Assessing a customer complaint indicator: a case study in the automotive sector

Introduction - Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are used in many organizations to facilitate decisions and actions. A KPI life cycle is composed of four phases: design, implementation, use, and review. In the review phase, indicators may eventually be deleted, included, or replaced. The literature lacks analyses of the real improvement caused by the implementation and use of revised KPIs. Purpose - This paper presents a real case of a reviewed KPI that was implemented in a leading company in the automotive electronics industry. Methodology - The Methodology adopted was the Case Study. Findings - The KPI that went through the review is related to customer complaints. Despite having overcome the limitation that triggered its creation, new shortcomings were perceived by management during the use phase. Three situations are presented to exemplify the limitations of previous and current indicators, concluding that the most critical drawback is present in both: the lack of a clear purpose. Therefore, assuming certain purposes, suggestions for improvement are proposed.This work has been supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the R&D Units Project Scope: UIDB/00319/2020

Mechanical behaviour of dental composite filling materials using digital holography

One of the most common clinical problems in dentistry is tooth decay. Among the dental filling materials used to repair tooth structure that has been destroyed by decay are dental amalgam and composite materials based on acrylics. Dental amalgam has been used by dentists for the past 150 years as a dental restorative material due to its low cost, ease of application, strength, durability, and bacteriostatic effects. However its safety as a filling material has been questioned due to the presence of mercury. Amalgam possesses greater longevity when compared to other direct restorative materials, such as, composite [1]. However, this difference has decreased with continual development of composite resins [2]

The importance of diffusing capacity as a complementary study to plethysmography in smokers

Rev Port Pneumol. 2007 Nov-Dec;13(6):763-74. [The importance of diffusing capacity as a complementary study to plethysmography in smokers] [Article in Portuguese] Paes Cardoso A, Reis Ferreira JM, Moreira da Silva A. Human Physiology, Porto University, Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas de Abel Salazar, Santo António Hospital. Abstract This study comprised 194 male and female heavy smokers or ex-smokers (>or= 1 pack-year) aged between 20 and 82, whose symptoms varied. Cases were only selected from patients with normal whole-body plethysmography. Subjects with any significant pathology and occupational risk factors were excluded from the study. Varying degrees of symptoms were found and a range of results from normal plethysmography examination, with abnormal levels of alveolar-capillary transfer, determined by the single-breath method to analyse CO (TLCO and TLCO-VA) coefficients. Using the chi-square test for statistical analysis of the sample revealed a significant variation in sensitivity between both parameters (p=0.0001). Possible limitations of using the single-breath method, of were reduced in this study (ventilatory restriction with Vital Capacity <1.5 litres) by the routine plethysmography results seen. Likewise, the presence of alterations in ventilatory distribution was, in principle, minimised by the absence of TLCsb/TLCplet values below 0.85% CONCLUSIONS: Normal plethysmography results in heavy or ex-smokers are not enough to confirm normal respiratory function, as a large percentage of cases present abnormalities in the alveolar-capillary transfer factor for CO. Alveolar limitation was considered not only anatomically, but also from a functional perspective. PMID: 18183328 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE

Measuring Black Hole Spin using X-ray Reflection Spectroscopy

I review the current status of X-ray reflection (a.k.a. broad iron line) based black hole spin measurements. This is a powerful technique that allows us to measure robust black hole spins across the mass range, from the stellar-mass black holes in X-ray binaries to the supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei. After describing the basic assumptions of this approach, I lay out the detailed methodology focusing on "best practices" that have been found necessary to obtain robust results. Reflecting my own biases, this review is slanted towards a discussion of supermassive black hole (SMBH) spin in active galactic nuclei (AGN). Pulling together all of the available XMM-Newton and Suzaku results from the literature that satisfy objective quality control criteria, it is clear that a large fraction of SMBHs are rapidly-spinning, although there are tentative hints of a more slowly spinning population at high (M>5*10^7Msun) and low (M<2*10^6Msun) mass. I also engage in a brief review of the spins of stellar-mass black holes in X-ray binaries. In general, reflection-based and continuum-fitting based spin measures are in agreement, although there remain two objects (GROJ1655-40 and 4U1543-475) for which that is not true. I end this review by discussing the exciting frontier of relativistic reverberation, particularly the discovery of broad iron line reverberation in XMM-Newton data for the Seyfert galaxies NGC4151, NGC7314 and MCG-5-23-16. As well as confirming the basic paradigm of relativistic disk reflection, this detection of reverberation demonstrates that future large-area X-ray observatories such as LOFT will make tremendous progress in studies of strong gravity using relativistic reverberation in AGN.Comment: 19 pages. To appear in proceedings of the ISSI-Bern workshop on "The Physics of Accretion onto Black Holes" (8-12 Oct 2012). Revised version adds a missing source to Table 1 and Fig.6 (IRAS13224-3809) and corrects the referencing of the discovery of soft lags in 1H0707-495 (which were in fact first reported in Fabian et al. 2009

Interacção entre duas espécies exóticas de lagostins (pacifastacus leniusculus e procambarus clarkii): estudo experimental com recurso à PIT-telemetria

No rio Maçãs (bacia do Rio Douro), no Nordeste de Portugal, coexistem duas espécies de lagostins exóticos, o lagostim vermelho da Louisiana (Procambarus clarkii) e o lagostim sinal (Pacifastacus leniusculus). Para estudar o movimento e padrão de actividade de ambas as espécies foi desenvolvida uma experiência num espaço confinado (300 x 100 cm) e aplicada a técnica da PIT-telemetria (Passive Integrated Technology, UKID Systems, U.K.), com recurso a um MPD (Data-logger) e oito antenas circulares de detecção de transmissores (PIT-tags). Seleccionou-se um local de alimentação e alguns refúgios capazes de fornecer isolamento visual entre lagostins. Foram implantados PIT-tags, com identificação individual, em 5 machos e 5 fêmeas de cada espécie e monitorizado o seu comportamento de forma contínua (dia e noite) ao longo de 15 dias, durante o período estival de dois anos consecutivos. Obtiveram-se cerca de 30 000 dados, diferenciados em termos de frequência de dados repetidos (registos contínuos na mesma antena) e não repetidos por cada animal. A análise dos dados sugere um comportamento diferenciado entre espécies e sexos com dominância do lagostim vermelho relativamente ao lagostim sinal e dos machos sobre as fêmeas. As interacções entre espécies podem estar na origem do afastamento e menor actividade de P. leniusculus dos locais mais próximos da área de alimentação. Por outro lado, as fêmeas de ambas as espécies demonstraram ser menos activas do que os machos

Precision of 1-RM prediction equations in non-competitive subjects performing strength training

The purpose of this study was to assess the precision of the 1-RM prediction equations proposed by Adams (1994), Baechle and Groves (2000), Brzycki (1993), Epley (1985), Lander (1985) and O’Conner et al. (1989) for strength assessment in fitness programs. Thirty one healthy regular strength training male practitioners (mean ± SD: 21.8 ± 4.0 years of age; 75.9 ± 8.4 kg of weight; and 178.1 ± 6.4 cm of height) performed two tests on the bench press exercise: (a) maximum test - determination of the 1-RM load; and (b) submaximum test - determination of the load matching 4 to 10 maximum repetitions. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) found no significant difference (p > .05) between maximum load determination through prediction equations or through the 1-RM test. The coefficient of determination (r2) varied from .94 to .96. The prediction equations had small standard error of estimate (2.7 to 3.2 kg). Results indicate that the 1-RM prediction equations could be used to determine the maximum load at the bench press exercise in subjects with low strength training experience

New insights on mechanisms of sulfonamide bio-transformation by environmental bacteria

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