BUILDING A RELATIONSHIP WITH THE CUSTOMER: A CRM VERSUS A QM PERSPECTIVE

Customer relationship management (CRM) and quality management (QM) both define the customer as being the focus of all business activities. The question arises on how these two concepts work together. In the change defined environment, where getting aheadrelationship marketing, customer relationship management, quality management, customer centric approach

BUILDING A RELATIONSHIP WITH THE CUSTOMER: A CRM VERSUS A QM PERSPECTIVE

Customer relationship management (CRM) and quality management (QM) both define the customer as being the focus of all business activities. The question arises on how these two concepts work together. In the change defined environment, where getting ahea

Dairy cows welfare quality in tie-stall housing system with or without access to exercise

BACKGROUND: Tie-stall housing of dairy cows is used extensively worldwide, despite of the welfare concerns regarding the restriction of voluntary movement and limitation of expression of the cows’ natural behaviour. The aim of this study was to compare the welfare quality of dairy cows kept in two types of tie-stall housing systems: with regular outdoor exercise and without access to exercise. In addition, the study investigated the relationship between different welfare measures of dairy cows kept in tie-stalls. METHODS: 3,192 lactating cows were assessed using the Welfare Quality® assessment protocol for cattle in 80 commercial dairy farms, half of the farms providing outdoor access for the animals to exercise. The descriptive statistical indicators were determined for the assessed measures and for the welfare criteria and principle scores. The data obtained in the two housing types were compared and the correlation coefficients were calculated between the different welfare measures. RESULTS: The significant differences found between the two housing systems for the majority of the animal based measures indicate the positive effect of exercise on the welfare of tethered cows. Many of the animal welfare parameters correlated with each other. For the farms allowing the cows’ turnout in a paddock, pasture or both, the mean scores for the welfare criteria and principles were higher than for the farms with permanent tethering of the cows, except the criteria absence of prolonged hunger and expression of social behaviours. The lowest scores were obtained for the criterion positive emotional state, in both housing systems. With regard to the overall classification, none of the farms were considered excellent. In the not classified category were only farms with all-year-round tethering of the animals and in the enhanced category only farms where the cows had outdoor access. CONCLUSIONS: The welfare quality of the investigated dairy cows was significantly better in the tie-stall farms which allow exercise for cows (paddocks, pasture or both) than in those which do not. In the light of our results we consider that dairy cattle welfare is not necessarily poor in tie-stall housing systems, its quality depending on the management practices

Sea Ice Field Analysis Using Machine Vision

Sea ice field analysis has motivation in various areas, such as environmental, logistics or ship maintenance. Among other methods, local ice field analysis from ship-based visual observations are currently done by human volunteers and therefore are liable to human errors and subjective interpretations. The goal of the thesis is to develop and implement a complete process for obtaining dimensions, distribution and concentration of sea-ice floes, which aims at assisting and improving part of the aforementioned visual observations. Such process involves numerous, organized steps which take advantage of techniques from image processing (lens calibration, vignetting removal and orthorectification), robotics (transformation frames) and machine vision (thresholding and texture analysis methods, and morphological operations). An experimental system setup for collecting the required information is provided as well, which includes a machine vision camera for image acquisition, an IMU device for determining the dynamic attitude of the cameras with respect to the world, two GPS sensors providing a redundant positioning and clock data, and a desktop computer used as the main logging platform for all the collected data. Through a number of experiments, the proposed system setup and image analysis methods have proved to provide promising results in pack ice and brash ice conditions, thus encouraging further research on the topic. Further improvements should target the accuracy of ice floes detection, and over and under-segmentation of the detected sea-ice floes