, produktivitas diukur pada level perusahaan dengan menggunakan Total Factor Productivity (TFP). Kemudian, produktivitas perusahaan diestimasi bersama variabel karakteristik perusahaan dan industri, termasuk variabel pengukuran aglomerasi yang mewakili localization economies dan urbanization economies. Hasil regresi menunjukkan adanya dampak positif dari localization economies dan dampak negatif dari urbanization economies.

Introduction. The poor long-term adherence is known to affect the efficacy of allergen immunotherapy (AIT). In the case of injection AIT (SCIT), one of the main determinants is the inconvenience for patients to undergo prolonged build-up phases. Thus, simplifying the time schedule of the induction protocol could be effective in increasing the adherence to SCIT. Methods. We backtracked the SCIT renewal orders, thanks to the cooperation of the manufacturing company, and we compared the long-term adherence of 152 patients, who were prescribed with an abbreviated build-up schedule (4 injections, allergoid) with that of 302 patients treated with the same product, but with the traditional build-up protocol (7 injections). Results. According to the patient-named refills, those patients on the abbreviated build-up were significantly more compliant at the 2nd and 3rd year of treatment compared to the other group (p=0.0001). The drop-out rate after one year was also significantly lower between the two groups (p=0.0001). In the abbreviated group, as expected, reimbursed patients showed significantly better adherence compared with patients with no reimbursement at all (p<0.05). Conclusions. Abbreviating the build-up phase by reducing the number of injections significantly improves patients’ adherence to SCIT.

Subject area Decision making, behavioural decision making, heuristics, optimistic bias, confirmatory bias, anchoring bias, ready mix cement (RMC) business in India. Study level/applicability Post graduate management course, executive training program in the subject areas. Case overview Arco is a Projects and Infrastructure-sector company. Some of its key officials, believing that entering the RMC can be beneficial for Arco, plan entry into the manufacturing of RMC but order a feasibility report. The report confirms the hunch and Arco starts the business under the aegis of its associate, EG Ltd (EGL) which is into equipment rental business. At this time a new dimension of reality opens up but the senior officers refuse to accept a revised proposal which is adjusted to the new realities. After a few months and some losses, EGL closes down the RMC plant and rents it out. Expected learning outcomes This case study is developed with a purpose to provide a basis to discuss how decisions are taken in real life and how various behavioural elements affect the quality of decisions that affect not only the decision makers but many others and their organizations. Focus is especially on prejudice, heuristics and bias that creep into important organizational decisions such as venturing into new business. Supplementary materials Teaching note.

680 Background: The first-line treatment with tyrosine kinase inhibitors results in significant clinical benefits for patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC). However, in Brazilian public health system Interferon still remains as standard treatment. In an innovative way, the Brazilian Society of Clinical Oncology made a price negotiation directly with the pharmaceutical company, aiming to propose a formal request for the incorporation of these technologies to the National Committee for Health Technology Incorporation (CONITEC). Our objective was to estimate the cost-effectiveness of Sunitinib or Pazopanib versus Interferon in patients with mRCC, under the perspective of the Brazilian public health system. Methods: A cost-effectiveness analysis was conducted using a Markov model over a lifetime horizon. The model considers three health states: 1st-line treatment, disease progression and death. Transition probabilities were extracted from randomized studies. Costs of standard treatment, complications, and surveillance were obtained from Brazilian public hospitals. Sunitinib and Pazopanib prices were those negotiated with the manufacturing companies. Benefits are presented in life-years (LY) and costs in USD. The relation between costs and benefits were used to present the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) per life-year saved. Results: Patients with mRCC treated with Interferon were projected to have 1.92 LY with a total cost of $2,000. Sunitinib or Pazopanib were projected to increase the life expectancy to 2.84 LY, with a total cost of $19,584 (Sunitinib) and $19,646 (Pazopanib). The ICERs for Sunitinib and Pazopanib were estimated at $18,565 and $18,634 per LY respectively. Conclusions: Using the discount prices, at a willingness-to-pay (WTP) threshold of $25,615 per LY (three times gross domestic product per capita), both Pazopanib and Sunitinib are cost-effective strategies compared to Interferon. Potential impacts of targeted therapies for mRCC on the overall health care expenditures need to be assessed in a budget impact analysis. A formal request for the incorporation of these technologies to the CONITEC is in progress.

Industrial operation cost analysis shows that, in general, maintenance represents a significant proportion of the overall operating costs. Therefore, the improvement of maintenance follows the final goal of any company, namely, to maximize profit. This paper studies spare parts availability, an issue of the maintenance process, which is an important way to improve production through increased availability of functional machinery and subsequent minimization of the total production cost. Spare parts estimation based on machine reliability characteristics and operating environment is performed. The study uses an improved statistical-reliability (S-R) approach which incorporates the system/machine operating environment information in systems reliability analysis. For this purpose, two methods of Poisson process and renewal process are introduced and discussed. The renewal process model uses a multiple regression type of analysis based on Cox's proportional hazards modeling (PHM). The parametric approaches with baseline Weibull hazard functions and time-independent covariates are considered, and the influence of operating environment factors on this model is analyzed. The outputs represent a significant difference in the required spare parts estimation when considering or ignoring the influence of the relevant system operating environment. The difference is significant in the sense of spare parts forecasting and inventory management which can enhance the parts and consequently machine availability, leading to economical operation and savings.

Business today is being impacted by multiple forces and is under an unprecedented pressure to perform. The key to performance lies in anticipating the future and working towards it. This means asking the question: How much of its resources is the company putting in renewal and innovation, i.e., in activities like R&D, quality and process improvement, industrial design, market research, and so on? What is the record of Indian companies when it comes to innovation? This article briefly surveys the Indian scenario and quotes examples of innovation, or lack of it, in sectors such as automobiles, FMCG, telecom, etc. While impressive strides have been made by certain companies, the same cannot be said of the entire Indian industry. It is mostly the MNCs, driven by their worldwide processes, that have been at the forefront of innovation. There have been some Indian companies too doing a good job but the majority seems to be ill-prepared to meet the global onslaught or even the Chinese one. In this context, this article examines the following issues: What is the concept of innovation? How do Indian companies achieve a grasp of it? Is innovation an ongoing process? Should companies strive for breakthrough developments or focus on continuous improvement? “It is not the strongest who survive nor the most intelligent — but those most responsive to change” (Charles Darwin). If this is true, are the Indian companies doing enough to respond to the changing times? Again, this article examines the Indian scenario in the manufacturing and services sector. While many companies are adapting fast, there are many that are still to awake to the changing times. Total Quality Management (TQM) has made impressive inroads in to the manufacturing and service sectors. Organizations have finally realized the difference between seeking an ISO certification and launching a process to improve continuously. The manufacturing sector is focusing on aspects like lean management, TQM, Quality Circles, and Kaizen. Its essential approach has been influenced significantly by the Japanese approach to TQM. The service sector has been using the Six Sigma banner to further its movement. Benchmarking is a common thread between the two sectors to drive improvement. Organizations have also been using variations of the business excellence models to drive their improvement. There are many reasons that go into making process improvement the most challenging exercise. This article examines the fundamental causes and recommends that this is one area where improvements will directly impact customer satisfaction. As we move into the 21st century, what are the key traits required in an organization to achieve excellence? These are as follows: having key customer insights focusing business strategies on customer value quality commitment upgrading knowledge and processes management by facts and feedback. In the Indian scenario, it is mainly the MNCs, driven by their global processes, that are driving business excellence. The same culture needs to be cultivated by the Indian companies be they large or medium ones.

Abstrak. Perhitungan harga pokok per unit merupakan kegiatan yang sangat penting dilakukan perusahaan karena dapat dijadikan dasar untuk menilai persediaan, harga pokok penjualan, perhitungan laba dan sejumlah keputusan lainnya. Harga pokok produksi adalah semua biaya yang dikeluarkan untuk memproduksi barang atau jasa selama periode bersangkutan. Dengan kata lain bahwa harga pokok produksi merupakan biaya untuk memperoleh barang jadi yang siap jual. Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk menganalisis penentuan harga pokok produksi pada usaha Socolatte di Kabupaten Pidie Jaya. Penelitian ini dilakukan di Desa Musa Baroh Kecamatan Bandar Baru Kabupaten Pidie Jaya. Metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah metode penelitian deskriptif dengan menggunakan pendekatan kualitatif dan kuantitatif. Teknik pengumpulan data diperoleh dengan melakukan wawancara dan penelitian lapangan. Analisis data harga pokok produksi dilakukan dengan metode full costing. Perhitungan Harga Pokok Produksi Harga Pokok Produksi (HPP) menurut Perusahaan Socolatte lebih rendah dibandingkan perhitungan Harga Pokok Produksi (HPP) menurut metode full costing dengan selisih sebesar Rp 1.277, untuk produk coklat bar besar, coklat aneka rasa, coklat 3in1 besar dan coklat 3in1 kecil, sedangkan selisih HPP untuk coklat bar kecil sebesar Rp 479. Perbedaan nilai Harga Pokok Produksi (HPP) menurut perusahaan dan metode full costing terletak pada komponen biaya OHP tetap karena perusahaan tidak menghitungnya sebagai komponen Harga Pokok Produksi (HPP). Analysis Of Cost Of Goods Manufactured In Socolatte Company Of Pidie Jaya RegencyAbstract. Calculation of the cost per unit is a significant activity for the company because it can be used as a basis for assessing the inventory, cost of goods sold, profit and some other decisions. The cost of goods manufactured is all costs to produce goods or services during the period in question. In other words, the cost of goods manufactured is the cost to obtain finished products ready for sale.The purpose of this study was to analyse the determination of cost of goods manufactured in SocolatteCompany inPidie Jaya. This research was conducted in the village of Musa Barohof Bandar Baru sub-district of Pidie Jaya Regency. This study used a descriptive method with thequalitative and quantitative approach. Data were collectedthrough interviews and field research. The data analysis of the cost of goods manufactured was done by using a full costing method.The calculation of the cost of goods manufacturedaccording to SocolatteCompany was lower than the calculation of goods manufactured according to the full costing method with the difference amounting to IDR 1,277.Meanwhile, for big bar chocolate products, different flavor chocolate, big3 in 1 chocolate and small 3 in 1 chocolate, while the difference of cost of goods manufactured for the small chocolate bar was IDR 479.The difference in the value of the cost of goods manufactured according to the company and the full costing method lies in the fixed manufacturing overhead costscomponent becausecompanydid not count it as an element of cost of goods manufactured

The aim of the article is to present the proposed model of an international innovative logistics cluster, which aims to stimulate the renewal of the economic potential of all interested partners with a focus on the metallurgy. Experts analyse ongoing changes and trends that have affected business and logistics processes and define certain trends that could lead to an improvement in the situation, such as the use of a "Cluster strategy". The subject of the research is the analysis of the cooperation between international scientific organizations, research centers and companies within the proposed cluster. A model of the structure of the cluster was created, which will make it possible to monitor global processes in the field of economics and logistics. A simulation of the production of a new product was performed to verify the proposed cluster's expected effects. Therefore, a model was used to determine the value of the company to capture complex links. This model is based on Method DCF using structural analysis principles to objectively evaluate the influence of factors affecting the change of cost potential in the immediate vicinity of the enterprise. During the verification of specific data, the considered project's value was quantified, and obtained results showed that synergy effects could be expected. The verification results show that the interaction and cooperation between universities, research centers, and industrial enterprises at the international level can be made more efficient with an emphasis on effective and lasting cooperation in the field of innovation and technology transfer.

Purpose Load haul dumper (LHD) is one of the main ore transporting machineries used in underground mining industry. Reliability of LHD is very significant to achieve the expected targets of production. The performance of the equipment should be maintained at its highest level to fulfill the targets. This can be accomplished only by reducing the sudden breakdowns of component/subsystems in a complex system. The identification of defective component/subsystems can be possible by performing the downtime analysis. Hence, it is very important to develop the proper maintenance strategies for replacement or repair actions of the defective ones. Suitable maintenance management actions improve the performance of the equipment. This paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach Reliability analysis (renewal approach) has been used to analyze the performance of LHD machine. Allocations of best-fit distribution of data sets were made by the utilization of Kolmogorov–Smirnov (K–S) test. Parametric estimation of theoretical probability distributions was made by utilizing the maximum likelihood estimate (MLE) method. Findings Independent and identical distribution (IID) assumption of data sets was validated through trend and serial correlation tests. On the basis of test results, the data sets are in accordance with IID assumption. Therefore, renewal process approach has been utilized for further investigation. Allocations of best-fit distribution of data sets were made by the utilization of Kolmogorov–Smirnov (K–S) test. Parametric estimation of theoretical probability distributions was made by utilizing the MLE method. Reliability of each individual subsystem has been computed according to the best-fit distribution. In respect of obtained reliability results, the reliability-based preventive maintenance (PM) time schedules were calculated for the expected 90 percent reliability level. Research limitations/implications As the reliability analysis is one of the complex techniques, it requires strategic decision making knowledge for the selection of methodology to be used. As the present case study was from a public sector company, operating under financial constraints the conclusions/findings may not be universally applicable. Originality/value The present study throws light on this equipment that need a tailored maintenance schedule, partly due to the peculiar mining conditions, under which they operate. This study mainly focuses on estimating the performance of four numbers of well-mechanized LHD systems with reliability, availability and maintainability (RAM) modeling. Based on the drawn results, reasons for performance drop of each machine were identified. Suitable recommendations were suggested for the enhancement of performance of capital intensive production equipment. As the maintenance management is only the means for performance improvement of the machinery, PM time intervals were estimated with respect to the expected rate of reliability level.

The relentless pressures of competition stemming from globalization, technological changes, etc., today are increasingly buffeting organizations. One of the pathways for companies to weather these storms is through unleashing the entrepreneurial spirit latent in its employees enabling these employees to carve out new paths, initiate new ventures, defy the status quo in their organizations, and break fresh ground. There is an increasing body of knowledge relating to unleashing entrepreneurial energies in large organizations referred to as corporate entrepreneurship or intrapreneurship. Intrapreneurship is a major driver for organizational renewal or reinvention. This article seeks to understand the intrapreneurial mindset as opposed to the employee mindset. It is inextricably connected with leadership since it involves mobilizing teams of people towards a cause much greater than the individuals involved, often in the face of significant resistance from status quo preserving forces within and outside the organization. Intrapreneurship at any level (individual, group or organization) fundamentally involves taking ownership, i.e., operating with an entrepreneurial mindset. In the corporate context, since the person leading the reinvention is not an autonomous entrepreneur, he/she is more appropriately referred to as an intrapreneur. It is very unlikely that reinvention at any level can occur without this basic transformation of perspective from employee to psychological owner or intrapreneur. Intrapreneuring is not a path that is chosen by the vast majority of people in any profession since this path involves a lot more of the person than would be the case for a person operating with an ‘employee mindset.’ However, the reason it is important is that it is challenging, fulfilling, personally and professionally rewarding, and is urgently required by corporations—both big and small—the world over to thrive meaningfully in todays uncertain times. While the context in which this manifestation of entrepreneurial behaviour is enacted may vary (government, public sector, private sector, NGO, etc.), the fundamental fibre of the person who chooses this path is essentially similar. This article presents three interesting case studies from Tata Steel, a company that has sought to create an entrepreneurial climate in the organization over the last several years. Two of these relate to crashing project time and cost lines to create international records in the face of international technical collaborators affirming that this would not be possible in India. The third intrapreneurial episode relates to turning around a run-down manufacturing facility in the company to produce spectacular results. In the process, the authors have: drawn generic lessons from each of these case studies presented the results of interviews with 30 practising managers on the facilitators and inhibitors for creating an intrapreneurial climate in large organizations highlighted the perspectives of a few senior managers from the Indian IT industry on this very important source of innovation in large organizations tied together the three intrapreneurial episodes presented in this paper by attempting to understand the commonalities among the intrapreneurs. This article would be beneficial to Indian companies seeking to create an entrepreneurial climate and to professionals in these companies to motivate them to look at their work lives differently and to enable them to redefine their roles in their organizations.

Purpose Railway transport maintenance plays an important role in delivering safe, reliable and competitive transport services. An appropriate maintenance strategy not only reduces the assets’ lifecycle cost, but also will ensure high standards of safety and comfort for rail passengers and workers. In recent years, the majority of studies have been focused on the application of risk-based tools and techniques to maintenance decision making of railway infrastructure assets (such as tracks, bridges, etc.). The purpose of this paper is to present a risk-based modeling approach for the inspection and maintenance optimization of railway rolling stock components. Design/methodology/approach All the “potential failure modes and root causes” related to rolling stock systems are identified from an extensive literature review followed by an expert’s panel assessment. The failure causes are categorized into six groups of electrical faults, structural damages, functional failures, degradation, human errors and natural (external) hazards. Stochastic models are then proposed to estimate the likelihood (probability) of occurrence of a failure in the rolling stock system. The consequences of failures are also modeled by an “inflated cost function” that involves safety-related costs, corrective maintenance and renewal (M&R) costs, the penalty charges due to train delays or service interruptions as well as the costs associated with loss of reputation (or loss of fares) in the case of trip cancellation. Lastly, a time-varying risk-cost function is formulated to determine the optimal frequency of preventive inspection and maintenance actions for rolling stock components. Findings For the purpose of clearly illustrating the proposed risk-based inspection and maintenance modeling methodology, a case study of the Class 380 train’s pantograph system from a Scottish train operating company is provided. The results indicate that the proposed model has a substantial potential to reduce the M&R costs while ensuring a higher level of safety and service quality compared to the currently used inspection methodologies. Practical implications The railway rolling stocks should be regularly inspected and maintained so as to ensure network availability and reliability, passenger safety and comfort, and operations efficiency. Despite the best efforts of the maintenance staff, it is reported that a considerable amount of maintenance resources (e.g. budget, time, manpower) is wasted due to insufficiency or inefficiency of current periodic M&R interventions. The model presented in this paper helps the maintenance engineers to assess the current maintenance practices and propose or initiate improvement actions when needed. Originality/value There are few studies investigating the application of risk-based tools and techniques to inspection and maintenance decision making of railway rolling stock components. This paper presents a modeling approach aimed at planning the preventive repair and maintenance interventions for rolling stock components based on risk measures. The author’s model is also capable of incorporating real measurement information gathered at each inspection epoch to update future inspection plans.

ABSTRACT PT. XYZ has implemented Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of manufacturing companies as a whole. However, the implementation is still not optimal and seen from not achieving the production target. This study aims to measure the value of the effectiveness of equipment, find the root causes of problems and provide suggestions for improvement. The study was conducted on a kneader machine that had the highest breakdown rate. This research begins by measuring the overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) achievement value, then identifying the six big losses that occur. The results showed that the average OEE value on the kneader machine was 81.62%, the effectiveness value was classified as very low because the standard OEE value for world-class companies was ideally 85%. The biggest factor influencing the low OEE value is the performance rate with a factor of six big losses in reducing spees losses of 42.66% and idling and minor stoppages of 31.27% of all time losses. What causes the magnitude of losses consists of human, machine, material, method, and environmental factors. Human and machine factors are the most dominant factors. To reduce these losses, companies should provide skills and knowledge training to operators about the signs of damage to the equipment. In addition, operators are given additional work in the form of equipment maintenance that is often used in work so that maintenance work can be more focused. Then the company must pay more attention to the comfort of the operator at work so that fatigue can be reduced and operator productivity is increased and increase operator awareness of the tools they use. Keywords: Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), Six Big Losses, Idling and Minor Stoppages ABSTRAK XYZ telah menerapkan Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) guna meningkatkan efisiensi dan efektivitas perusahaan manufaktur secara menyeluruh. Namun dalam pelaksanaannya masih belum optimal dan dilihat dari tidak tercapainya target produksi. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengukur nilai efektivitas peralatan, mencari akar penyebab masalah dan memberikan usulan perbaikan. Penelitian dilakukan pada mesin kneader yang selama ini memiliki tingkat breakdown yang tertinggi. Penelitian ini dimulai dengan mengukur pencapaian nilai overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), kemudian mengidentifikasi six big losses yang terjadi. Hasil penelitian menunjukan bahwa rata-rata nilai OEE pada mesin kneader sebesar 81,62%, nilai efektivitas ini tergolong sangat rendah karena standar nilai OEE untuk perusahaan kelas dunia idealnya adalah 85%. Faktor terbesar yang mempengaruhi rendahnya nilai OEE adalah performance rate dengan faktor persentase six big losses pada reduce spees losses 42,66% dan idling and minor stoppages sebesar 31,27% dari seluruh time losses. Yang menyebabkan besarnya losses terdiri dari faktor manusia, mesin, material, metode, dan lingkungan. Faktor manusia dan mesin merupakan faktor yang paling dominan. Untuk mengurangi kerugian tersebut, perusahaan sebaiknya memberikan pelatihan skill dan pengetahuan kepada operator tentang tanda-tanda kerusakan alat tersebut. Selain itu operator diberikan tambahan pekerjaan berupa perawatan peralatan yang sering digunakannya dalam bekerja sehingga pekerjaan bagian maintenance bisa lebih berfokus. Kemudian perusahaan harus lebih memperhatikan kenyamanan operator dalam bekerja sehingga kelelahan bisa dikurangi dan produktivitas operator lebih meningkat serta meningkatkan kepedulian operator terhadap alat yang digunakannya.

<p><em>Abstrak<strong> - </strong></em><strong>Tantangan yang dihadapi dunia<em> </em>manufaktur, seiring dengan berkembangnya zaman selalu berubah dan semakin berat dari masa ke masa. Keunggulan bersaing pada era ini tidak hanya ditentukan oleh kemampuan suatu industri dalam menciptakan banyak output persatuan waktu. Produktifitas memang penting, tetapi tidak cukup sebagai bekal untuk bersaing dipasar. Pelanggan mulai bisa membedakan produk berdasarkan kualitasnya. Kualitas produk pun sangat bergantung pada proses, manusia, dan sistem secara keseluruhan. Pengendalian kualitas tidak lagi cukup hanya dilakukan dengan model inspeksi produk, tetapi lebih fundamental dengan melihat proses. PT. Louserindo Megah Permai (LMP) merupakan perusahaan yang menerapkan manajemen rantai pasok pada setiap proses produksinya. Pada penelitian ini akan dilakukan pengukuran kinerja terhadap manajemen rantai pasok pada proses elemen stage finished product dan release finished product to deliver pada LMP. Metode yang dipakai dalam mengukur kinerja tersebut adalah metode SCOR yang dibantu dengan metode FAHP (<em>Fuzzy</em> <em>Analytical Hierarchy Process</em>) dalam proses<em> </em>menentukan bobot pada setiap metrics. Dari hasil perhitungan tersebut maka akan diketahui indikator kinerja perusahaan yang tergolong rendah sehingga bisa diberikan usulan perbaikan serta diketahui metrics apa saja yang sangat mempengaruhi kinerja pekerja pada LMP. Penelitian ini dilakukan berdasarkan pada penurunan selama 4 tahun terakhir (2010-2014) di LMP pada tingkat penjualan lift dan hanya mengalami kenaikan sebesar rata-rata hanya 10%. Oleh karena itu perusahaan perlu melakukan pengukuran kinerja <em>supply chain</em> untuk mengetahui sejauh mana performansi <em>supply chain</em> perusahaan telah tercapai. 2. Dari hasil</strong> <strong>pengukuran kinerja rantai pasok LMP untuk periode tahun 2015, didapatkan nilai kinerja sebesar 73.82%, yang termasuk dalam kategori Good menurut Hvolby (2000). Dari perhitungan pada indikator kinerja SCOR yang telah dilakukan, didapatkan 9 metrics yang nilai kinerjanya rendah, yaitu: <em>Delivery Performance to</em> <em>Customer Commit Date </em>[60%], %<em>Faultless Installation </em>[55%],<em> Days Payable Outstanding </em>[25%], Rout<em> Shipments Cycle Time </em>[60%],<em> Deliver Cycle Time </em>[30%],<em> Ship Product Cycle Time </em>[60%],<em> Load Vehicle &amp; Generate Shipping Documentation Cycle Time </em>[60%] dan<em> Install Product Cycle Time </em></strong><strong>[30%].</strong></p><p> </p><p><strong><em>Kata Kunci </em></strong><strong>–<em> </em></strong>Pengukuran kinerja,<strong><em> </em></strong><em>Manajemen Rantai Pasok, SCOR, Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process</em></p><p> </p><p><em>Abstract - </em><strong>The challenges faced the manufacturing world, along with the evolution of the ever changing and increasingly heavy from time to time. Competitive advantage in this era not only determined by the ability of industry in creating a lot of unity output time. Productivity is important but enough as a provision to complete in the market. Customer can be begin to differentiate products based on their quality. Product quality is highly dependent on process, human, and system as a whole. Quality control is not only done with the product inspection model, but more fundamentally by looking at the process. PT. Louserindo Megah Permai is company that implemented supply chain management in each production process. In this research, performance measurement of supply chain management on stage finish product element process and finished product to deliver on LMP. The method used in measuring the performance is SCOR method wich is assisted by FAHP (Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process) method in the process determining the weight of each metrics. From the results of these calculations it will be known indicators of company performance are low so that it can be given suggestions for improvement and known metrics what are affecting the performance of workers in LMP. This study is based on decline over the last 4 year (2010-2014) in LMP at the level of elevator sales and only increased by on average of only 10%. Therefore, companies need to measure supply chain performance to know the extent to which the company's supply chain performance has been achieved. 2. From the results of LMP supply chain performance measurement for the period of 2015, obtained a performance value of 73.82%, which is included in the category of Good according to Hvolby (2000). From the calculation on SCOR performance indicator that has been done, got 9 metrics that its performance value is low, that is: Delivery Performance to Customer Commit Date [60%],% Faultless Installation [55%], Days Payable Outstanding [25%], Rout Shipments Cycle Time [60%], Deliver Cycle Time [30%], Ship Product Cycle Time [60%], Load Vehicle &amp; Generate Shipping Documentation Cycle Time [60%] and Install Product Cycle Time [30%].</strong></p><p><strong> </strong></p><p><strong><em>Keywords</em></strong><strong> – </strong><em>Performance Measurements, Supply Chain Management, SCOR, Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy </em><em>Process</em></p>

The objective of this research is to examine the level and effect of voluntary disclosure andthe earnings quality on cost of equity capital of listed manufacturing company inIndonesian Stock Exchange in 2008. This study uses secondary data from the annualreports of 75 manufacturing firms listed in Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) in 2008. Weuse multiple regressions to test hypotheses. We find that the average of voluntarydisclosure is only 29.7%, which indicates that firms’ disclosure in the annual report is stilllow. The result also shows that the level of voluntary disclosure, in contrary to expectation,has positive and significant effect on cost of equity capital. We find some evidences thatearnings quality can reduce cost of equity capital.Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk menganalisis pengaruh tingkat pengungkapan sukareladan kualitas laba terhadap cost of equity capital pada perusahaan manufaktur yang terdaftardi Bursa Efek Indonesia tahun 2008. Penelitian ini dilakukan pada 75 perusahaan yangmenjadi sampel penelitian. Hipotesis penelitian diuji menggunakan regresi linier berganda.Hasil penilaian atas indeks pengungkapan sukarela menunjukkan rata-rata indekspengungkapan sukarela hanya 29.7% sehingga dapat disimpulkan bahwa tingkatpengungkapan sukarela dalam laporan tahunan perusahaan masih rendah. Hasil penelitianmenunjukkan bahwa tingkat pengungkapan sukarela, berbeda dengan dugaan, mempunyaipengaruh positif signifikan terhadap biaya modal ekuitas. Ditemukan juga bukti bahwakualitas laba dapat menurunkan biaya modal ekuitas.

<p>PT IGASAR was one of the companies affiliated with PT Semen Padang with business activities in the fields of engineering, cement distribution, transportation, heavy equipment rental, cement-based building materials industry, manufacturing, general contractor, and developer. Some work accidents were still found in activities at this company. It was essential to making hazard identification, risk assessment, and determined the type of control in some areas. There are work accidents in PT IGASAR in as many as five cases in 2017 - 2018. One way was to use the Hazard Identification Risk Assessment Determine Control (HIRADC) Method. A risk analysis was done by looking at the opportunities and the severity of the hazards. Based on the results of the risk analysis, it was found that activities that were low risk, very high risk was absent while the medium risk was 100%. The risk control measures include the provision of personal protective equipment, the rule of safety signs, equipment maintenance, and the creation of road area boundaries.</p>

Industri adalah kegiatan ekonomi yang mengolah bahan baku dan/atau memanfaatkan sumber daya industri sehingga menghasilkan barang yang mempunyai nilai tambah atau manfaat lebih tinggi, perusahaan merupakan salah satu usaha yang berbasis Usaha Kecil Menengah (UKM ) dan bergerak dalam bidang pembuatan produk logam besi. Perusahaan melakukan usaha bisnis yang menyediakan produk berupa pagar pintu besi, canopi, teralis, dan railing dari besi. Dalam menjalankan usahanya, Perusahaan sudah menerapkan prinsip Green Supply Chain dengan supplier, menjadi pemasok sumber bahan utama dalam pengolahan produksi logam di UKM. Green Supply Chain Manajemen adalah managemen rantai pasok yang berhubungan dengan aspek lingkungan untuk memaksimalkan keuntungan dan efektivitas kerja dengan memperhatikan lingkungan. Tujuan penelitian adalah mengidentifikasi adanya konsep ramah lingkungan dalam rantai pasok perusahaan. Dalam proses produksi, dihasilkan bermacam jenis olahan logam dengan limbah atau waste yang banyak seperti percahan besi, potongan besi dan scrap dimana waste tersebut masih dapat di olah kembali. Perusahaan menerapkan konsep Green Supply Chain, yang dapat dibuktikan dari cara perusahaan melakukan proses pengolahan limbah besi dengan mencairkan menjadi plat besi yang berkualitas lebih rendah. Kualitas besi yang dihasilkan oleh distributor dari waste mempunyai persentasi kadar besi sebesar 35% yang dilakukan. Kemudian hasil plat besi yang didapat didistribusikan kembali kepada konsumen maupun distributor lain. Industry is an economic activity that processes raw materials and / or utilizes industrial resources so as to produce goods that have added value or higher benefits, the company is one of the businesses based on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and is engaged in manufacturing metal metal products. The company runs a business that provides products in the form of metal door fences, canopies, trellis, and railing from iron. In running its business, the Company has applied the principle of Green Supply Chain with suppliers, becoming a supplier of the main material source in processing metal production in SMEs. Green Supply Chain Management is supply chain management that deals with environmental aspects to maximize profits and work effectiveness with regard to the environment. The research objective is to identify the existence of environmentally friendly concepts in the company's supply chain. In the production process, various types of metal products are produced with a lot of waste or waste such as iron scrap, scrap iron and scrap where the waste can still be processed again. The company applies the Green Supply Chain concept, which can be proven from the way the company carries out the processing of iron waste by melting it into a lower quality iron plate. The quality of iron produced by distributors from waste has a percentage of iron content of 35%. Then the results of the obtained iron plate is distributed back to consumers and other distributors.

ABSTRACT Purpose: This article aims to describe the absorptive capacity (ACAP) of textile manufacturing industrial companies of Sergipe state, Brazil, for the signals captured from the environment, indicating the need for innovation in response to changes in the market. The theoretical bases of absorptive capacity postulate that a company that develops this capacity has the ability to recognize the information value, assimilate it, and apply it for commercial purposes. They can develop skills that allow them to achieve competitive advantage. Originality/value: From the theoretical point of view, the factors that stimulate the apparel companies to recognize, assimilate, transform, and exploit the external knowledge were listed. Regarding the practical contributions, the study can provide references to organizations wishing to extend or develop the absorption of new knowledge, so this can promote improvement in organizational activity and innovation. Design/methodology/approach: For the study, it was built a qualitative data collection instrument. The instrument had been applied in seven companies with innovative characteristics when compared to the local competition. Companies are micro to medium-sized and develop innovations in process and marketing. Findings: The result shows that the analyzed companies look for renewal of existing knowledge and assimilate the external information to adapt and transform their organizational strategies. The exploitation of knowledge occurs from relationships with customers and suppliers, prior knowledge of leadership and organization existing structure. Companies with best ACAP were those who faced direct competition. This fact has created incentives for the search for information to differentiate the companies and make them competitive.

The movement of the economy on the path of efficiency, rationalization and constant renewal, through the creation of an innovative environment that destroys traditional structures and opens opportunities for transformation is achieved through the activities of public companies that are subjects of the stock market. The presented article is devoted to substantiation of theoretical positions and definition of features of activity of public companies on the basis of experience of the countries of the European Union. The activities of public companies are regulated by law and related to the stock market. The key theses of the legislative base of Ukraine concerning the activity of joint-stock companies are given. Emphasis is placed on a clear criterion for classifying a joint-stock company as a public one, due to cooperation with the stock market. The peculiarities of the functioning of modern foreign public companies, including in comparison with private campaigns, are given. The results of the analysis of the dynamics of the number of public companies indicate the low readiness of Ukrainian business for transparent activities, and the underdevelopment of the Ukrainian stock market limits the prospects for choosing sources of increasing the market value of public companies in the future. The publicity of companies in Ukraine is questionable due to the lack of public offerings by issuers of shares in Ukraine. These facts point to the problems associated with increasing the level of capitalization of the company by increasing the market value of capital and the formation of effective sources of financing by expanding the range of financial instruments and resources. The peculiarities of this form of entrepreneurship (infinity of stakeholders, openness of information, legality of actions, sustainability of business models, transparency of decisions) due to increased investment attractiveness and liquidity of assets for investors, which is achieved by ensuring openness, transparency and social responsibility of public companies.

Purpose There are several important strategic projects in the field of renewable energy in Egypt. Benban project is considered as one of the largest solar generation facilities in the world, which aims to increase clean energy produced, provide electricity needs for citizens and help to increase the volume of Egypt's electricity exports. The purpose of this paper is to explore the most important drivers and barriers that affect the implementation of green supply chain management (GSCM) practices in the field of solar energy production. Design/methodology/approach It is an exploratory research that conducts a case study about solar energy companies operating in Benban, south Egypt. It adopts a mixed approach; qualitative and quantitative research strategy to test the relationship between dependent and independent variables through a survey. Findings This research concluded that normative drivers involving stakeholder pressure are of the greatest drivers of GSCM practice, while external barriers including lack of government regulations and government support, poor supplier commitment, customers’ unawareness of sustainable green products, lack of markets receiving and manufacturing recycled materials, lack of renewal or technological innovation in markets and lack of human resources or expertise in market are among the biggest barriers to GSCM implementation. Research limitations/implications The researchers collected 30 responses during the field survey, which is a nonrandom sample that does not allow generalization. In addition, samples are only from companies in the solar energy sector only. Originality/value As there is a need for research that addresses sustainability practices and solutions in developing countries, especially in Egypt, this paper theoretically contributes to literature by proposing a conceptual framework that identifies the drivers and barriers of GSCM from the existing literature, then investigates and measures their impact on the implementation of GSCM on an Egyptian case study. As regards the practical contribution, this research is a trial to experimentally test the importance of top management’s role in motivating and training employees to improve the brand image of their company and making them aware of the benefits of the successful GSCM implementation.

PT. XYZ adalah perusahaan yang bergerak didalam pembuatan kemasan botol minum. Pendistribusian produk dilakukan PT XYZ menggunakan data historis berdasarkan jumlah permintaan pada tahun 2013 dan 2014. Data tersebut menunjukkan bahwa terjadinya perbedaan hasil. Tahun 2013 memiliki jumlah permintaan yang lebih rendah dari tahun 2014. Informasi terdapat bahwa perlu dilakukan pengevaluasian karena didalam rantai produksi terdapat bullwhip effect. Terdapat nilai bullwhip Effect menujukan bahwa nilai bullwhip effect untuk distributor Indomaret, Carrefour, dan rantai manufakturnya masing-masing sebesar 0,5303; 0,2967, dan 0,5114. Usulan perbaikan dapat diatasi yaitu dengan model Q yang berfungsi menggendalikan persediaan pada rantai pasok dengan metodeHadley-Within. Perhitungan pengendalian persediaan untuk distributor Indomaret, Carrefour, dan rantai manufakturnya masing-masing sebesar 1,0721; 1,100; dan 1,0714. Hasil dari perhitungan menujukan bahwa terjadi keseimbangan antara penjual dan pembeli sehingga biaya pun dapat dihematkan pada PT XYZ. PT. XYZ Medan is manufacturing company that produce soft drinks of beverages in containers. In the product distribution system at PT. XYZ Medan, found that the number of orders based on the result of forecasting in 2013 lower than actual orders at distrbutor and manufacturer in 2014. Distorsion of information on this order can evaluate the indication of bullwhip effect in supply chain. Based on the result calculation of bullwhip effect, found that the value of bullwhip effect for Indomaret distributor, Carrefour, and supply chain of manufacturer each of 0,5303; 0,2967, and 0,5114. Proposed improvements to predominate bullwhip effect that is by doing inventory control policy with Q model using Hadley-Within approach. The value of bullwhip effect aftre doing inventory control policy for Indomaret distributor, Carrefour, and supply chain of manufacturer each of 1,0721; 1,100; dan 1,0714. The value of bullwhip effect which is close to one shows that the variance between the number of the order and the number of the demand nearly balanced so as to save the inventory cost at PT. XYZ Medan.

<p><strong><em>Abstract</em></strong><em>: </em><em>The investor's valuation of the company's performance often only sees the stock price. High share price reflects the high value of the company as well. However, low share prices do not necessarily indicate the company's performance is poor. This research aims to analyse and know the role of quality of profit in the mediation of the influence of conservatism accounting </em><em>on the firm </em><em>value. Sampling techniques are performed by purposive sampling methods. </em><em>S</em><em>ample of 60</em><em> </em><em>manufacturing companies that have been </em><em>listed </em><em>on the Indonesia Stock Exchange for the period 2016-2018.. The data analysis techniques undertaken are coefficient of similarity, descriptive statistics, classical assumption test, and linear regression analysis, including F-Test, T-Test, and coefficient of determination test. And to make the role of the quality of profit as</em><em> </em><em>a variable intervening, it is done using the analysis of pathways and Sobel tests to test indirect influences. The results showed that the quality of profit has a positive and significant effect on the </em><em>firm value</em><em>, accounting conservatism has a positive and significant effect on the quality of profit, while the accounting conservatism is not proven directly affect the value of the company. Based on the analysis of the track and The Sobel test shows that earnings quality can mediate the effect of accounting conservatism on firm value.</em></p><p><em></em><strong><em>Keywords:</em></strong><em> Accounting Conservatism, Earnings Quality, Firm Value</em><em></em></p><p><em><br /></em></p><p><em></em><strong>Abstrak</strong>: Penilaian investor terhadap kinerja perusahaan seringkali hanya melihat dari harga saham. Harga saham yang tinggi mencerminkan nilai perusahaan yang tinggi. Namun, harga saham yang rendah tidak selalu mengindikasikan kinerja perusahaan tersebut kurang baik. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk menganalisis peran kualitas laba dalam mediasi pengaruh konservatisme akuntansi terhadap nilai perusahaan. Pengambilan sampel menggunakan teknik <em>non probalility sampling</em> dengan metode <em>purposive sampling</em>. Sampel sebanyak 60 perusahaan manufaktur yang telah didaftarkan di BEI (Bursa Efek Indonesia) periode tahun 2016-2018. Teknik analisis data antara lain uji kesamaan koefisien, statistika deskriptif, uji asumsi klasik, dan analisis regresi linear yang meliputi uji F, uji t, dan uji koefisien determinasi. Pengujian peran kualitas laba sebagai variable intervening, dilakukan dengan analisis jalur dan uji Sobel untuk menguji pengaruh tidak langsung. Hasil penelitian membuktikan bahwa kualitas laba berpengaruh positif dan signifikan terhadap nilai perusahaan, konservatisme akuntansi berpengaruh positif dan signifikan terhadap kualitas laba, sedangkan konservatisme akuntansi tidak terbukti berpengaruh secara langsung terhadap nilai perusahaan. Berdasarkan hasil <em>path analysis</em> dan Uji Sobel menunjukkan bahwa kualitas laba dapat memediasi pengaruh konservatisme akuntansi terhadap nilai perusahaan.</p><p><strong>Kata kunci:</strong> Konservatisme Akuntansi, Kualitas Laba, Nilai Perusahaan.</p>

Machinofacture, computer control and globalisation have created the appearance that in the relation between humanity and the machine the human possesses ever-deepening power. However, this is a very Whiggish view of the history of science and technology as a field of ever-expanding knowledge. History is littered with examples of technologies which have been abandoned as out-dated, then later attempts to revive them have failed because the expertise has been lost. Technology is not merely a reflection of human needs, but an embodiment of the human condition. Machines can be seen as products of their creator, but in the case of long-lived machines they can out-live their creator whilst embodying some of their expertise and their failings. If there is a human need for that lost experience contained within the machine, then there is a form of remote power exercised through the machine. Although the machine can be owned, and the owner 'controls' the machine, it is not a deity-subject (uni-directional) relation; the machine may fail -- because the master does not understand the processes of the machine, there is no way to enforce the power of ownership. This potential for control loss has resonances with the 'Frankenstein syndrome' where the fear is that humanity could unleash something beyond its control. This fear has found recent expression in the debate about genetically-modified (GM) foods in Europe, taking place not over the results of scientific tests; indeed the debate precedes those tests and concerns the effects of releasing them from the direct (space-time) control by humans in laboratories. Frankenstein's monster and GM-foods share the common trait that both are organic, and it makes more sense that a sentient or at least living object could upset the human-object power relation. The inanimate analogue of this (e.g. the golem of Jewish folklore) has a much weaker hold over popular consciousnesses. Asimov 'built' his robots with the laws of robotics to prevent upsetting the hegemony of human over machine. Even huge advances recently in computing power, neural networks and artificial intelligence have come nowhere near producing an Asimov robot with the freedom to have and exercise power over humanity. However, there are other more mundane and diffuse ways that machines can have power over humans. The company Joyce-Loebl, based in the North East of England, from the 1950s to the 1970s built thousands of microdensitometers, and through the effort of its sales teams sold them all over the world. The company was like a family; little was done in the way of formal drawings -- even the machinists were highly skilled and exercised great initiative; the 'secrets' of the machine were passed through incredibly elaborate apprenticeships, and were diffused into many individuals in a range of trades. The machine's inventor described it in correspondence thus: "many scientific measurements result in a series of darkened bars similar to a barcode. To interpret these bars it is necessary to measure their density. The microdensitometer does this by balancing the signal from the bars with light passing through an optical wedge. This balancing technique gives great accuracy". These machines did not embody absolute power of humans over machines; they came about only because the highly place-specific and combined efforts of a number of highly-skilled complementary craftsmen. At a time when the region was said to be "good for the nearest inch" (i.e. good at shipbuilding) the company made instruments that were "good to the nearest thousandth [of an inch]" (i.e. as precise as clockwork). Loebl, in his forthcoming memoirs, relates a number of examples where the microdensitometer conferred the power to influence human life even when it was notionally under anthropological control. It found a crashed moon probe from a lunar satellite photograph when all other analyses had failed, and allowed him, as a one-time refugee from the Nazis, to snub the apartheid regime by refusing to sell machines to South African firms. More palpably, it disproved the evidence in a murder appeal where the machine 'proved' that the rope submitted as evidence could not have produced the marks on the neck of the strangulated wife (legal power). Although the machine required an operator to use, in common with many technologies today, there is a separation between the knowledge necessary to manufacture the microdensitometer, and that required to make it carry out it designated functions. It appeared for a time as if microdensitometers were a commodity to be bought and sold; humans controlled them absolutely through determining where they were located. The appearance of absolute control only arose out of a particular techno-economic configuration particular to the 1960s, dependent on the mass-production and mass marketing of the machine. When this configuration disintegrated, so the balance of power shifted towards the machine. Joyce-Loebl broke up in the 1980s; technologies moved towards analytic software rather than electro-mechanical measurement; the skills of craftsmen were lost; the instrument teams drifted. Electronic instrument standardisation and the effects of the PC on software seemed to spell the end for analogue hardware. However, the microdensitometer remains the most precise instrument for the measurement of grey scale on photograph emulsions, yet the skills to produce microdensitometers have been lost. The Soviets tried for over a decade to reverse engineer the machine, even copying faults in a screw thread, but the machine steadfastly 'refused' to be copied, and the imitation would not work (geopolitical power). One film-manufacturing multi-national firm has paid thousands of pounds for the refurbishment of one such device from the 1970s (commercial power). The device is still in use in scientific, medical and engineering installations world-wide (technical power). Joyce-Loebl broke up in the 1980s; technologies moved towards analytic software rather than electro-mechanical measurement; the skills of craftsmen were lost; the instrument teams drifted. Electronic instrument standardisation and the effects of the PC on software seemed to spell the end for analogue hardware. However, the microdensitometer remains the most precise instrument for the measurement of grey scale on photograph emulsions, yet the skills to produce microdensitometers have been lost. The Soviets tried for over a decade to reverse engineer the machine, even copying faults in a screw thread, but the machine steadfastly 'refused' to be copied, and the imitation would not work (geopolitical power). One film-manufacturing multi-national firm has paid thousands of pounds for the refurbishment of one such device from the 1970s (commercial power). The device is still in use in scientific, medical and engineering installations world-wide (technical power). Value is not identical to power, but arises in the independence the machines have as bearers of the skills of their creators. It is not just the skill embodied in those machines, but the machines arise because of the particular contingency of their creation. Although design conventions can exist, machines are purposively designed and manufactured, the outcomes of these processes affecting their final state. The machine is not just the creature its maker desires, but like Frankenstein's Monster, emerges from a struggle to shape the raw materials to the designer's ends, and records that struggle for posterity. In the case of the micro-densitometer, understanding the reasons for the precise arrangement of the various optics, mechanisms, metal and electronics is impossible. However, in the machine lies a series of messages about the context of the creation of the machine. The North East of England is a declining industrial region; the machine can be read as a recipe for creating material success in a high-technology industry in the North East even given the absence of contemporary activity -- 'assemble a range of disparate craft skills, make a branded product, sell globally, find new avenues for your skill base'. Mythology has served a similar purpose in a number of ancient civilisations. To westerners raised on an abstract, Kiplingesque diet of 'native tales' providing neat explanations of natural phenomena, these myths might appear pointless, but even today, in their context of a particular location, contain highly encoded cultural information for survival and edification (e.g. Australian Aboriginal peoples). The power of these myths provided access to extensive micro-zoological and anthropological observation and understanding without necessarily understanding why. The Joyce-Loebl microdensitometer came out of particular situation in the economy of the North East of England which has materially all but vanished. Messrs. Joyce and Loebl built a company making branded equipment selling worldwide, in a way that was and is supposed to be impossible for a heavy industrial region, whose cultural traits of the industrial structure are supposed to endure in the communitarian and anti-entrepreneurial aspirations of the working classes. However, the microdensitometer challenges the notion that the North East was only a centre of heavy industry, but was once somewhere where instruments of beauty and purpose were fashioned and sold. The Joyce-Loebl microdensitometer came out of particular situation in the economy of the North East of England which has materially all but vanished. Messrs. Joyce and Loebl built a company making branded equipment selling worldwide, in a way that was and is supposed to be impossible for a heavy industrial region, whose cultural traits of the industrial structure are supposed to endure in the communitarian and anti-entrepreneurial aspirations of the working classes. However, the microdensitometer challenges the notion that the North East was only a centre of heavy industry, but was once somewhere where instruments of beauty and purpose were fashioned and sold. Just as the Story of the Dreaming explains that "storytelling, while explaining the past, helps young Indigenous Australians maintain dignity and self-respect in the present", there is a modern role for past machines in helping the inhabitants of declining industrial regions maintain their dignity and sustain themselves economically into the future. Much of the debate about industrial renewal in the UK has recently focussed around the notion of the knowledge economy in the abstract form; the microdensitometer is the embodiment of how a knowledge economy can be created. This suggests three potential ways of understanding a machine beyond the delivery of a piece of technological functionality within a production paradigm. A machine can at once have and exercise technological, political and cultural power when the constraints of its control are removed. This brings us back to the starting point of the article, the idea of the Frankenstein monster, who demonstrated a highly spectacular specific physical power; in a modern(-ist?) reality, the power of many 'rogue machines' (those beyond tight contextual control) is entirely more mundane, diffuse and abstract, yet represents a real influence on life experiences in the modern world. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Paul Benneworth. "The Machine as Mythology -- The Case of the Joyce-Loebl Microdensitometer." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.6 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9909/micro.php>. Chicago style: Paul Benneworth, "The Machine as Mythology -- The Case of the Joyce-Loebl Microdensitometer," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 6 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9909/micro.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Paul Benneworth. (1999) The machine as mythology -- the case of the Joyce-Loebl microdensitometer. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(6). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9909/micro.php> ([your date of access]).

IntroductionThe walking tour is an enduring feature of cities. Fuelled by a desire to learn more about the hidden and unknown spaces of the city, the walking tour has moved beyond its historical role as tourist attraction to play a key role in the transformation of urban space through gentrification. Conversely, the walking tour has a counter-history as part of a critical urban praxis. This article reflects on historical examples, as well as our own experience of conducting Field Trip, a critical geographical walking tour through an industrial precinct in Marrickville, a suburb of Sydney that is set to undergo rapid change as a result of high-rise residential apartment construction (Gibson et al.). This precinct, known as Carrington Road, is located on the unceded land of the Cadigal and Wangal people of the Eora nation who call the area Bulanaming.Drawing on a long history of philosophical walking, many contemporary writers (Solnit; Gros; Bendiner-Viani) have described walking as a practice that can open different ways of thinking, observing and being in the world. Some have focused on the value of walking to the study of place (Hall; Philips; Heddon), and have underscored its relationship to established research methods, such as sensory ethnography (Springgay and Truman). The work of Michel de Certeau pays particular attention to the relationship between walking and the city. In particular, the concepts of tactics and strategy have been applied in a variety of ways across cultural studies, cultural geography, and urban studies (Morris). In line with de Certeau’s thinking, we view walking as an example of a tactic – a routine and often unconscious practice that can become a form of creative resistance.In this sense, walking can be a way to engage in and design the city by opposing its structures, or strategies. For example, walking in a city such as Sydney that is designed for cars requires choosing alternative paths, redirecting flows of people and traffic, and creating custom shortcuts. Choosing pedestrianism in Sydney can certainly feel like a form of resistance, and we make the argument that Field Trip – and walking tours more generally – can be a way of doing this collectively, firstly by moving in opposite directions, and secondly, at incongruent speeds to those for whom the scale and style of strategic urban development is inevitable. How such tactical walking relates to the design of cities, however, is less clear. Walking is a generally described in the literature as an individual act, while the design of cities is, at its best participatory, and always involving multiple stakeholders. This reveals a tension between the practice of walking as a détournement or appropriation of urban space, and its relationship to existing built form. Field Trip, as an example of collective walking, is one such appropriation of urban space – one designed to lead to more democratic decision making around the planning and design of cities. Given the anti-democratic, “post-political” nature of contemporary “consultation” processes, this is a seemingly huge task (Legacy et al.; Ruming). We make the argument that Field Trip – and walking tours more generally – can be a form of collective resistance to top-down urban planning.By using an open-source wiki in combination with the Internet Archive, Field Trip also seeks to collectively document and make public the local knowledge generated by walking at the frontier of gentrification. We discuss these digital choices as oppositional practice, and consider the idea of tactical media (Lovink and Garcia; Raley) in order to connect knowledge sharing with the practice of walking.This article is structured in four parts. Firstly, we provide a historical introduction to the relationship between walking tours and gentrification of global cities. Secondly, we examine the significance of walking tours in Sydney and then specifically within Marrickville. Thirdly, we discuss the Field Trip project as a citizen-led walking tour and, finally, elaborate on its role as tactical media project and offer some conclusions.The Walking Tour and Gentrification From the outset, people have been walking the city in their own ways and creating their own systems of navigation, often in spite of the plans of officialdom. The rapid expansion of cities following the Industrial Revolution led to the emergence of “imaginative geographies”, where mediated representations of different urban conditions became a stand-in for lived experience (Steinbrink 219). The urban walking tour as mediated political tactic was utilised as far back as Victorian England, for reasons including the celebration of public works like the sewer system (Garrett), and the “othering” of the working class through upper- and middle-class “slum tourism” in London’s East End (Steinbrink 220). The influence of the Situationist theory of dérive has been immense upon those interested in walking the city, and we borrow from the dérive a desire to report on the under-reported spaces of the city, and to articulate alternative voices within the city in this project. It should be noted, however, that as Field Trip was developed for general public participation, and was organised with institutional support, some aspects of the dérive – particularly its disregard for formal structure – were unable to be incorporated into the project. Our responsibility to the participants of Field Trip, moreover, required the imposition of structure and timetable upon the walk. However, our individual and collective preparation for Field Trip, as well as our collective understanding of the area to be examined, has been heavily informed by psychogeographic methods that focus on quotidian and informal urban practices (Crosby and Searle; Iveson et al).In post-war American cities, walking tours were utilised in the service of gentrification. Many tours were organised by real estate agents with the express purpose of selling devalorised inner-city real estate to urban “pioneers” for renovation, including in Boston’s South End (Tissot) and Brooklyn’s Park Slope, among others (Lees et al 25). These tours focused on a symbolic revalorisation of “slum neighbourhoods” through a focus on “high culture”, with architectural and design heritage featuring prominently. At the same time, urban socio-economic and cultural issues – poverty, homelessness, income disparity, displacement – were downplayed or overlooked. These tours contributed to a climate in which property speculation and displacement through gentrification practices were normalised. To this day, “ghetto tours” operate in minority neighbourhoods in Brooklyn, serving as a beachhead for gentrification.Elsewhere in the world, walking tours are often voyeuristic, featuring “locals” guiding well-meaning tourists through the neighbourhoods of some of the world’s most impoverished communities. Examples include the long runningKlong Toei Private Tour, through “Bangkok’s oldest and largest slum”, or the now-ceased Jakarta Hidden Tours, which took tourists to the riverbanks of Jakarta to see the city’s poorest before they were displaced by gentrification.More recently, all over the world activists have engaged in walking tours to provide their own perspective on urban change, attempting to direct the gentrifier’s gaze inward. Whilst the most confrontational of these might be the Yuppie Gazing Tour of Vancouver’s historically marginalised Downtown Eastside, other tours have highlighted the deleterious effects of gentrification in Williamsburg, San Francisco, Oakland, and Surabaya, among others. In smaller towns, walking tours have been utilised to highlight the erasure of marginalised scenes and subcultures, including underground creative spaces, migrant enclaves, alternative and queer spaces. Walking Sydney, Walking Marrickville In many cities, there are now both walking tours that intend to scaffold urban renewal, and those that resist gentrification with alternative narratives. There are also some that unwittingly do both simultaneously. Marrickville is a historically working-class and migrant suburb with sizeable populations of Greek and Vietnamese migrants (Graham and Connell), as well as a strong history of manufacturing (Castles et al.), which has been undergoing gentrification for some time, with the arts playing an often contradictory role in its transformation (Gibson and Homan). More recently, as the suburb experiences rampant, financialised property development driven by global flows of capital, property developers have organised their own self-guided walking tours, deployed to facilitate the familiarisation of potential purchasers of dwellings with local amenities and ‘character’ in precincts where redevelopment is set to occur. Mirvac, Marrickville’s most active developer, has designed its own self-guided walking tour Hit the Marrickville Pavement to “explore what’s on offer” and “chat to locals”: just 7km from the CBD, Marrickville is fast becoming one of Sydney’s most iconic suburbs – a melting pot of cuisines, creative arts and characters founded on a rich multicultural heritage.The perfect introduction, this self-guided walking tour explores Marrickville’s historical architecture at a leisurely pace, finishing up at the pub.So, strap on your walking shoes; you're in for a treat.Other walking tours in the area seek to highlight political, ecological, and architectural dimension of Marrickville. For example, Marrickville Maps: Tropical Imaginaries of Abundance provides a series of plant-led walks in the suburb; The Warren Walk is a tour organised by local Australian Labor Party MP Anthony Albanese highlighting “the influence of early settlers such as the Schwebel family on the area’s history” whilst presenting a “political snapshot” of ALP history in the area. The Australian Ugliness, in contrast, was a walking tour organised by Thomas Lee in 2016 that offered an insight into the relationships between the visual amenity of the streetscape, aesthetic judgments of an ambiguous nature, and the discursive and archival potentialities afforded by camera-equipped smartphones and photo-sharing services like Instagram. Figure 1: Thomas Lee points out canals under the street of Marrickville during The Australian Ugliness, 2016.Sydney is a city adept at erasing its past through poorly designed mega-projects like freeways and office towers, and memorialisation of lost landscapes has tended towards the literary (Berry; Mudie). Resistance to redevelopment, however, has often taken the form of spectacular public intervention, in which public knowledge sharing was a key goal. The Green Bans of the 1970s were partially spurred by redevelopment plans for places like the Rocks and Woolloomooloo (Cook; Iveson), while the remaking of Sydney around the 2000 Olympics led to anti-gentrification actions such as SquatSpace and the Tour of Beauty, an “aesthetic activist” tour of sites in the suburbs of Redfern and Waterloo threatened with “revitalisation.” Figure 2: "Tour of Beauty", Redfern-Waterloo 2016. What marks the Tour of Beauty as significant in this context is the participatory nature of knowledge production: participants in the tours were addressed by representatives of the local community – the Aboriginal Housing Company, the local Indigenous Women’s Centre, REDWatch activist group, architects, designers and more. Each speaker presented their perspective on the rapidly gentrifying suburb, demonstrating how urban space is made an remade through processes of contestation. This differentiation is particularly relevant when considering the basis for Sydney-centric walking tours. Mirvac’s self-guided tour focuses on the easy-to-see historical “high culture” of Marrickville, and encourages participants to “chat to locals” at the pub. It is a highly filtered approach that does not consider broader relations of class, race and gender that constitute Marrickville. A more intense exploration of the social fabric of the city – providing a glimpse of the hidden or unknown spaces – uncovers the layers of social, cultural, and economic history that produce urban space, and fosters a deeper engagement with questions of urban socio-spatial justice.Solnit argues that walking can allow us to encounter “new thoughts and possibilities.” To walk, she writes, is to take a “subversive detour… the scenic route through a half-abandoned landscape of ideas and experiences” (13). In this way, tactical activist walking tours aim to make visible what cannot be seen, in a way that considers the polysemic nature of place, and in doing so, they make visible the hidden relations of power that produce the contemporary city. In contrast, developer-led walking tours are singularly focussed, seeking to attract inflows of capital to neighbourhoods undergoing “renewal.” These tours encourage participants to adopt the position of urban voyeur, whilst activist-led walking tours encourage collaboration and participation in urban struggles to protect and preserve the contested spaces of the city. It is in this context that we sought to devise our own walking tour – Field Trip – to encourage active participation in issues of urban renewal.In organising this walking tour, however, we acknowledge our own entanglements within processes of gentrification. As designers, musicians, writers, academics, researchers, venue managers, artists, and activists, in organising Field Trip, we could easily be identified as “creatives”, implicated in Marrickville’s ongoing transformation. All of us have ongoing and deep-rooted connections to various Sydney subcultures – the same subcultures so routinely splashed across developer advertising material. This project was borne out of Frontyard – a community not-just-art space, and has been supported by the local Inner West Council. As such, Field Trip cannot be divorced from the highly contentious processes of redevelopment and gentrification that are always simmering in the background of discussions about Marrickville. We hope, however, that in this project we have started to highlight alternative voices in those redevelopment processes – and that this may contribute towards a “method of equality” for an ongoing democratisation of those processes (Davidson and Iveson).Field Trip: Urban Geographical Enquiry as Activism Given this context, Field Trip was designed as a public knowledge project that would connect local residents, workers, researchers, and decision-makers to share their experiences living and working in various parts of Sydney that are undergoing rapid change. The site of our project – Carrington Road, Marrickville in Sydney’s inner-west – has been earmarked for major redevelopment in coming years and is quickly becoming a flashpoint for the debates that permeate throughout the whole of Sydney: housing affordability, employment accessibility, gentrification and displacement. To date, public engagement and consultation regarding proposed development at Carrington Road has been limited. A major landholder in the area has engaged a consultancy firm to establish a community reference group (CRG) the help guide the project. The CRG arose after public outcry at an original $1.3 billion proposal to build 2,616 units in twenty towers of up to 105m in height (up to thirty-five storeys) in a predominantly low-rise residential suburb. Save Marrickville, a community group created in response to the proposal, has representatives on this reference group, and has endeavoured to make this process public. Ruming (181) has described these forms of consultation as “post-political,” stating thatin a universe of consensual decision-making among diverse interests, spaces for democratic contest and antagonistic politics are downplayed and technocratic policy development is deployed to support market and development outcomes.Given the notable deficit of spaces for democratic contest, Field Trip was devised as a way to reframe the debate outside of State- and developer-led consultation regimes that guide participants towards accepting the supposed inevitability of redevelopment. We invited a number of people affected by the proposed plans to speak during the walking tour at a location of their choosing, to discuss the work they do, the effect that redevelopment would have on their work, and their hopes and plans for the future. The walking tour was advertised publicly and the talks were recorded, edited and released as freely available podcasts. The proposed redevelopment of Carrington Road provided us with a unique opportunity to develop and operate our own walking tour. The linear street created an obvious “circuit” to the tour – up one side of the road, and down the other. We selected speakers based on pre-existing relationships, some formed during prior rounds of research (Gibson et al.). Speakers included a local Aboriginal elder, a representative from the Marrickville Historical Society, two workers (who also gave tours of their workplaces), the Lead Heritage Adviser at Sydney Water, who gave us a tour of the Carrington Road pumping station, and a representative from the Save Marrickville residents’ group. Whilst this provided a number of perspectives on the day, regrettably some groups were unrepresented, most notably the perspective of migrant groups who have a long-standing association with industrial precincts in Marrickville. It is hoped that further community input and collaboration in future iterations of Field Trip will address these issues of representation in community-led walking tours.A number of new understandings became apparent during the walking tour. For instance, the heritage-listed Carrington Road sewage pumping station, which is of “historic and aesthetic significance”, is unable to cope with the proposed level of residential development. According to Philip Bennett, Lead Heritage Adviser at Sydney Water, the best way to maintain this piece of heritage infrastructure is to keep it running. While this issue had been discussed in private meetings between Sydney Water and the developer, there is no formal mechanism to make this expert knowledge public or accessible. Similarly, through the Acknowledgement of Country for Field Trip, undertaken by Donna Ingram, Cultural Representative and a member of the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council, it became clear that the local Indigenous community had not been consulted in the development proposals for Carrington Road. This information, while not necessary secret, had also not been made public. Finally, the inclusion of knowledgeable local workers whose businesses are located on Carrington Road provided an insight into the “everyday.” They talked of community and collaboration, of site-specificity, the importance of clustering within their niche industries, and their fears for of displacement should redevelopment proceed.Via a community-led, participatory walking tour like Field Trip, threads of knowledge and new information are uncovered. These help create new spatial stories and readings of the landscape, broadening the scope of possibility for democratic participation in cities. Figure 3: Donna Ingram at Field Trip 2018.Tactical Walking, Tactical Media Stories connected to walking provide an opportunity for people to read the landscape differently (Mitchell). One of the goals of Field Trip was to begin a public knowledge exchange about Carrington Road so that spatial stories could be shared, and new readings of urban development could spread beyond the confines of the self-contained tour. Once shared, this knowledge becomes a story, and once remixed into existing stories and integrated into the way we understand the neighbourhood, a collective spatial practice is generated. “Every story is a travel story – a spatial practice”, says de Certeau in “Spatial Stories”. “In reality, they organise walks” (72). As well as taking a tactical approach to walking, we took a tactical approach to the mediation of the knowledge, by recording and broadcasting the voices on the walk and feeding information to a publicly accessible wiki. The term “tactical media” is an extension of de Certeau’s concept of tactics. David Garcia and Geert Lovink applied de Certeau’s concept of tactics to the field of media activism in their manifesto of tactical media, identifying a class of producers who amplify temporary reversals in the flow of power by exploiting the spaces, channels and platforms necessary for their practices. Tactical media has been used since the late nineties to help explain a range of open-source practices that appropriate technological tools for political purposes. While pointing out the many material distinctions between different types of tactical media projects within the arts, Rita Raley describes them as “forms of critical intervention, dissent and resistance” (6). The term has also been adopted by media activists engaged in a range of practices all over the world, including the Tactical Technology Collective. For Field Trip, tactical media is a way of creating representations that help navigate neighbourhoods as well as alternative political processes that shape them. In this sense, tactical representations do not “offer the omniscient point of view we associate with Cartesian cartographic practice” (Raley 2). Rather these representations are politically subjective systems of navigation that make visible hidden information and connect people to the decisions affecting their lives. Conclusion We have shown that the walking tour can be a tourist attraction, a catalyst to the transformation of urban space through gentrification, and an activist intervention into processes of urban renewal that exclude people and alternative ways of being in the city. This article presents practice-led research through the design of Field Trip. By walking collectively, we have focused on tactical ways of opening up participation in the future of neighbourhoods, and more broadly in designing the city. 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A common criticism of the rhythm video games genre — including series like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, is that playing musical simulation games is a waste of time when you could be playing an actual guitar and learning a real skill. A more serious criticism of games cultures draws attention to the degree of e-waste they produce. E-waste or electronic waste includes mobiles phones, computers, televisions and other electronic devices, containing toxic chemicals and metals whose landfill, recycling and salvaging all produce distinct environmental and social problems. The e-waste produced by games like Guitar Hero is obvious in the regular flow of merchandise transforming computer and video games stores into simulation music stores, filled with replica guitars, drum kits, microphones and other products whose half-lives are short and whose obsolescence is anticipated in the annual cycles of consumption and disposal. This paper explores the connection between e-waste and obsolescence in the games industry, and argues for the further consideration of consumers as part of the solution to the problem of e-waste. It uses a case study of the PC digital distribution software platform, Steam, to suggest that the digital distribution of games may offer an alternative model to market driven software and hardware obsolescence, and more generally, that such software platforms might be a place to support cultures of consumption that delay rather than promote hardware obsolescence and its inevitability as e-waste. The question is whether there exists a potential for digital distribution to be a means of not only eliminating the need to physically transport commodities (its current 'green' benefit), but also for supporting consumer practices that further reduce e-waste. The games industry relies on a rapid production and innovation cycle, one that actively enforces hardware obsolescence. Current video game consoles, including the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii, are the seventh generation of home gaming consoles to appear within forty years, and each generation is accompanied by an immense international transportation of games hardware, software (in various storage formats) and peripherals. Obsolescence also occurs at the software or content level and is significant because the games industry as a creative industry is dependent on the extensive management of multiple intellectual properties. The computing and video games software industry operates a close partnership with the hardware industry, and as such, software obsolescence directly contributes to hardware obsolescence. The obsolescence of content and the redundancy of the methods of policing its scarcity in the marketplace has been accelerated and altered by the processes of disintermediation with a range of outcomes (Flew). The music industry is perhaps the most advanced in terms of disintermediation with digital distribution at the center of the conflict between the legitimate and unauthorised access to intellectual property. This points to one issue with the hypothesis that digital distribution can lead to a reduction in hardware obsolescence, as the marketplace leader and key online distributor of music, Apple, is also the major producer of new media technologies and devices that are the paragon of stylistic obsolescence. Stylistic obsolescence, in which fashion changes products across seasons of consumption, has long been observed as the dominant form of scaled industrial innovation (Slade). Stylistic obsolescence is differentiated from mechanical or technological obsolescence as the deliberate supersedence of products by more advanced designs, better production techniques and other minor innovations. The line between the stylistic and technological obsolescence is not always clear, especially as reduced durability has become a powerful market strategy (Fitzpatrick). This occurs where the design of technologies is subsumed within the discourses of manufacturing, consumption and the logic of planned obsolescence in which the product or parts are intended to fail, degrade or under perform over time. It is especially the case with signature new media technologies such as laptop computers, mobile phones and portable games devices. Gamers are as guilty as other consumer groups in contributing to e-waste as participants in the industry's cycles of planned obsolescence, but some of them complicate discussions over the future of obsolescence and e-waste. Many gamers actively work to forestall the obsolescence of their games: they invest time in the play of older games (“retrogaming”) they donate labor and creative energy to the production of user-generated content as a means of sustaining involvement in gaming communities; and they produce entirely new game experiences for other users, based on existing software and hardware modifications known as 'mods'. With Guitar Hero and other 'rhythm' games it would be easy to argue that the hardware components of this genre have only one future: as waste. Alternatively, we could consider the actual lifespan of these objects (including their impact as e-waste) and the roles they play in the performances and practices of communities of gamers. For example, the Elmo Guitar Hero controller mod, the Tesla coil Guitar Hero controller interface, the Rock Band Speak n' Spellbinder mashup, the multiple and almost sacrilegious Fender guitar hero mods, the Guitar Hero Portable Turntable Mod and MAKE magazine's Trumpet Hero all indicate a significant diversity of user innovation, community formation and individual investment in the post-retail life of computer and video game hardware. Obsolescence is not just a problem for the games industry but for the computing and electronics industries more broadly as direct contributors to the social and environmental cost of electrical waste and obsolete electrical equipment. Planned obsolescence has long been the experience of gamers and computer users, as the basis of a utopian mythology of upgrades (Dovey and Kennedy). For PC users the upgrade pathway is traversed by the consumption of further hardware and software post initial purchase in a cycle of endless consumption, acquisition and waste (as older parts are replaced and eventually discarded). The accumulation and disposal of these cultural artefacts does not devalue or accrue in space or time at the same rate (Straw) and many users will persist for years, gradually upgrading and delaying obsolescence and even perpetuate the circulation of older cultural commodities. Flea markets and secondhand fairs are popular sites for the purchase of new, recent, old, and recycled computer hardware, and peripherals. Such practices and parallel markets support the strategies of 'making do' described by De Certeau, but they also continue the cycle of upgrade and obsolescence, and they are still consumed as part of the promise of the 'new', and the desire of a purchase that will finally 'fix' the users' computer in a state of completion (29). The planned obsolescence of new media technologies is common, but its success is mixed; for example, support for Microsoft's operating system Windows XP was officially withdrawn in April 2009 (Robinson), but due to the popularity in low cost PC 'netbooks' outfitted with an optimised XP operating system and a less than enthusiastic response to the 'next generation' Windows Vista, XP continues to be popular. Digital Distribution: A Solution? Gamers may be able to reduce the accumulation of e-waste by supporting the disintermediation of the games retail sector by means of online distribution. Disintermediation is the establishment of a direct relationship between the creators of content and their consumers through products and services offered by content producers (Flew 201). The move to digital distribution has already begun to reduce the need to physically handle commodities, but this currently signals only further support of planned, stylistic and technological obsolescence, increasing the rate at which the commodities for recording, storing, distributing and exhibiting digital content become e-waste. Digital distribution is sometimes overlooked as a potential means for promoting communities of user practice dedicated to e-waste reduction, at the same time it is actively employed to reduce the potential for the unregulated appropriation of content and restrict post-purchase sales through Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies. Distributors like Amazon.com continue to pursue commercial opportunities in linking the user to digital distribution of content via exclusive hardware and software technologies. The Amazon e-book reader, the Kindle, operates via a proprietary mobile network using a commercially run version of the wireless 3G protocols. The e-book reader is heavily encrypted with Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies and exclusive digital book formats designed to enforce current copyright restrictions and eliminate second-hand sales, lending, and further post-purchase distribution. The success of this mode of distribution is connected to Amazon's ability to tap both the mainstream market and the consumer demand for the less-than-popular; those books, movies, music and television series that may not have been 'hits' at the time of release. The desire to revisit forgotten niches, such as B-sides, comics, books, and older video games, suggests Chris Anderson, linked with so-called “long tail” economics. Recently Webb has queried the economic impact of the Long Tail as a business strategy, but does not deny the underlying dynamics, which suggest that content does not obsolesce in any straightforward way. Niche markets for older content are nourished by participatory cultures and Web 2.0 style online services. A good example of the Long Tail phenomenon is the recent case of the 1971 book A Lion Called Christian, by Anthony Burke and John Rendall, republished after the author's film of a visit to a resettled Christian in Africa was popularised on YouTube in 2008. Anderson's Long Tail theory suggests that over time a large number of items, each with unique rather than mass histories, will be subsumed as part of a larger community of consumers, including fans, collectors and everyday users with a long term interest in their use and preservation. If digital distribution platforms can reduce e-waste, they can perhaps be fostered by to ensuring digital consumers have access to morally and ethically aware consumer decisions, but also that they enjoy traditional consumer freedoms, such as the right to sell on and change or modify their property. For it is not only the fixation on the 'next generation' that contributes to obsolescence, but also technologies like DRM systems that discourage second hand sales and restrict modification. The legislative upgrades, patches and amendments to copyright law that have attempted to maintain the law's effectiveness in competing with peer-to-peer networks have supported DRM and other intellectual property enforcement technologies, despite the difficulties that owners of intellectual property have encountered with the effectiveness of DRM systems (Moore, Creative). The games industry continues to experiment with DRM, however, this industry also stands out as one of the few to have significantly incorporated the user within the official modes of production (Moore, Commonising). Is the games industry capable (or willing) of supporting a digital delivery system that attempts to minimise or even reverse software and hardware obsolescence? We can try to answer this question by looking in detail at the biggest digital distributor of PC games, Steam. Steam Figure 1: The Steam Application user interface retail section Steam is a digital distribution system designed for the Microsoft Windows operating system and operated by American video game development company and publisher, Valve Corporation. Steam combines online games retail, DRM technologies and internet-based distribution services with social networking and multiplayer features (in-game voice and text chat, user profiles, etc) and direct support for major games publishers, independent producers, and communities of user-contributors (modders). Steam, like the iTunes games store, Xbox Live and other digital distributors, provides consumers with direct digital downloads of new, recent and classic titles that can be accessed remotely by the user from any (internet equipped) location. Steam was first packaged with the physical distribution of Half Life 2 in 2004, and the platform's eventual popularity is tied to the success of that game franchise. Steam was not an optional component of the game's installation and many gamers protested in various online forums, while the platform was treated with suspicion by the global PC games press. It did not help that Steam was at launch everything that gamers take objection to: a persistent and initially 'buggy' piece of software that sits in the PC's operating system and occupies limited memory resources at the cost of hardware performance. Regular updates to the Steam software platform introduced social network features just as mainstream sites like MySpace and Facebook were emerging, and its popularity has undergone rapid subsequent growth. Steam now eclipses competitors with more than 20 million user accounts (Leahy) and Valve Corporation makes it publicly known that Steam collects large amounts of data about its users. This information is available via the public player profile in the community section of the Steam application. It includes the average number of hours the user plays per week, and can even indicate the difficulty the user has in navigating game obstacles. Valve reports on the number of users on Steam every two hours via its web site, with a population on average between one and two million simultaneous users (Valve, Steam). We know these users’ hardware profiles because Valve Corporation makes the results of its surveillance public knowledge via the Steam Hardware Survey. Valve’s hardware survey itself conceptualises obsolescence in two ways. First, it uses the results to define the 'cutting edge' of PC technologies and publishing the standards of its own high end production hardware on the companies blog. Second, the effect of the Survey is to subsequently define obsolescent hardware: for example, in the Survey results for April 2009, we can see that the slight majority of users maintain computers with two central processing units while a significant proportion (almost one third) of users still maintained much older PCs with a single CPU. Both effects of the Survey appear to be well understood by Valve: the Steam Hardware Survey automatically collects information about the community's computer hardware configurations and presents an aggregate picture of the stats on our web site. The survey helps us make better engineering and gameplay decisions, because it makes sure we're targeting machines our customers actually use, rather than measuring only against the hardware we've got in the office. We often get asked about the configuration of the machines we build around the office to do both game and Steam development. We also tend to turn over machines in the office pretty rapidly, at roughly every 18 months. (Valve, Team Fortress) Valve’s support of older hardware might counter perceptions that older PCs have no use and begins to reverse decades of opinion regarding planned and stylistic obsolescence in the PC hardware and software industries. Equally significant to the extension of the lives of older PCs is Steam's support for mods and its promotion of user generated content. By providing software for mod creation and distribution, Steam maximises what Postigo calls the development potential of fan-programmers. One of the 'payoffs' in the information/access exchange for the user with Steam is the degree to which Valve's End-User Licence Agreement (EULA) permits individuals and communities of 'modders' to appropriate its proprietary game content for use in the creation of new games and games materials for redistribution via Steam. These mods extend the play of the older games, by requiring their purchase via Steam in order for the individual user to participate in the modded experience. If Steam is able to encourage this kind of appropriation and community support for older content, then the potential exists for it to support cultures of consumption and practice of use that collaboratively maintain, extend, and prolong the life and use of games. Further, Steam incorporates the insights of “long tail” economics in a purely digital distribution model, in which the obsolescence of 'non-hit' game titles can be dramatically overturned. Published in November 2007, Unreal Tournament 3 (UT3) by Epic Games, was unappreciated in a market saturated with games in the first-person shooter genre. Epic republished UT3 on Steam 18 months later, making the game available to play for free for one weekend, followed by discounted access to new content. The 2000 per cent increase in players over the game's 'free' trial weekend, has translated into enough sales of the game for Epic to no longer consider the release a commercial failure: It’s an incredible precedent to set: making a game a success almost 18 months after a poor launch. It’s something that could only have happened now, and with a system like Steam...Something that silently updates a purchase with patches and extra content automatically, so you don’t have to make the decision to seek out some exciting new feature: it’s just there anyway. Something that, if you don’t already own it, advertises that game to you at an agreeably reduced price whenever it loads. Something that enjoys a vast community who are in turn plugged into a sea of smaller relevant communities. It’s incredibly sinister. It’s also incredibly exciting... (Meer) Clearly concerns exist about Steam's user privacy policy, but this also invites us to the think about the economic relationship between gamers and games companies as it is reconfigured through the private contractual relationship established by the EULA which accompanies the digital distribution model. The games industry has established contractual and licensing arrangements with its consumer base in order to support and reincorporate emerging trends in user generated cultures and other cultural formations within its official modes of production (Moore, "Commonising"). When we consider that Valve gets to tax sales of its virtual goods and can further sell the information farmed from its users to hardware manufacturers, it is reasonable to consider the relationship between the corporation and its gamers as exploitative. Gabe Newell, the Valve co-founder and managing director, conversely believes that people are willing to give up personal information if they feel it is being used to get better services (Leahy). If that sentiment is correct then consumers may be willing to further trade for services that can reduce obsolescence and begin to address the problems of e-waste from the ground up. Conclusion Clearly, there is a potential for digital distribution to be a means of not only eliminating the need to physically transport commodities but also supporting consumer practices that further reduce e-waste. For an industry where only a small proportion of the games made break even, the successful relaunch of older games content indicates Steam's capacity to ameliorate software obsolescence. Digital distribution extends the use of commercially released games by providing disintermediated access to older and user-generated content. For Valve, this occurs within a network of exchange as access to user-generated content, social networking services, and support for the organisation and coordination of communities of gamers is traded for user-information and repeat business. Evidence for whether this will actively translate to an equivalent decrease in the obsolescence of game hardware might be observed with indicators like the Steam Hardware Survey in the future. The degree of potential offered by digital distribution is disrupted by a range of technical, commercial and legal hurdles, primary of which is the deployment of DRM, as part of a range of techniques designed to limit consumer behaviour post purchase. While intervention in the form of legislation and radical change to the insidious nature of electronics production is crucial in order to achieve long term reduction in e-waste, the user is currently considered only in terms of 'ethical' consumption and ultimately divested of responsibility through participation in corporate, state and civil recycling and e-waste management operations. The message is either 'careful what you purchase' or 'careful how you throw it away' and, like DRM, ignores the connections between product, producer and user and the consumer support for environmentally, ethically and socially positive production, distribrution, disposal and recycling. This article, has adopted a different strategy, one that sees digital distribution platforms like Steam, as capable, if not currently active, in supporting community practices that should be seriously considered in conjunction with a range of approaches to the challenge of obsolescence and e-waste. 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