Linking Quality Management Practices with Performance of Manufacturing Industries in Tanzania

Local products of manufacturing industries in Tanzania are subjected to intense competition in the markets. Product quality is one of key factors that play a considerable role for manufacturing industries to win the competitive advantage. This paper attempts to analyse the extents of quality management practices (QMP) and manufacturing performance (MP) as well as to examine the linkage between practices and performance. Data was collected from seventy-eight (78) manufacturing industries in Dar es Salaam region using questionnaires comprising of both single-item and multi-item questions. Descriptive statistics was used to quantify the extent of quality management practices and manufacturing performance (MP) of the industries. Factor analysis was used to reduce the scale items of QMP and MP into few underlying factors representing the items without loss of information. As a consequence, four QMP and two MP factors were identified. A correlation analysis was used to evaluate the effect of QMP on the performance of manufacturing industries. The findings show that most of manufacturing industries in Tanzania are large in scale and owned by private companies. Among these industries, many of them are dealing with food, beverage and tobacco products. The extent of quality management practices and manufacturing performance are favourable. Further to that, quality management practices mainly quality commitment significantly correlates with both operational and financial performance. This can be seen as a positive indication of the top management commitment in quality issues throughout the supply chain in supporting customer satisfaction, competitive advantage, flexibility in production quantity and overall product quality. Thus, local manufacturing industries should utilise the quality management and performance strengths to produce high-quality products that will penetrate into the markets. In addition, enforcement on the implementation of quality management tools and methods is required for the purpose of realising reasonable operational and financial performance while winning the competitive advantage

Integration of part selection, machine loading and machining optimisation decisions for balanced workload in flexible manufacturing system

This paper demonstrates the importance of incorporating and solving the machining optimisation problem jointly with part selection and machine loading problems in order to avoid unbalanced workload in the FMS. Unbalanced workload renders to ineffective FMS such that some machines on the manufacturing shop floor become more occupied than others. Since CNC machine tools employed in the FMS are rather expensive, it is mostly important to balance the workload so that all machines can be effectively utilised. Therefore, in this study, two mathematical models are presented and solved in efforts to balance the workload and improve the performance of the FMS. A two-stage sequential approach is adopted whereby the first stage deals with the maximum throughput objective while the second stage deals with the minimum production cost objective. The results show that when part selection, machine loading and machining optimisation problems are jointly solved, more practical decisions can be made and a wide range of balanced workload in the FMS can be realised with minimum production cost objective. The results also show that the available machine time and tooling budget have enormous effects on throughput and production cost

Five Years of Antimalarial Resistance Marker Surveillance in Gaza Province, Mozambique, Following Artemisinin-Based Combination Therapy Roll Out

Antimalarial drug resistance is a major obstacle to malaria control and eventual elimination. The routine surveillance for molecular marker of resistance is an efficient way to assess drug efficacy, which remains feasible in areas where malaria control interventions have succeeded in substantially reducing malaria transmission. Community based asexual parasite prevalence surveys were conducted annually in sentinel sites in Gaza Province, Mozambique from 2006 until 2010, before, during and after antimalarial policy changes to artesunate plus sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine in 2006 and to artemether-lumefantrine in 2008. Genetic analysis of dhfr, dhps, crt, and mdr1 resistant genes was conducted on 3 331 (14.4%) Plasmodium falciparum PCR positive samples collected over the study period from 23 229 children aged 2 to 15 years. The quintuple dhfr/dhps mutation associated with sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine resistance increased from 56.2% at baseline to 75.8% by 2010. At baseline the crt76T and mdr186Y mutants were approaching fixation, 96.1% and 74.7%, respectively. Following the deployment of artemisinin-based combination therapy, prevalence of both these chloroquine-resistance markers began declining, reaching 32.4% and 30.9%, respectively, by 2010. All samples analysed over the 5-year period possessed a single copy of the mdr1 gene. The high and increasing prevalence of the quintuple mutation supports the change in drug policy from artesunate plus sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine to artemether-lumefantrine in Mozambique. As chloroquine related drug pressure decreased in the region, so did the molecular markers associated with chloroquine resistance (crt76T and mdr186Y). However, this reversion to the wild-type mdr186N predisposes parasites towards developing lumefantrine resistance. Close monitoring of artemether-lumefantrine efficacy is therefore essential, particularly given the high drug pressure within the region where most countries now use artemether-lumefantrine as first line treatment

Smallholder Farmers’ Practices and Understanding of Climate Change and Climate Smart Agriculture in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania

Adverse effects of climate change and variability remain to be a major threat to smallholder farmers and rural livelihoods. It posed a challenge of developing innovative technologies to improve rural livelihoods, environmental conservation and ensuring adoption of such technologies. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is used as a mitigation and adaptation option to reduce the negative impacts of climate change and improve agricultural productivity. To achieve the desired objectives, CSA requires a complete package of practices that increase productivity and income, build resilience and reduce green gas emission.  However, adoption is largely dependent on farmers’ understanding, preferences and their capacity and willingness to practice. The study explores smallholder farmers’ understanding of climate change impacts and their proclivity on climate smart agricultural practices. In engaging with smallholder farmers, a range of methods was used, including focus group discussions (FGD), key informant interviews (KI), household questionnaire survey and field observations. Results indicate that less than half (26%) of smallholder farmers interviewed have low knowledge on climate change in the study area, however, they are adapting and coping with the impacts of climate change. The low knowledge, coupled with the low ability to effectively adapt to the impacts of climate change, might have contributed to reduced agricultural yields.  Developing appropriate and feasible climate smart and resilient agriculture practices, is a pre-requisite towards improving food security and income to smallholder farmers. The study suggests the need to consider appropriate and sustainable local-based technologies to increase production. The local-based knowledge and technologies are cost effective, easy to adopt and can be easily out-scaled to other communities within the region. We conclude that the availability of improved local-basedtechnologies alone is not a sufficient condition to bring about the change and transformation among smallholder farmers. Effective institutions and sustained policy support play a significant role in the adoption of CSA practices. There is an urgent need for scientists and users to co-produce the climate information and CSA practices so as to ensure action-oriented recommendations. Therefore, establishing an enabling local environment, including by supporting strong and innovative rural institutions, to increase the uptake of good practices are indispensable. Keywords: Climate change, climate smart agriculture, Southern Highland, smallholder farmers and perceptio

Upper Body-Based Power Wheelchair Control Interface for Individuals with Tetraplegia

Many power wheelchair control interfaces are not sufficient for individuals with severely limited upper limb mobility. The majority of controllers that do not rely on coordinated arm and hand movements provide users a limited vocabulary of commands and often do not take advantage of the user's residual motion. We developed a body-machine interface (BMI) that leverages the flexibility and customizability of redundant control by using high dimensional changes in shoulder kinematics to generate proportional control commands for a power wheelchair. In this study, three individuals with cervical spinal cord injuries were able to control a power wheelchair safely and accurately using only small shoulder movements. With the BMI, participants were able to achieve their desired trajectories and, after five sessions driving, were able to achieve smoothness that was similar to the smoothness with their current joystick. All participants were twice as slow using the BMI however improved with practice. Importantly, users were able to generalize training controlling a computer to driving a power wheelchair, and employed similar strategies when controlling both devices. Overall, this work suggests that the BMI can be an effective wheelchair control interface for individuals with high-level spinal cord injuries who have limited arm and hand control

Measurement of Aerosols at the Pierre Auger Observatory

The air fluorescence detectors (FDs) of the Pierre Auger Observatory are vital for the determination of the air shower energy scale. To compensate for variations in atmospheric conditions that affect the energy measurement, the Observatory operates an array of monitoring instruments to record hourly atmospheric conditions across the detector site, an area exceeding 3,000 square km. This paper presents results from four instruments used to characterize the aerosol component of the atmosphere: the Central Laser Facility (CLF), which provides the FDs with calibrated laser shots; the scanning backscatter lidars, which operate at three FD sites; the Aerosol Phase Function monitors (APFs), which measure the aerosol scattering cross section at two FD locations; and the Horizontal Attenuation Monitor (HAM), which measures the wavelength dependence of aerosol attenuation.Comment: Contribution to the 30th International Cosmic Ray Conference, Merida Mexico, July 2007; 4 pages, 4 figure

Adaptation to Delayed Force Perturbations in Reaching Movements

Adaptation to deterministic force perturbations during reaching movements was extensively studied in the last few decades. Here, we use this methodology to explore the ability of the brain to adapt to a delayed velocity-dependent force field. Two groups of subjects preformed a standard reaching experiment under a velocity dependent force field. The force was either immediately proportional to the current velocity (Control) or lagged it by 50 ms (Test). The results demonstrate clear adaptation to the delayed force perturbations. Deviations from a straight line during catch trials were shifted in time compared to post-adaptation to a non-delayed velocity dependent field (Control), indicating expectation to the delayed force field. Adaptation to force fields is considered to be a process in which the motor system predicts the forces to be expected based on the state that a limb will assume in response to motor commands. This study demonstrates for the first time that the temporal window of this prediction needs not to be fixed. This is relevant to the ability of the adaptive mechanisms to compensate for variability in the transmission of information across the sensory-motor system

Molecular Etiology Disclosed by Array CGH in Patients With Silver–Russell Syndrome or Similar Phenotypes

Introduction: Silver-Russell syndrome (SRS) is an imprinting disorder primarily caused by genetic and epigenetic aberrations on chromosomes 11 and 7. SRS is a rare growth retardation disorder often misdiagnosed due to its heterogeneous and non-specific clinical features. The Netchine-Harbison clinical scoring system (NH-CSS) is the recommended tool for differentiating patients into clinical SRS or unlikely SRS. However, the clinical diagnosis is molecularly confirmed only in about 60% of patients, leaving the remaining substantial proportion of SRS patients with unknown genetic etiology. Materials and Methods: A cohort of 34 Italian patients with SRS or SRS-like features scored according to the NH-CSS and without any SRS-associated (epi)genetic alterations was analyzed by high-resolution array-based comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) in order to identify potentially pathogenic copy number variants (CNVs). Results and Discussion: In seven patients, making up 21% of the initial cohort, five pathogenic and two potentially pathogenic CNVs were found involving distinct genomic regions either previously associated with growth delay conditions (1q24.3-q25.3, 17p13.3, 17q22, and 22q11.2-q11.22) and with SRS spectrum (7p12.1 and 7p15.3-p14.3) or outlined for the first time (19q13.42), providing a better definition of reported and as yet unreported SRS overlapping syndromes. All the variants involve genes with a defined role in growth pathways, and for two genes mapping at 7p, IGF2BP3 and GRB10, the association with SRS turns out to be reinforced. The deleterious effect of the two potentially pathogenic variants, comprising GRB10 and ZNF331 genes, was explored by targeted approaches, though further studies are needed to validate their pathogenic role in the SRS etiology. In conclusion, we reconfirm the utility of performing a genome-wide scan to achieve a differential diagnosis in patients with SRS or similar features and to highlight novel chromosome alterations associated with SRS and growth retardation disorders