The relationship between personality traits and workaholism in Iranian public bank employees

Introduction: The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between workaholism and personality traits among bank employees. Participants in this were consisted of Iranian public banks employees working in Mellat, Keshavarzi and Melli banks' branches in three different regions known as Tehran, Rasht, and Abhar city. Methods: Sample size was calculated using Cochran formula and included 150 participants. For data collection short form of NEO-FFI questionnaire (the questionnaire for evaluating Big Five) and WorkBAT (Workaholism questionnaire) were used. Data were analyzed through descriptive and correlation analysis based on Structural Equation Modeling. Results: There was significant positive correlation between conscientiousness, openness, and extraversion with positive workaholism and positive relationship between agreeableness with positive workaholism. Neuroticism had negative correlation with positive workaholism. Also, our analysis showed that there is a significant positive correlation between conscientiousness and openness with negative workaholism and negative correlation between neuroticism with negative workaholism. There was no relationship between negative workaholism and two other components (agreeableness and extraversion). Conclusion: Workaholism has positive and negative dimensions with two different meanings. According to analysis, the relationship between personality traits and workaholism depends on the aspect that we consider. Declaration of Interest: None

New process capability index using Taguchi loss functions

Classic process capability indices such as Ca, Cp and Cpk are well-known process capability indices, which are using widely. Since, process capability indices predict the capability of a process, they must have a significant relation with rate of rejects and losses. Studies showed that mostly process capability indices do not have a significant relation with rate of rejects or losses. Therefore, the loss-based indices are more appropriate and suitable indices to predict the capability of a process. In order to define a new loss-based process capability index, Taguchi loss functions were employed and this study proposed a novel process capability index called Taguchi-based Process Capability Index (TPCI). The methodology of this process capability index is based on standard rate of rejects for a capable process compared to other cases. Therefore, this study develops a new process capability index, which is Taguchi loss function-based and sensitive to losses. This new process capability index can provide a realistic and applicable metric to evaluate a process

A new asymmetric bounded loss-based process capability index

Process capability indices such as Cp, Cpk, Cpu and Cpl are common metrics to evaluate and predict the performance of a process. Although higher process capability indices indicate higher process “quality”, but a high quality process does not necessarily guarantee the fewer rates of rejects. Therefore, a process capability index based on rate of rejects or real losses is more reliable and proper. This paper defines a novel process capability index called asymmetric inverted normal loss-based process capability index (AIPCI) with the aid of asymmetric inverted normal loss function. The logical idea is to compare the standard loss for a capable process with other cases. AIPCI is a bounded asymmetric process capability index and can provide a more realistic metric to evaluate and predict the performance of a process

Optimally Controlling the Timing of Energy Transfer in Elastic Joints: Experimental Validation of the Bi-Stiffness Actuation Concept

Elastic actuation taps into elastic elements' energy storage for dynamic motions beyond rigid actuation. While Series Elastic Actuators (SEA) and Variable Stiffness Actuators (VSA) are highly sophisticated, they do not fully provide control over energy transfer timing. To overcome this problem on the basic system level, the Bi-Stiffness Actuation (BSA) concept was recently proposed. Theoretically, it allows for full link decoupling, while simultaneously being able to lock the spring in the drive train via a switch-and-hold mechanism. Thus, the user would be in full control of the potential energy storage and release timing. In this work, we introduce an initial proof-of-concept of Bi-Stiffness-Actuation in the form of a 1-DoF physical prototype, which is implemented using a modular testbed. We present a hybrid system model, as well as the mechatronic implementation of the actuator. We corroborate the feasibility of the concept by conducting a series of hardware experiments using an open-loop control signal obtained by trajectory optimization. Here, we compare the performance of the prototype with a comparable SEA implementation. We show that BSA outperforms SEA 1) in terms of maximum velocity at low final times and 2) in terms of the movement strategy itself: The clutch mechanism allows the BSA to generate consistent launch sequences while the SEA has to rely on lengthy and possibly dangerous oscillatory swing-up motions. Furthermore, we demonstrate that providing full control authority over the energy transfer timing and link decoupling allows the user to synchronously release both elastic joint and gravitational energy. This facilitates the optimal exploitation of elastic and gravitational potentials in a synergistic manner.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures. Submitted to IEEE Robotics and Automation Letter

Memory-Constrained Policy Optimization

We introduce a new constrained optimization method for policy gradient reinforcement learning, which uses two trust regions to regulate each policy update. In addition to using the proximity of one single old policy as the first trust region as done by prior works, we propose to form a second trust region through the construction of another virtual policy that represents a wide range of past policies. We then enforce the new policy to stay closer to the virtual policy, which is beneficial in case the old policy performs badly. More importantly, we propose a mechanism to automatically build the virtual policy from a memory buffer of past policies, providing a new capability for dynamically selecting appropriate trust regions during the optimization process. Our proposed method, dubbed as Memory-Constrained Policy Optimization (MCPO), is examined on a diverse suite of environments including robotic locomotion control, navigation with sparse rewards and Atari games, consistently demonstrating competitive performance against recent on-policy constrained policy gradient methods.Comment: Preprint, 24 page

An integrated approach to analyze strategy map using BSC – FUZZY AHP: A case study of auto industry

In an environment, which is highly competitive and everything changes rapidly, managers of organizations face with problems such as how to identify important factors preventing organizations from optimum use of available resources and capacities and invest more on key factors. To achieve this goal, we need to develop an effective strategy map for organizations. The strategy map is a constructional and expanding procedure to identify relationships among all the organization's strategic goals, which play a key role in achieving competitive advantage. Undoubtedly, representing a model to identify and to evaluate the important items for each of available goals in strategy map of each organization is a significant help for management to access higher competition benefits. In this paper, strategic objectives in the strategy map of one of the best producer of electric auto part makers in Iran called Electric Vehicle Co. East are evaluated based on balanced score card perspective and to assign appropriate values to available factors we use a hybrid method consist of AHP technique with Fuzzy logic