142 research outputs found
A CASE STUDY OF KAIZEN IMPLEMENTATION IN SMI
Kaizen is a concept that focuses on improving a work area or an organization in
incremental steps. Many organizations have begun to incorporate the philosophy of
kaizen through the use of kaizen methodology. The first well-known and most
frequently cited proponent of kaizen was Imai, who wrote KAIZEN β The Key to
Japanβs Competitive Success (1986). He outlined the concept, its core values and
principles, its relation to other concepts and the practices used in the improvement
process. This paper illustrates about kaizen case study in Small Medium Industries
(SMI) Company that is ABC Company, which produce machines spare part and food
processing machines. This case study is focused on reducing lead time of sales order
processing. Kaizen steps are used as guidelines and PDCA Cycle is choosing as
problem solving approach to conduct the case study. The properly tools and techniques
such as 5why, Work Instruction Sheet, Pareto diagram, Process Mapping, PDCA Cycle
and brainstorming were used. The kaizen implementation has reduced the percentage of
time losses which is 48.44%. More than that, sales order processing lead time was
reduced about 6.98% and production lead time reduced about 14.93%. These results
have proved the effectiveness of kaizen methodology
A Review of Purpose, Benefits, Impediments and Structure of Environmental Management System (EMS)
The ISO 14001 EMS has been designed to introduce environmental improvement into every
aspect of a companyβs operations, offers an organized approach to manage environmental issues and
it has now become administrative tool towards corporate environmental management.First introduced
in 1996 including Malaysia. According to literature review there can be benefits that firms gain by
adopting ISO 14001 and so on and so forth. There present information regarding ISO 14001 standard
facts promoting adoption base from within firms such as those from Malaysia context.ISO 14001
certification is voluntary, adoption is depend on aspirations of the companies and the external drivers.
This study focuses on the internal and external factors that several literatures indicate play significant
role in determining adoption of ISO 14001. In Malaysia, the factor such as role of top management,
perceived benefit, motivation, market orientation, resource availability, regulatory concerns and
organizational culture is choose as independent variables. The adoption of ISO 14001 has been
relatively slow outside of Africa/West Asia, value to approximately three percent (3.02 percent)
Role of Plastid Protein Phosphatase TAP38 in LHCII Dephosphorylation and Thylakoid Electron Flow
Regulation of photosynthesis efficiency involves reversible phosphorylation of the light-harvesting complex through the activity of the newly identified phosphatase TAP38
Spatial variability in sustainable development trajectories in South Africa:provincial level safe and just operating spaces
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represents the first globally agreed framework to address human development and environmental stewardship in an integrated way. One approach to summarising national SDG status is our βbarometer for inclusive sustainable development in South Africaβ. The barometer downscales global social and planetary boundaries to provide status and trends for 20 critical indicators of environmental stress and social deprivation. In this paper, we explore the sub-national heterogeneity in sustainable development indicators by creating barometers defining the βsafe and just operating spaceβ for South Africaβs nine provinces. Our results show that environmental stress varies significantly and provinces need to focus on quite different issues. Although generally environmental stress is increasing, there are areas where it is decreasing, most notably, marine harvesting. Social deprivation results show more of a pattern with high levels of deprivation in employment, income and safety across the provinces, and historically disadvantaged provinces showing the most deprivation overall. Although deprivation is generally decreasing, there are notable exceptions such as food security in six provinces. Our provincial barometers and trend plots are novel in that they present comparable environmental and social data on key indicators over time for all South Africaβs provinces. They are visual tools that communicate the range of key challenges and risks that provincial governments face, and are non-specialist and accessible to a range of audiences. In addition, the paper provides a critical case study of spatial disaggregation of national data that is required for the SDGs implementation
The Arabidopsis RNA Polymerase II Carboxyl Terminal Domain (CTD) Phosphatase-Like1 (CPL1) is a biotic stress susceptibility gene
Β© 2018, The Author(s). Crop breeding for improved disease resistance may be achieved through the manipulation of host susceptibility genes. Previously we identified multiple Arabidopsis mutants known as enhanced stress response1 (esr1) that have defects in a KH-domain RNA-binding protein and conferred increased resistance to the root fungal pathogen Fusarium oxysporum. Here, screening the same mutagenized population we discovered two further enhanced stress response mutants that also conferred enhanced resistance to F. oxysporum. These mutants also have enhanced resistance to a leaf fungal pathogen (Alternaria brassicicola) and an aphid pest (Myzus persicae), but not to the bacterial leaf pathogen Pseudomonas syringae. The causal alleles in these mutants were found to have defects in the ESR1 interacting protein partner RNA Polymerase II Carboxyl Terminal Domain (CTD) Phosphatase-Like1 (CPL1) and subsequently given the allele symbols cpl1-7 and cpl1-8. These results define a new role for CPL1 as a pathogen and pest susceptibility gene. Global transcriptome analysis and oxidative stress assays showed these cpl1 mutants have increased tolerance to oxidative stress. In particular, components of biotic stress responsive pathways were enriched in cpl1 over wild-type up-regulated gene expression datasets including genes related to defence, heat shock proteins and oxidative stress/redox state processes
Plasma membrane-generated ROS and their possible contribution to leaf cell growth of cucumber (Cucumis sativus) MSC16 mitochondrial mutant
Genome-Wide Analysis of the Complex Transcriptional Networks of Rice Developing Seeds
<div><h3>Background</h3><p>The development of rice (<em>Oryza sativa</em>) seed is closely associated with assimilates storage and plant yield, and is fine controlled by complex regulatory networks. Exhaustive transcriptome analysis of developing rice embryo and endosperm will help to characterize the genes possibly involved in the regulation of seed development and provide clues of yield and quality improvement.</p> <h3>Principal Findings</h3><p>Our analysis showed that genes involved in metabolism regulation, hormone response and cellular organization processes are predominantly expressed during rice development. Interestingly, 191 transcription factor (TF)-encoding genes are predominantly expressed in seed and 59 TFs are regulated during seed development, some of which are homologs of seed-specific TFs or regulators of <em>Arabidopsis</em> seed development. Gene co-expression network analysis showed these TFs associated with multiple cellular and metabolism pathways, indicating a complex regulation of rice seed development. Further, by employing a cold-resistant <em>cultivar</em> Hanfeng (HF), genome-wide analyses of seed transcriptome at normal and low temperature reveal that rice seed is sensitive to low temperature at early stage and many genes associated with seed development are down-regulated by low temperature, indicating that the delayed development of rice seed by low temperature is mainly caused by the inhibition of the development-related genes. The transcriptional response of seed and seedling to low temperature is different, and the differential expressions of genes in signaling and metabolism pathways may contribute to the chilling tolerance of HF during seed development.</p> <h3>Conclusions</h3><p>These results provide informative clues and will significantly improve the understanding of rice seed development regulation and the mechanism of cold response in rice seed.</p> </div
Laforin, a Dual Specificity Phosphatase Involved in Lafora Disease, Is Present Mainly as Monomeric Form with Full Phosphatase Activity
Lafora Disease (LD) is a fatal neurodegenerative epileptic disorder that presents as a neurological deterioration with the accumulation of insoluble, intracellular, hyperphosphorylated carbohydrates called Lafora bodies (LBs). LD is caused by mutations in either the gene encoding laforin or malin. Laforin contains a dual specificity phosphatase domain and a carbohydrate-binding module, and is a member of the recently described family of glucan phosphatases. In the current study, we investigated the functional and physiological relevance of laforin dimerization. We purified recombinant human laforin and subjected the monomer and dimer fractions to denaturing gel electrophoresis, mass spectrometry, phosphatase assays, protein-protein interaction assays, and glucan binding assays. Our results demonstrate that laforin prevalently exists as a monomer with a small dimer fraction both in vitro and in vivo. Of mechanistic importance, laforin monomer and dimer possess equal phosphatase activity, and they both associate with malin and bind glucans to a similar extent. However, we found differences between the two states' ability to interact simultaneously with malin and carbohydrates. Furthermore, we tested other members of the glucan phosphatase family. Cumulatively, our data suggest that laforin monomer is the dominant form of the protein and that it contains phosphatase activity
Gas phase noncovalent protein complexes that retain solution binding properties: Binding of xylobiose inhibitors to the Ξ²-1, 4 exoglucanase from Cellulomonas fimi
Transcriptomic Signatures of Ash (Fraxinus spp.) Phloem
Ash (Fraxinus spp.) is a dominant tree species throughout urban and forested landscapes of North America (NA). The rapid invasion of NA by emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis), a wood-boring beetle endemic to Eastern Asia, has resulted in the death of millions of ash trees and threatens billions more. Larvae feed primarily on phloem tissue, which girdles and kills the tree. While NA ash species including black (F. nigra), green (F. pennsylvannica) and white (F. americana) are highly susceptible, the Asian species Manchurian ash (F. mandshurica) is resistant to A. planipennis perhaps due to their co-evolutionary history. Little is known about the molecular genetics of ash. Hence, we undertook a functional genomics approach to identify the repertoire of genes expressed in ash phloem.Using 454 pyrosequencing we obtained 58,673 high quality ash sequences from pooled phloem samples of green, white, black, blue and Manchurian ash. Intriguingly, 45% of the deduced proteins were not significantly similar to any sequences in the GenBank non-redundant database. KEGG analysis of the ash sequences revealed a high occurrence of defense related genes. Expression analysis of early regulators potentially involved in plant defense (i.e. transcription factors, calcium dependent protein kinases and a lipoxygenase 3) revealed higher mRNA levels in resistant ash compared to susceptible ash species. Lastly, we predicted a total of 1,272 single nucleotide polymorphisms and 980 microsatellite loci, among which seven microsatellite loci showed polymorphism between different ash species.The current transcriptomic data provide an invaluable resource for understanding the genetic make-up of ash phloem, the target tissue of A. planipennis. These data along with future functional studies could lead to the identification/characterization of defense genes involved in resistance of ash to A. planipennis, and in future ash breeding programs for marker development
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