The Vision for the Future of Mobility

The automotive industry is going through a transformation. Disruptive technologies and tools are shifting the business model from one of automobiles to one of mobility. To accomplish this shift, automotive companies are embracing acquisitions and partnerships. In a time when the consumer electronics industry is delivering new products to market at a rapid rate, automotive manufacturers must identify ways of getting new products and features to customers faster and with high quality to maintain or increase market share.  We provide an analysis of interviews with global automotive company professionals to understand the impact that quality requirements have on innovation and the advanced product design process.   The research contributes to the literature on innovation and quality, identifying organizational behaviors and practices that facilitate or obstruct the development of high quality fast-to-market innovations, particularly in the area of mobility

Improved Stabilization Criteria for Neutral Time-Delay Systems

This paper addresses the stabilization conditions for neutral systems with mixed time delays. By constructing a novel class of Lyapunov functionals which contains an augmented Lyapunov functional, using a new class of improved Jensen's like inequalities, two improved delay-dependent stability criteria are firstly established. Next, state feedback controllers are designed according to the stability conditions in different cases. Finally, five numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the theoretical results

How does adoption of labor saving agricultural technologies affect intrahousehold resource allocations? The case of push-pull technology in Western Kenya

Considerable research documents why women farmers have lower technology adoption rates than men farmers, but relatively little is known about what happens within a household after technology uptake. This study contributes through an investigation of the intrahousehold distribution of benefits and costs of agricultural technology adoption in western Kenya. Using gender-disaggregated data and an endogenous switching regression approach, we elucidate the causal effects of push pull technology (PPT) adoption on intrahousehold labor and expenditure allocation. Results show that adoption increases household labor allocation for harvesting of maize, the staple crop, but reduces the labor required for other tasks (e.g., ploughing and weeding). In net, the technology is labor saving, with men experiencing a slightly greater workload reduction than women. In terms of expenditure impacts, PPT uptake increases household expenditures on children’s education and consumption goods commonly associated with female preferences. Study findings support wider uptake of PPT to trigger gains in social and economic wellbeing for both men and women farmers. Implications for policy and practice are discussed