Service users as peer research interviewers: why bother?

Drawing on two studies completed within the social housing sector, this chapter asks if there are advantages to peer interviewing, whereby those currently or recently receiving services interview their peers as part of a research project. Contribution is made to the broader methodological debate of how service users should be involved in research about their lives. Along with contributions from a peer interviewer, we examine the benefits to peer interviewers themselves, and whether there are any positive differences for the people being interviewed. This chapter argues that there are clear methodological advantages to peer interviewing as it can lend vital insights from rapport with those often regarded as ‘hardest to reach’. The chapter also discusses peer interviewing in terms of strategic risk and limitations, as well as practical and ethical considerations. Ways of developing peer research in general are also suggested

Real time resource scheduling within a distributed collaborative design environment

Operational design co-ordination is provided by a Virtual Integration Platform (VIP) that is capable of scheduling and allocating design activities to organisationally and geographically distributed designers. To achieve this, the platform consists of a number of components that contribute to the engineering management and co-ordination of data, resources, activities, requirements and processes. The information required to schedule and allocate activities to designers is defined in terms of: the designers' capability to perform particular design activities; commitment in terms of the design activities that it is currently performing, and capacity to perform more than one design activity at the same time as well as the effect of increased capacity on capability. Previous approaches have been developed by the authors to automatically allocate resources to activities [1-3], however these approaches have generally been applied either within the context of real-time allocation of computational resources using automated design tools, or in the planning of human resources within future design projects and not for the real-time allocation of activities to a combination of human and computational resources. The procedure presented here is based upon this previous research and involves: the determination of the design activities that need to be undertaken on the basis of the goals that need to be achieved; identification of the resources that can undertake these design activities; and, the use of a genetic algorithm to optimally allocate the activities to the resources. Since the focus of the procedure is toward the real-time allocation of design activities to designers, additional human issues with respect to scheduling are considered. These human issues aspects include: consideration of the improvement in performance as a result of the experience gained from undertaking the activity; provision of a training period to allow inexperienced designers the opportunity to improve their performance without their performance being assessed; and the course of action to take when a designer is either unwilling or unable to perform an activity

Real-time co-ordinated resource management in a computational enviroment

Design co-ordination is an emerging engineering design management philosophy with its emphasis on timeliness and appropriateness. Furthermore, a key element of design coordination has been identified as resource management, the aim of which is to facilitate the optimised use of resources throughout a dynamic and changeable process. An approach to operational design co-ordination has been developed, which incorporates the appropriate techniques to ensure that the aim of co-ordinated resource management can be fulfilled. This approach has been realised within an agent-based software system, called the Design Coordination System (DCS), such that a computational design analysis can be managed in a coherent and co-ordinated manner. The DCS is applied to a computational analysis for turbine blade design provided by industry. The application of the DCS involves resources, i.e. workstations within a computer network, being utilised to perform the computational analysis involving the use of a suite of software tools to calculate stress and vibration characteristics of turbine blades. Furthermore, the application of the system shows that the utilisation of resources can be optimised throughout the computational design analysis despite the variable nature of the computer network

A methodology for design coordination in a distributed computing environment

At the conceptual stage of the design process it is increasingly common that analysis tools are involved in the evaluation of a large number of alternative designs. Designers use such analysis tools to assist with large scale concept evaluations and the prediction of good initial designs. Consequently there exists a need to coordinate these analysis tools to enable the early stage of design to be performed in a timely and efficient manner. This paper describes a generic methodology that allows the management and coordination of design analysis tools. A Computer Aided Design tool, namely the Design Coordination System (DCS), has been developed to assist the designer in performing computational analysis in a distributed computing environment. Within the DCS, a collection of design agents act as members of a multi-functional team operating in a cooperative and coordinated manner in order to satisfy the objective of efficiently performing the design analysis

A generic coordination approach applied to a manufacturing environment

This paper describes a generic coordination approach applied to the field of manufacturing engineering. The objective of the coordination mechanism with respect to this application is twofold. Firstly, it is shown that utilising the developed system can result in the efficient organisation of processes leading to a near optimum time taken to manufacture a number of artefacts. Secondly, successful operation of the system in this environment will demonstrate that the approach is generic in nature. The results already achieved using this system within a computational analysis environment supports this hypothesis

A methodology for prospective operational design co-ordination

Engineering companies are continually faced with the challenge of how best to utilise their design team given some design project. Decisions regarding how to distribute the project workload amongst the members of the design team are the responsibility of a project manager who, in order to do this, often relies upon previous experience and/or the support of some planning tool. Furthermore, a project manager rarely has the opportunity to assess the capability of the design team against the current work load in order to determine what, if any, alterations couldbe made to the team to facilitate appropriate reductions in project time and cost.This paper proposes a mathematical-based methodology aimed at identifying shortfalls in design teams, which if remedied would result in a more efficient project in terms of time and cost. The methodology provides a means of identifying those skills within the design team,with respect to the outstanding work load, in which improvements would have the greatest influence on reducing time and cost. In addition, the methodology employs a genetic algorithm for the purpose of scheduling tasks to be undertaken by potential design teams. The methodology is applied to two practical case studies provided by engineering industry.The first case study involves the assessment of a multi-disciplined design team consisting of single-skilled engineers. In contrast, the second case study entails the assessment of multiskilled engineers within a multi-disciplined design team. As a result of applying the methodology to the case studies, potential improvement to the design teams are identified and, subsequently, evaluated by observing their effects

Seminatrix, S. pygaea

Number of Pages: 5Integrative BiologyGeological Science

Real-time co-ordinated scheduling using a genetic algorithm

Real-time co-ordination is an emerging approach to operational engineering management aimed at being more comprehensive and widely applicable than existing approaches. Schedule management is a key characteristic of operational co-ordination related to managing the planning and dynamic assignment of tasks to resources, and the enactment of the resulting schedules, throughout a changeable process. This paper presents the application of an agent-oriented system, called the Design Co-ordination System, to an industrial case study in order to demonstrate the appropriate use of a genetic algorithm for the purpose of real-time scheduling. The application demonstrates that real-time co-ordinated scheduling can provide significant reductions in time to complete the computational design process

A robust design methodology suitable for application to one-off products

Robust design is an activity of fundamental importance when designing large, complex, one-off engineering products. Work is described which is concerned with the application of the theory of design of experiments and stochastic optimization methods to explore and optimize at the concept design stage. The discussion begins with a description of state-of-the-art stochastic techniques and their application to robust design. The content then focuses on a generic methodology which is capable of manipulating design algorithms that can be used to describe a design concept. An example is presented, demonstrating the use of the system for the robust design of a catamaran with respect to seakeeping

Comparative aspects of phytase and xylanase effects on performance, mineral digestibility, and ileal phytate degradation in broilers and turkeys

Two experiments were performed, using broilers or turkeys, each utilizing a 3 × 2 factorial arrangement, to compare their response to phytase and xylanase supplementation with growth performance, nutrient digestibility, and ileal phytate degradation as response criteria. For both experiments, 960 Ross 308 or 960 BUT 10 (0-day-old) birds were allocated to 6 treatments: (1) control diet, containing phytase at 500 FTU/kg; (2) the control diet with xylanase (16,000 BXU/kg); (3) the control diet supplemented on top with phytase (1,500 FTU/kg); (4) diet supplemented with 1,500 FTU/kg phytase and xylanase (16,000 BXU/kg); (5) the control diet supplemented with phytase (3,000 FTU/kg); and (6) diet supplemented with 3,000 FTU/kg phytase and xylanase (16,000 BXU/kg). Each treatment had 8 replicates of 20 birds each. Water and diets based on wheat, soybean meal, oilseed rape meal, and barley were available ad libitum. Body weight gain and feed intake were measured from 0 to 28 D, and feed conversion ratio (FCR) corrected for mortality was calculated. Ileal digestibility for dry matter and minerals on day 7 and 28 were analyzed in addition to levels of inositol phosphate esters (InsP6-3) and myo-inositol. Statistical comparisons were performed using ANOVA. Xylanase supplementation improved 28D FCR in broilers and turkeys. Increasing doses of phytase reduced FI and improved FCR only in broilers. In broilers, the age × phytase interaction for phosphorous digestibility showed that increasing phytase dose was more visible on day 7, than on day 28. Mineral digestibility was lower in 28-day-old turkey compared with 7-day-old turkey. InsP6 disappearance increased with increasing phytase levels in both species, with lower levels analyzed in turkeys. InsP6 disappearance was greater in younger turkeys (day 7 compared with day 28). In conclusion, although broilers and turkeys shared several similarities in their growth and nutrient utilization responses, the outcomes of the 2 trials also differed in many aspects. Whether this is because of difference in diets (InsP or Ca level) or differences between species needs further investigation