Search

This paper estimates the distribution of educational returns by gender for India. While previous studies focus on mean returns, the variance of educational returns has important implications for policy-making and micro-level decision making with respect to education. If the variance of educational returns is large, it can leave large sections of the population with negative returns; if the variance of educational returns is gender specific, it can influence households' decisions to educate girls versus boys. Our econometric results provide evidence that India's labor markets are characterized by significant uncertainty and that the uncertainty is systematically larger for women. (Contains 3 tables and 4 figures.)

In the past, public stakeholders have indicated strong negative preferences in response to some approaches, such as culling, for managing Chronic wasting disease (CWD). We collect data across Canada from the general public and several stakeholder groups and assess their preferences using a paired comparison approach. The results suggest that the public wants action in managing CWD. Members of the general public seem receptive to a number of different types of management approaches for CWD. Specifically, the public seems to support hunters reducing herd sizes, through increased tags and compensation for submitting positive testing CWD heads, and promoting environmental sampling on private land to detect CWD. In contrast, the public seems to dislike using sharpshooters to cull herds (on public or private land), and a number of options involving landowners, including increasing the number of licenses they may obtain, allowing them to charge hunters for access and providing them with extension services. Another stark result of our study is the remarkable homogeneity of preferences across different segments of society. There are very few cases where we find conflicting positive and negative preferences across groups. • The Canadian public wants action in managing Chronic Wasting Disease. • The Canadian public supports using hunters to control Chronic Wasting Disease. • Preferences for management are similar across segments of Canadian society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Describes the work of the National Council of Teachers of English Task Force on Class Size. Addresses the issue of class size by outlining the needs and rights of students (at all grade levels and in each classroom) that can only be granted when appropriate class size and teacher workload are granted. (SR)

The flexible and easy-to-use integration of production equipment and IT systems on the shop floor becomes more and more a success factor for manufacturing to adapt rapidly to changing situations. The approach of the Manufacturing Integration Assistant (MIALinx) is to simplify this challenge. The integration steps range from integrating sensors over collecting and rule-based processing of sensor information to the execution of required actions. This paper presents the implementation of MIALinx to retrofit legacy machines for Industry 4.0 in a manufacturing environment and focus on the concept and implementation of the easy-to-use user interface as a key element. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The expansion of sensors located within the shop floor area drastically expands the amount of information being available for planning procedures. However, it is questionable on how far ever more current data, leading to higher production planning frequencies, are able to contribute to a higher logistical performance of production planning and control (PPC). For this purpose, we conducted a study to confront frequently described potentials of real-time abilities with adverse effects consequent to scheduling nervousness. The results of a curvilinear regression indicate that the risks of scheduling nervousness can outweigh potential benefits due to immediate schedule adjustments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Manufacturing has to adapt to changing situations in order to stay competitive. It demands a flexible and easy-to-use integration of production equipment and ICT systems. The contribution of this paper is the presentation of the implementation of the Manufacturing Integration Assistant (MIALinx). The integration steps range from integrating sensors over collecting and rule-based processing of sensor information to the execution of required actions. Furthermore, we describe the implementation of MIALinx by commissioning it in a manufacturing environment to retrofit legacy machines for Industrie 4.0. Finally, we validate the suitability of our approach by applying our solution in a medium-size company. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In times of an increasing product individualization and global competition, companies in the single and small batch manufacturing try to differentiate by promising a high adherence to delivery dates. However, many of these companies are struggling to fulfill that promise as they suffer from poor planning quality. Therefore, an approach is presented that facilitates companies to increase their production planning quality by a determination of order specific transition times using data mining algorithms leading eventually to an improved adherence to delivery dates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efficient Engineering Change Management (ECM) is an important competency in New Product Development. The increasing use of Highly Iterative Product Development as an agile development paradigm induces substantial time-variability in the requirements of ECM as products progress from early stage development to full series production. As a result, new functional-prerequisites for successful ECM arise in addition to those normally necessary. To address these additional, time-dynamic requirements, this study creates a method for the continuous adaption of ECM using the concept of complexity management. A heuristic framework combining a detailed literature analysis and expert interviews forms the basis of the method’s design. Hereby, complexity drivers and complexity enablers of ECM are identified. The study determines causal relationships between these complexity elements and presents specific measures suitable to allow practitioners to influence the level of complexity inherent in ECM systems. The findings are integrated into complexity-oriented models. Based on these models, a method is presented that permits the adaptive design of ECM to address time-variable management requirements across the product lifecycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increased volatility of market demands and customized products force companies to continuously monitor the right configuration of their production to ensure production at competitive costs. One crucial success factor for companies is the right configuration of their production structure. Driven by the evolution of computer-based planning methods, up to several thousand possible production structures can be examined and evaluated automatically. This article presents a framework for assessing and characterizing production structures to enable production supervisors for fast and profound decisions by providing adequate decision support. The framework, consisting of the parts performance and structural indicators and visualization, is applied using a real industrial case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manufacturing companies in industrialized countries are facing the challenge of achieving shorter times-to-market for their products while also coping with higher and more frequent initial planning efforts for customer specific products. Automated process planning is suited to dissolve this conflict by reducing manual planning efforts and enhancing planning productivity. However, existing computer-aided process planning (CAPP) approaches primarily shift planning efforts towards establishing and updating deterministic rules for planning algorithms manually. This paper shows the potential of using feedback data from Industrie 4.0 production systems as well as design features in a statistical approach to automatically determine initial process sheet information for new products. Feedback data from the manufacturing system is used as a digital representation of the production process. Interdependencies of component characteristics and production processes can be statistically identified via a knowledge discovery in databases (KDD) approach. These interdependencies in turn can be used to automatically deduce rules for CAPP planning algorithms. The presented integrated approach also includes further increasing the level of accuracy and comprehensiveness of the initial process sheet information, as well as updating the planning rules and assumptions following a control loop model. Necessary input and output parameters of the approach are being described, as well as the approach itself, including several steps to systematically incorporate the implications of component characteristic interdependencies on the necessary process steps. Finally, the approach and its potentials are illustrated using a set of real data from a manufacturing company. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Forestry Chronicle is the property of Canadian Institute of Forestry and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)