The American Dream and American Greed in Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall: Sentimental and Satirical Christian Discourse in the Popular Domestic Tale

Although Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall: A Domestic Tale of the Present Time originally was a widely popular book in the nineteenth century, Fern and Ruth Hall were criticized after readers learned about the similarities among Fern’s life and book. Contemporary critics have recovered Ruth Hall from the literary margins and situated Ruth’s story in the context of the popular American dream story while emphasizing the book’s satirical elements. Reexamining the novel’s originally popular sentimental elements alongside the novel’s more recently popular satirical elements expands the literary critical focus from Ruth’s sentimental struggles and Fern’s satirical accomplishments to Ruth Hall’s equally important critique of American greed, especially among wealthy and socially-conscious Christians

A Computational Study of the Copper-Catalyzed Trifluoromethylation of Boronic Acids

This work is a computational study of a reaction mechanism for the trifluoromethylation of boronic acids. Three steps of the proposed reaction mechanism are studied, •CF3 addition to a copper catalyst center, base promoted transmetalation between copper and aryl boronic acid, and bond forming reductive elimination in which the CF3 and aryl substituent form a bond. Limited information is known about this mechanism. This study uses computational methods to attempt to elucidate the mechanism and provide the groundwork for potential improvement. Quantum chemical methods in conjunction with tight-binding based conformational sampling methods are used to investigate the possible pathways, their intermediates, and their transition states. Reaction energy pathways were successfully calculated for each step in the proposed mechanism. Transition states were found in the second and third steps, and the pathway appeared to be thermodynamically reasonable. A second proposed reaction mechanism, in which the base promoted transmetalation occurs before the •CF3 addition, was found to be thermodynamically unfavorable when compared to the original proposed mechanism, in which the •CF3 addition happens first. These calculations were benchmarked using multiple density functionals as well as the Random Phase Approximation and Møller-Plesset Perturbation methods. Free energy calculations showed relatively low, around 2 kcal/mol, thermal effects on the reaction energies. Solvent analysis using an implicit solvent model was ineffective, but explicit solvent calculations showed a significant decrease in reaction energies when the solvent is included. This implies that explicit solvent inclusion is necessary for future investigation of this mechanism. These results serve as a preliminary computational investigation into this reaction mechanism, and provide useful information for future attempts to optimize trifluoromethylation reactions

Software-Tool To Determine Functional Flexibility Based On Employee Specific Risks

During training of manual assembly operations, all employees experience continuous improvement caused by learning. This improvement is known as learning behaviour and describes individual improvement of competence and skill. In an assembly system, employees are required to learn various tasks to ensure overall productivity. Job rotation supports the constant change of tasks to enable an environment where employees maintain their skills by changing tasks in defined time-frames. Functional flexibility describes how many employee-workstation-combinations are possible and needs to be determined based on internal and external factors. Especially employee specific risks are predominant in terms of affecting the outcome and can be encountered by considering these risks when determining the level of functional flexibility. This paper provides an approach to assess employee specific risks with the goal to deduct an expected impact. An overall approach describes the process in order to implement a software-tool to determine the level of functional flexibility. The result is considered a tool to support the decision-making process of leaders and executives in production systems regarding determining a necessary competence matrix

Data-based identification of throughput time potentials in production departments

Logistics performance becomes an ever more important strategic factor for manufacturing companies to obtain a competitive advantage. Yet, numerous companies fail to meet their own corporate goals or customer requirements. One of the most important objectives in logistics is speed in terms of short delivery times which are mainly determined by the production throughput times. Derivation of effective improvement measures requires a profound understanding of logistic cause-effect relationships. At a time of increasing digitalization, an increasing amount of feedback data is available that offers great potentials to discover novel insights. Yet, the vast amount of data can also be overwhelming and result in unsystematic and ineffective analysis of less meaningful data. Therefore, in this paper a systematic procedure is presented that allows data-based identification of throughput time potentials in production departments. The quantitative analysis framework is based on a generic driver tree structuring the influencing factors on throughput time. The approach will boost the understanding about logistics relations and will particularly help SMEs to focus on the most relevant influencing factors and data. Furthermore, it provides a basis for future more advanced information systems that will help companies to continuously improve their logistics performance and adapt their supply chains to ever-changing conditions

Lean Changeability – Evaluation and Design of Lean and Transformable Factories

In today-s turbulent environment, companies are faced with two principal challenges. On the one hand, it is necessary to produce ever more cost-effectively to remain competitive. On the other hand, factories need to be transformable in order to manage unpredictable changes in the corporate environment. To deal with these different challenges, companies use the philosophy of lean production in the first case, in the second case the philosophy of transformability. To a certain extent these two approaches follow different directions. This can cause conflicts when designing factories. Therefore, the Institute of Production Systems and Logistics (IFA) of the Leibniz University of Hanover has developed a procedure to allow companies to evaluate and design their factories with respect to the requirements of both philosophies

Applicability Of Gamification In Industrial Work Processes To Influence Target Variables

Today more than ever, companies are forced to regularly initiate projects in their factories in order to ensure competitiveness through constant adaptation and change. Such projects are controlled and managed individually. Implementing many projects frequently leads to situations however, in which different projects overlap regarding their planning and control. Deviation in the projects’ duration and scope further intensifies this effect. To manage environments consisting of projects with different scopes and timelines, companies make use of models for multi-project management (MPM). Due to their aim for general validity, existing models for MPM generally lack a specific focus on the targets and tasks of the factory environment. A new process model is therefore needed to effectively and efficiently plan and control a multi-project environment in the factory. Therefore, the project context and the interdependencies of the model’s tasks shall also be taken into account. In order to build a process model for multi-project management, according to the requirements of the factory, insights from MPM as well as the production environment are needed. In this article an overview of the approach is given and first findings are presented. Based on analogies between models of MPM and production planning and control (PPC), an exemplary excerpt of a combined know-how catalogue is shown, laying the foundation for the further development of a holistic process model