Feasibility study of an Integrated Program for Aerospace-vehicle Design (IPAD) system. Volume 6: Implementation schedule, development costs, operational costs, benefit assessment, impact on company organization, spin-off assessment, phase 1, tasks 3 to 8

A baseline implementation plan, including alternative implementation approaches for critical software elements and variants to the plan, was developed. The basic philosophy was aimed at: (1) a progressive release of capability for three major computing systems, (2) an end product that was a working tool, (3) giving participation to industry, government agencies, and universities, and (4) emphasizing the development of critical elements of the IPAD framework software. The results of these tasks indicate an IPAD first release capability 45 months after go-ahead, a five year total implementation schedule, and a total developmental cost of 2027 man-months and 1074 computer hours. Several areas of operational cost increases were identified mainly due to the impact of additional equipment needed and additional computer overhead. The benefits of an IPAD system were related mainly to potential savings in engineering man-hours, reduction of design-cycle calendar time, and indirect upgrading of product quality and performance

Risk factors affecting the ability for earned value management to accurately assess the performance of infrastructure projects in Australia

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate a set of risk-related factors influencing the earned value management (EVM) concept as an assessment technique in evaluating the progress of modern sustainable infrastructure construction projects. Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative research approach has been adopted for identifying risk-related factors influencing EVM concept from a literature review and through interviewing industry personnel, followed by an inductive process to form sets of key factors and their measuring items. Findings – EVM is a common method for assessing project performance. A weakness of this approach is that EVM assessment in its current form does not measure the impact of a number of project performance factors that result from the complexity of modern infrastructure construction projects, and thus does not accurately assess their impact in this performance. This paper discusses and explains a range of potential risk factors to evaluating project performance such as sustainability, stakeholder requirements, communication, procurement strategy, weather, experience of staff, site condition, design issues, financial risk, subcontractor, government requirements and material. In addition, their measuring items were identified. Practical implications – This research assists projects managers to improve the evaluation process of infrastructure construction performance by incorporating a range of factors likely to impact on that performance and which are not included in current EVM calculations. Originality/value – This research addresses the need to include in the EVM calculation a range of risk factors affecting the performance of infrastructure projects in Australia and therefore makes this calculation a more reliable tool for assessing project performance

R&D cooperation versus R&D subcontracting: empirical evidence from French survey data.

This paper uses a survey of French firms active in R&D to identify the determinants of R&D outsourcing and of the ensuing trade-off between R&D subcontracting and R&D cooperation. Internal R&D expenditures increase both the probability of outsourcing and the number of R&D partners. Investment in fundamental R&D, group belonging, and the sector’s high R&D intensity positively influences the probability of R&D outsourcing but have less impact on the number of partners. R&D subcontracting is more likely than R&D cooperation when the relationship deals with generic, standardized R&D processes, as reflected in the influence of several qualitative proxies.R&D cooperation, R&D subcontracting, organizational choices.

Risk Adjustment and Reinsurance: A Work Plan for State Officials

Outlines the decisions and actions states need to take to implement the risk adjustment and reinsurance provisions of the 2010 health reform law, including risk adjustment model, reinsurance parameters, stakeholder engagement, and program administration

Skills development and recoding in engineering analysis and simulation : Industry needs

The EASIT2 project (Engineering Analysis and Simulation Innovation Transfer), funded under the European Union Lifelong Learning Programme, has the major goal to contribute to the competitiveness and quality of engineering, design and manufacturing in Europe through identifying the generic competencies that users of engineering analysis and simulation systems must possess. This competency framework will include a comprehensive Educational Base, a web-based interface compatible with other staff development systems, with links to associated resource material that engineers and analysts can use to develop and track their competencies. The project will also deliver an integrated Registered Analyst (RA) Scheme to provide recognition of achievement of these competencies. In order to help ensure that the deliverables of this project meet industry needs, a survey was undertaken and this paper summarises the findings of this survey. The survey comprised of an online questionnaire and was completed by 1094 respondents from 50 different countries. A large majority of respondents thought a system to define analyst skills and provide links to appropriate training resources would be useful. There was also strong support for a form of professional qualification in engineering analysis. The advantages to industry that these project deliverables would bring include incentives for staff development, marketing power and enhanced subcontractor qualification and internal resource management. The survey also provided a valuable insight into the current state of the engineering analysis and simulation industry. The most significant barriers to the effective use of engineering analysis were identified as recruitment of suitably qualified and experienced staff and a lack of analysis skills. “Pressure of work” was also identified as the most significant reason why organisations fail to get the most out of engineering analysis software. The findings of this survey are now being used in the development of the project deliverables to ensure that they meet the needs of industry as much as possible

Application of Subcontractor Selection Using Analytical Hierarchy Process Method in Ritz Garment

This research was conducted in Ritz Garment to determine the level of importance of the criteria and sub-criteria that are used for subcontractor selection for Ritz Garment, assess the performance of current and alternative subcontractors, and provide recommendations for Ritz Garment based on the subcontractor selection. To determine the importance of the criteria and sub-criteria and also to score alternatives towards each of the sub-criteria, decision-makers which are the manager and owner of Ritz Garment are interviewed as respondents to get their expert judgment. The interview will generate pairwise comparison for each criterion and sub-criteria from each respondent that will be averaged using geometric mean to get the numbers that will be used to calculate the weight of each criteria and sub-criteria. From the result of this research that is conducted using AHP method with the Expert Choice software, level of importance for each criterion and alternatives are obtained. The order of importance of criteria is Quality (0.296), Cost (0.290), Reliability (0.273), Delivery (0.080), and Flexibility (0.061). The sequence for sub-criteria Global Weight is Defect Rate (0.156), Trustworthy (0.154), Internal Cost (0.153), Conformance Quality (0.140), Product Price (0.137), Product Reliability (0.119), Customization (0.051), Compliance with Quantity (0.045), Compliance with Schedule (0.035), and Product Volume Changes (0.010). For the alternatives, the order of importance is Alternative Subcontractor 1 (7.667), Alternative Subcontractor 2 (0.7.314), Alternative Subcontractor 3 (7.099) and Current Subcontractor (6.266). From the result, it is concluded that Alternative Subcontractor 1 is the best subcontractor to replace Current Subcontractor. Keywords: garment industry, subcontractor selection, analytical hierarchy process, criteria, sub-criteria, best subcontractor, case stud

Photovoltaic system criteria documents. Volume 1: Guidelines for evaluating the management and operations planning of photovoltaic applications

Guidelines are provided to the Field Centers for organization, scheduling, project and cost control, and performance in the areas of project management and operations planning for Photovoltaics Test and Applications. These guidelines may be used in organizing a T and A Project Team for system design/test, site construction and operation, and as the basis for evaluating T and A proposals. The attributes are described for project management and operations planning to be used by the Field Centers. Specifically, all project management and operational issues affecting costs, schedules and performance of photovoltaic systems are addressed. Photovoltaic tests and applications include residential, intermediate load center, central station, and stand-alone systems. The sub-categories of system maturity considered are: Initial System Evaluation Experiments (ISEE); System Readiness Experiments (SRE); and Commercial Readiness Demonstration Projects (CRDP)

Requirements for building information modeling based lean production management systems for construction

Smooth flow of production in construction is hampered by disparity between individual trade teams' goals and the goals of stable production flow for the project as a whole. This is exacerbated by the difficulty of visualizing the flow of work in a construction project. While the addresses some of the issues in Building information modeling provides a powerful platform for visualizing work flow in control systems that also enable pull flow and deeper collaboration between teams on and off site. The requirements for implementation of a BIM-enabled pull flow construction management software system based on the Last Planner System™, called ‘KanBIM’, have been specified, and a set of functional mock-ups of the proposed system has been implemented and evaluated in a series of three focus group workshops. The requirements cover the areas of maintenance of work flow stability, enabling negotiation and commitment between teams, lean production planning with sophisticated pull flow control, and effective communication and visualization of flow. The evaluation results show that the system holds the potential to improve work flow and reduce waste by providing both process and product visualization at the work face

Identifying Success Factors in Construction Projects: A Case Study

© 2015 by the Project Management Institute. Published online in Wiley Online Library. Defining "project success" has been of interest for many years, and recent developments combine multiple measurable and psychosocial factors that add to this definition. There has also been research into success factors, but little research into the causal chains through which success emerges. Following the multi-dimensionality of "success," this article shows how success factors combine in complex interactions; it describes factors contributing to project performance by a company working on two major construction programs and shows how to map and analyze paths from root causes to success criteria. The study also identifies some specific factors - some generic, some context-dependent - none of these is uncommon but here they come together synergistically

Specification of vertical semantic consistency rules of UML class diagram refinement using logical approach

Unified Modelling Language (UML) is the most popular modelling language use for software design in software development industries with a class diagram being the most frequently use diagram. Despite the popularity of UML, it is being affected by inconsistency problems of its diagrams at the same or different abstraction levels. Inconsistency in UML is mostly caused by existence of various views on the same system and sometimes leads to potentially conflicting system specifications. In general, syntactic consistency can be automatically checked and therefore is supported by current UML Computer-aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools. Semantic consistency problems, unlike syntactic consistency problems, there exists no specific method for specifying semantic consistency rules and constraints. Therefore, this research has specified twenty-four abstraction rules of class‟s relation semantic among any three related classes of a refined class diagram to semantically equivalent relations of two of the classes using a logical approach. This research has also formalized three vertical semantic consistency rules of a class diagram refinement identified by previous researchers using a logical approach and a set of formalized abstraction rules. The results were successfully evaluated using hotel management system and passenger list system case studies and were found to be reliable and efficient