The Harada Method – A Method for Employee Development during Production Ramp Up

Caused by shorter product life cycles and higher product variety the importance of production ramp ups is increasing. Even though companies are aware of that fact, up to 40% of the ramp up projects still miss technical and economical requirements. The success of a ramp up depends on the planning of human factors, organizational aspects and technological solutions. Since only partly considered in scientific literature, this paper lays its focus on the human factor during production ramp up. There are only incoherent methods which address the problems in this area. A systematic and holistic method to improve the capabilities of the employees during ramp up is missing. The Harada Method is a relatively young approach for developing highly-skilled workers. It consists of different worksheets which help employees to set guidelines and reach overall objectives. This approach is going to be transferred into a tool for ramp up management

Use of Life Cycle Data for Condition-Oriented Maintenance

This technical contribution treats of a novel approach to condition-oriented maintenance as elaborated by Collaborative Research Centre 653 at the Leibniz University in Hanover. The objective resides in the targeted analysis of information about a component's lifecycle for maintenance purposes. The information in question is collected by means of the Collaborative Research Centre's innovative technologies. This enables preventive maintenance of components on the basis of their condition. This contribution initially explains condition-oriented maintenance, before introducing the Collaborative Research Centre and finally presenting the methodology for analyzing the information. The current state of development is described and an outlook provided for expanding the methodology

The nuclear electric polarizability of 6He

We present an estimate of the nuclear electric polarizability of the 6He halo nucleus based on six-body microscopic calculations. Wave functions are obtained from semi-realistic two-body interactions using the hyperspherical harmonics expansion method. The polarizability is calculated as a sum rule of the dipole response function using the Lanczos algorithm and also by integrating the photo-absorption cross section calculated via the Lorentz integral transform method. We obtain alpha_E=1.00(14) fm^3, which is much smaller than the published value 1.99(40) fm^3 extracted from experimental data. This points towards a potential disagreement between microscopic theories and experimental observations.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, minor changes, added error analysi

Australian Transnational Educational Leadership Roles: Challenges, Opportunities and Experiences

The establishment of higher educational hubs in Malaysia and Singapore has spurred the growth of transnational education (TNE) offerings in Asia, and attracted several Australian higher education providers to set up branch campuses in these countries. In Malaysia, TNE is seen as contributing to economic targets by helping to decrease the outflow of students and currency, and by attracting international students to Malaysian shores (British Council 2012). The provision of higher education through TNE raises issues somewhat distinct from those arising with local provision of higher education. These include the balance of local and foreign educational decision making and its implications for academic staff and for the learning experiences of students. This paper is informed by ‘Learning without Borders: Leadership in transnational education and internationalization of curriculum’, an Australian Office of Learning and Teaching (OLT) funded project undertaken at Curtin University and Swinburne University of Technology, involving Australian campuses and branch campuses. The project investigated staff experiences, expectations and preferences on TNE issues including career path opportunities, teaching and learning implications. The project focused particularly on the development of recognition and support for leadership roles in transnational education and on internationalization of curriculum. The paper highlights some of the TNE and internationalization measures that might enhance staff experiences and student learning

Parallel Imaging with RASER using Multiband Frequency-modulated Excitation Pulses

The many advantages of the recently proposed RASER sequence have been demonstrated. Hence, RASER holds great promises for functional MRI (fMRI), particularly for studies of the orbital-frontal cortex and other brain regions near air cavities, which cause distortion and signal loss in conventional EPI methods. However, the single-shot RASER sequence implemented so far inherently presents a set of temporal and spatial limitations that hinders it feasibility and full potential for fMRI applications. It is believed that parallel imaging will help overcome such restrictions. In this work, the RASER acquisition and reconstruction scheme is extended for parallel imaging using tailored pulses for simultaneous multi-band excitation

Your place or mine: transnational education and the locus of control

In transnational education the place – in both an organisational and a geographic sense – in which educational decisions are made impacts on the academics involved and on student learning. The subject of this paper is learning and accreditation that takes place outside a home university through offshore branch campuses. A case study of two Australian Universities with offshore campuses in Sarawak, Malaysia was undertaken. Policies and procedures were reviewed and an empirical study of the experiences of academics involved was conducted. The study focused on who makes decisions about curriculum content, learning and teaching activities, design and provision of educational resources, and the assessment of student work. Consequences of the organisational relationships for academics involved and for student learning are examined in this paper. On the basis of the study a high degree of local control is recommended, at least for units of study that have operated transnationally several times

Size reduction of complex networks preserving modularity

The ubiquity of modular structure in real-world complex networks is being the focus of attention in many trials to understand the interplay between network topology and functionality. The best approaches to the identification of modular structure are based on the optimization of a quality function known as modularity. However this optimization is a hard task provided that the computational complexity of the problem is in the NP-hard class. Here we propose an exact method for reducing the size of weighted (directed and undirected) complex networks while maintaining invariant its modularity. This size reduction allows the heuristic algorithms that optimize modularity for a better exploration of the modularity landscape. We compare the modularity obtained in several real complex-networks by using the Extremal Optimization algorithm, before and after the size reduction, showing the improvement obtained. We speculate that the proposed analytical size reduction could be extended to an exact coarse graining of the network in the scope of real-space renormalization.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figure

Regulatory Adaptation of Staphylococcus aureus during Nasal Colonization of Humans

The nasopharynx is the main ecological niche of the human pathogen Staphylococcus aureus. Although colonization of the nares is asymptomatic, nasal carriage is a known risk factor for endogenous staphylococcal infection. We quantified S. aureus mRNA levels in nose swabs of persistent carriers to gain insight into the regulatory adaptation of the bacterium to the nasal environment. We could elucidate a general response of the pathogen to the surrounding milieu independent of the strain background or the human host. Colonizing bacteria preferentially express molecules necessary for tissue adherence or immune-evasion whereas toxins are down regulated. From the analysis of regulatory loci we found evidence for a predominate role of the essential two-component system WalKR of S. aureus. The results suggest that during persistent colonization the bacteria are metabolically active with a high cell surface turnover. The increased understanding of bacterial factors that maintain the colonization state can open new therapeutic options to control nasal carriage and subsequent infections