Fully-Automated Packaging Structure Recognition of Standardized Logistics Assets on Images

Innerhalb einer logistischen Lieferkette müssen vielfältige Transportgüter an zahlreichen Knotenpunkten bearbeitet, wiedererkannt und kontrolliert werden. Dabei ist oft ein großer manueller Aufwand erforderlich, um die Paketidentität oder auch die Packstruktur zu erkennen oder zu verifizieren. Solche Schritte sind notwendig, um beispielsweise eine Lieferung auf ihre Vollständigkeit hin zu überprüfen. Wir untersuchen die Konzeption und Implementierung eines Verfahrens zur vollständigen Automatisierung der Erkennung der Packstruktur logistischer Sendungen. Ziel dieses Verfahrens ist es, basierend auf einem einzigen Farbbild, eine oder mehrere Transporteinheiten akkurat zu lokalisieren und relevante Charakteristika, wie beispielsweise die Gesamtzahl oder die Anordnung der enthaltenen Packstücke, zu erkennen. Wir stellen eine aus mehreren Komponenten bestehende Bildverarbeitungs-Pipeline vor, die diese Aufgabe der Packstrukturerkennung lösen soll. Unsere erste Implementierung des Verfahrens verwendet mehrere Deep Learning Modelle, genauer gesagt Convolutional Neural Networks zur Instanzsegmentierung, sowie Bildverarbeitungsmethoden und heuristische Komponenten. Wir verwenden einen eigenen Datensatz von Echtbildern aus einer Logistik-Umgebung für Training und Evaluation unseres Verfahrens. Wir zeigen, dass unsere Lösung in der Lage ist, die korrekte Packstruktur in etwa 85% der Testfälle unseres Datensatzes zu erkennen, und sogar eine höhere Genauigkeit erzielt wird, wenn nur die meist vorkommenden Packstücktypen betrachtet werden. Für eine ausgewählte Bilderkennungs-Komponente unseres Algorithmus vergleichen wir das Potenzial der Verwendung weniger rechenintensiver, eigens designter Bildverarbeitungsmethoden mit den zuvor implementierten Deep Learning Verfahren. Aus dieser Untersuchung schlussfolgern wir die bessere Eignung der lernenden Verfahren, welche wir auf deren sehr gute Fähigkeit zur Generalisierung zurückführen. Außerdem formulieren wir das Problem der Objekt-Lokalisierung in Bildern anhand selbst gewählter Merkmalspunkte, wie beispielsweise Eckpunkte logistischer Transporteinheiten. Ziel hiervon ist es, Objekte präziser zu lokalisieren, als dies insbesondere im Vergleich zur Verwendung herkömmlicher umgebender Rechtecke möglich ist, während gleichzeitig die Objektform durch bekanntes Vorwissen zur Objektgeometrie forciert wird. Wir stellen ein spezifisches Deep Learning Modell vor, welches die beschriebene Aufgabe löst im Fall von Objekten, welche durch vier Eckpunkte beschrieben werden können. Das dabei entwickelte Modell mit Namen TetraPackNet wird evaluiert mittels allgemeiner und anwendungsbezogener Metriken. Wir belegen die Anwendbarkeit der Lösung im Falle unserer Bilderkennungs-Pipeline und argumentieren die Relevanz für andere Anwendungsfälle, wie beispielweise Kennzeichenerkennung

Factories of the Future

Engineering; Industrial engineering; Production engineerin

Textual Analysis of Environmental Compliance Assessment Program Findings

The United States Air Force (USAF) is committed to assessing environmental compliance; this is achieved in the USAF through the Environmental Compliance Assessment Management Program (ECAMP). These ECAMP audits are designed strictly to assess compliance performance at one point-in-time. They are not intended to assess underlying environmental management systems. This study provides insight into the USAF Environmental Management System (EMS) through a textual analysis of ECAMP data. The analysis discovers eleven categories that emerged from the data: performance, communication, documentation, coordination, training, guidance, notification, resource, human resource, material resource, and financial resource. These categories display a hierarchical relationship. This hierarchical structure exhibits more categories in communication-related definitions. The evidence suggests that the communication-related category accounts for the largest number of environmental compliance deficiencies. This study indicates that assessors should be provided training that enables them to document environmental audit findings in a manner that allows the data to be used to understand and improve existing EMSs

Factories of the Future

Engineering; Industrial engineering; Production engineerin

Analysing sawnwood supply distribution in Finnish sawmilling industry with database approach

The thesis analyses sawnwood supply in the Finnish sawmilling industry using the database approach. The analyses help to understand the supply and demand of sawnwood between customers and sawmills. In the analyses two databases were used to examine the supply of sawnwood. In addition, the following three criteria were used: 1) quantity, 2) price and 3) quality. The study focused on a sample of 63,774 sales of over 19 million m3 sawnwood from 1995 to 2000. Quality in the thesis is defined in terms of dimensions, quality classes, end moisture contents and user segments. The coniferous species in the sample were Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) and Norway spruce (Picea abies). Additionally, time series data about the consumption of coniferous sawnwood from the years between 1961 and 2002 was used in the study. The most essential new result of the thesis was that the features of sawnwood as a commodity product were clear in the sample from 1995 to 2000. Nevertheless, the marketing and the operations of the Finnish sawmilling industry at the time emphasised the features related to special and customer products. In 2002, the global consumption of coniferous sawnwood (CSW) was 283 million m3. The same year in Finland, the consumption of sawnwood increased to 1.02 m3 per capita, the highest in the world. Finland experienced a structural change in the sawnwood consumption between the periods of 1961-1996 and 1997-2002. From 1995 to 2000, sawnwood supply and sales from Finnish sawmills were largely limited to only a few volume dimensions. For pine, 20% of the number of dimensions encompassed 91% of volume and 90% of value. For spruce, 20% of the number of dimensions covered 82% of volume and 83% of value. The Pareto principle assumption applied to the distribution of sawnwood dimensions from the quantity (m3) and value (€) perspectives. There was a sawnwood market trend towards smaller batch sizes. It was observed that the end moisture content class MC 18% has a dominant position – over 90% – in the end moisture content distribution. The results supported the view that sawnwood supply consists mainly of a limited number standard products. Dimensions had big differences specific to country and species of timber. The basis price system worked by dimension, quality class and species with a defined basis of pine 50 × 150 mm U/S or similar. This system was used in the pricing of sawnwood in the Finnish sawmilling industry in 2000. In the analyses, the supply of sawnwood was divided according to end moisture content classes, countries, dimensions and segments. In the supply analyses, standard dimensions and qualities were linked with the standard moisture content classes as MC 18%. The results showed that the supply was greatest for standardised sawnwood. The supply and demand for special qualities increased particularly for pine. There was a correlation between sawnwood export countries, moisture content classes and end-user segments. The results showed that sawnwood user segmentation was still unfinished. The thesis seeks to present such methods that give relevant information to sawmills and other segments of the forest cluster. These useful methods include logistic regressions and other statistical tools. Applying these tools can give new insight into business management as well as the dynamics of the demand for sawnwood and other wood products.reviewe

Gender relations within a changing spatial division of labour

Recent industrial location theory argues non-labour factors affecting changes in the spatial division of labour are of diminishing importance since their spatial components are becoming relatively homogeneous. Emphasis upon labour, however, equally tends to view it as fairly homogeneous - spatially differentiated only in terms of skills (taken as given), cost, militancy etc derived from local variation in workforce reproduction; itself influenced by local industrial history. Interest in unique local forms of labour often ignores a major division within labour - gender. It is argued that the social construction of gender and gender relations, like labour, are reproduced in place and thus spatially and temporally differentiated. A comparison of women's current and historical structural position in the labour force reveals very little structural change over time, despite economic restructuring and the less spatially uneven pattern of women's paid work. Against this scenario, mainstream economic and sociological explanations for sex segregation are subjected to critiques that expose the way labour market theories take sex discrimination in paid work and gender for granted. Whilst feminists have shifted the problematic to the causes rather than effects of sex discrimination and segregation, those accounts rarely incorporate historical and/or spatial dimensions. Equally, geographers rarely encompass feminist perspectives in the analysis of socio-spatial processes. A framework is developed to synthesize these spatial and feminist perspectives so that spatial and temporal dimensions of the social construction of gender and gender relations within production relations can be embraced. Storper & Walker's notion of labour, created and reproduced in place, is placed within Young's conception of a 'gender division of labour' which, under capitalism, is the division of work and home, production and reproduction. To illustrate variations over time and space, snapshots of two regions, the Cotton region of Lancashire and the Potteries of N. Staffordshire are analysed at two distant points in time: during industrialisation and, through case studies of industries, for the contemporary period of economic restructuring. Whilst the domestic side of the division between home and work is integral to the notion of a 'gender division of labour', the focus here is upon the spatial division of paid labour and the intra-workforce side of that equation. Further, within production, the case studies are drawn from manufacturing activities because it is these, rather than more spatially homogeneous service employment, which still differentiate between places. A four-way comparison along the axes of space and time demonstrates that gender construction and relations do vary within and across regions. The two study regions throw up a bewildering amalgam of attributes, whose content and gender ascription varies over time and space. These observed dynamic features is, however, the surface phenomena - the effects rather than causes. More important is the way these variations arise out of spatial variations in the pattern and mix of industries within regions and the corresponding sexual composition of the workforces that comprise these industries

The communicative theory of Terminology (CTT) applied to the development of a corpus-based specialised dictionary of the ceramics industry

Esta tesis es el resultado de un proyecto destinado a la creación de un diccionario activo, bilingüe (español-inglés; inglés-español) y especializado de la industria cerámica y azulejera con la Teoría Comunicativa de la Terminología como su pilar teórico principal. Debido al posicionamiento teórico adoptado, la investigación aquí presentada ha partido de un estudio de corpus (compilado ad hoc) en el que los términos han sido analizados in vivo y caracterizados de acuerdo al ¿habitat¿ en el que se hallan en el texto especializado. Así pues, la aproximación hecha al estudio de la terminología industrial cerámica hace pertinente el uso de la etiqueta ¿lexicografía especializada¿ a la hora de referirnos a un trabajo como éste en el que se ha tratado de ir más allá de la práctica terminográfica para dar lugar a un estudio en el que se prima el contexto, las asociaciones naturales de los términos (colocaciones) y la naturaleza comunicativa de la terminología. De este modo, en esta tesis se ha presentado de manera progresiva, además de un marco teórico detallado y coherente con el fin último de la investigación, la metodología utilizada para la elaboración del diccionario en curso, ampliamente basada en el uso de programas informáticos tanto para la explotación del corpus (WordSmith Tools 4.0), como para la creación de la base de datos terminológica (TermStar XV) y la generación de entradas finales (GENDIC).Así pues, esta tesis presenta de manera progresiva los resultados obtenidos en cada etapa del método de trabajo y 4,000 entradas finales (en este caso del inglés al español) correspondientes a las letras A, B, N, O, U y V del diccionario.This PhD dissertation is the result of an ongoing process aimed at the creation of a bilingual corpus-based specialised active dictionary of the ceramic industry, with the Communicative Theory of Terminology (CTT) as its mainstay. According to the grounding principles of the CTT, this research has departed form a corpus-based approach in which terms have been analysed in vivo and characterised from the natural habitat in which they are given in specialised communication/discourse. In this light, it has been put forward how the study of terms – made possible thanks to the activity of compiling and describing them, called terminography – may be complemented by the wider projection of specialised lexicography for the compilation and elaboration of LSP, user-oriented and user-friendly quality products in the form of dictionaries. This specialised lexicographical dimension of the work has necessarily implied the need to renew the concept of speciality language dictionaries applied to the ceramic industry and has given way to the creation of a (prospective) active dictionary in this field with a marked emphasis on context. Accordingly, the importance of pragmatic aspects in a work of this sort, has made it necessary to undertake an in-depth revision and analysis of the socio-economic context for the research in order be able to establish and solve the specific terminological needs that the ceramic industrial discourse community may find. On the basis of this theoretical framework, the method of study followed for the development of the prospective dictionary has comprised 8 broad stages: the stage of work preparation and corpus compilation, the elaboration of the field diagram, the stage of documentary corpus management, term extraction, data processing, revision and normalisation and finally, the edition stage. Two main types of results have been presented: those obtained through work in progress in the different stages of the method and final ones strictly speaking, that is, 4,000 English-Spanish entries in their final format (as they will appear in the prospective dictionary) belonging to the letters A, B, N, O, U and V of a complete dictionary which will include a total of 26,000 entries