Cost objective PLM and CE

Concurrent engineering taking into account product life-cycle factors seems to be one of the industrial challenges of the next years. Cost estimation and management are two main strategic tasks that imply the possibility of managing costs at the earliest stages of product development. This is why it is indispensable to let people from economics and from industrial engineering collaborates in order to find the best solution for enterprise progress for economical factors mastering. The objective of this paper is to present who we try to adapt costing methods in a PLM and CE point of view to the new industrial context and configuration in order to give pertinent decision aid for product and process choices. A very important factor is related to cost management problems when developing new products. A case study is introduced that presents how product development actors have referenced elements to product life-cycle costs and impacts, how they have an idea bout economical indicators when taking decisions during the progression of the project of product development.

Tunneling for the Robin Laplacian in smooth planar domains

We study the low-lying eigenvalues of the semiclassical Robin Laplacian in a smooth planar domain symmetric with respect to an axis. In the case when the curvature of the boundary of the domain attains its maximum at exactly two points away from the axis of symmetry, we establish an explicit asymptotic formula for the splitting of the first two eigenvalues. This is a rigorous derivation of the semiclassical tunneling effect induced by the domain's geometry. Our approach is close to the Born-Oppenheimer one and yields, as a byproduct, a Weyl formula of independent interest

Uniqueness of N=2\mathcal{N}=2 and 33 pure supergravities in 4D

After proving the impossibility of consistent non-minimal coupling of a real Rarita-Schwinger gauge field to electromagnetism, we re-derive the necessity of introducing the graviton in order to couple a complex Rarita-Schwinger gauge field to electromagnetism, with or without a cosmological term, thereby obtaining ${\cal N}=2$ pure supergravity as the only possibility. These results are obtained with the BRST-BV deformation method around the flat and (A)dS backgrounds in 4 dimensions. The same method applied to $n_{v}$ vectors, ${\cal N}$ real spin-3/2 gauge fields and at most one real spinor field also requires gravity and yields ${\cal N}=3$ pure supergravity as well as ${\cal N}=1$ pure supergravity coupled to a vector supermultiplet, with or without cosmological terms. Independently from the matter content, we finally derive strong necessary quadratic constraints on the possible gaugings for an arbitrary number of spin-1 and spin-3/2 gauge fields, that are relevant for larger supergravities.Comment: LaTeX, 31 + 1 pages, no figure. v2: Extended discussion at the end of Section 3, corrected typos and references adde

Performance Evaluation of the Labelled OBS Architecture

A comparison of three different Optical Burst Switching (OBS) architectures is made, in terms of performance criteria, control and hardware complexity, fairness, resource utilization, and burst loss probability. Regarding burst losses, we distinguish the losses due to burst contentions from those due to contentions of Burst Control Packets (BCP). The simulation results show that as a counterpart of an its additional hardware complexity, the labelled OBS (L-OBS) is an efficient OBS architecture compared to a Conventional OBS (C-OBS) as well as in comparison with Offset Time-Emulated OBS (E-OBS)

Framework for Product Lifecycle Management integration in Small and Medium Enterprises networks

In order to improve the performance of extended enterprises, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) must be integrated into the extended networks. This integration must be carried out on several levels which are mastered by the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). But, PLM is underdeveloped in SMEs mainly because of the difficulties in implementing information systems. This paper aims to propose a modeling framework to facilitate the implementation of PLM systems in SMEs. Our approach proposes a generic model for the creation of processes and data models. These models are explained, based on the scope and framework of the modeling, in order to highlight the improvements provided

Bankruptcy Risk, Product Market Competition and Horizontal Mergers

Debt, Bankruptcy, Horizontal Merger, Competition Policy, Oligopoly.

Policy Analysis in the health-services market: accounting for quality and quantity

We provide a theoretical and empirical framework for evaluating the eects of policy reforms on physician labor supply. We argue that any policy evaluation must account for both the quality and the quantity of services provided. The introduction of quality into the analysis has implications for both the theoretical and empirical analysis of labor supply, and consequently policy evaluation. In particular, endogenous quality choices introduce non- linearities into the budget constraint since the marginal return to an hour of work depends on the quality of services provided. We illustrate by considering a particular example: the recent reform in compensation contracts for specialist physicians in the province of Quebec (Canada). Prior to 1999, most Quebec specialist physicians were paid fee-for-service con- tracts; they received a piece rate for each clinical service provided. In 1999, the government introduced a mixed remuneration system, under which physicians received a base (half-daily or daily) wage, independent of services provided, and a reduced fee-for-service. Moreover, the government allowed physicians to choose their contract. We derive theoretical results for the eect of the reform on the quantity and quality of services supplied by analyzing "local" prices and virtual income. We propose discretizing the choice set as an empirical approach to policy evaluation in the presence of non-linear budget constraints.Health production, Quality of health services, Discretized models