The prime objective of this thesis is to research and develop a new system of project budgeting, monitoring and forecasting to meet the needs of the Construction Industry. It is intended that this work will facilitate the means for more efficient control of projects from inception to final completion, utilising where possible the latest developments in computer technology. The initial stage of the work involves an investigation and appraisal of existing methods of formulating project budgets. In particular attention is paid to previous work in the development of mathematical 's' curve models, together with their limitations in use and application. Potential for future development is also identified. The thesis then focuses on the evolution of an improved modelling philosophy for project budgets and forecasts which overcomes previously known problems. In parallel with this work is the development of a computerised system intended to enable the testing of the model against live project data. The model finally selected is then tested against the extensive research work previously undertaken by the DHSS and the data collected from sixteen construction projects. To facilitate the development of a suitable control system to act as a vehicle for the application of the principles developed, a contextual survey is included. This survey is intended to provide an update of previous survey work undertaken by the author in 1977 and to further investigate factors orientated specifically to the objectives of the thesis. The research then concentrates on the development of an integrated set of sub-systems which contribute to the budgeting, monitoring and prediction of project expenditure. These systems are developed in accordance with the need to establish the financial status of projects both before, during and after they are completed. The overall system is based on the latest computer technology available and is designed to be flexible in its application. Tests documented in the text prove that the system operates both in principle and in practice. A further extension of the research is the use of the various project data bases to provide information for a corporate control system which has been developed in principle. This thesis provides a significant step forward in computerised project budgeting and control utilisng 's' curve philosophy and provides a basis for further development. Potential exists for future development of the prediction and corporate control systems, together with software developments to improve general application over a wide range of industries and disciplines where project work is undertaken.

As the applications of mobile robotics evolve it has become increasingly less practical for researchers to design custom hardware and control systems for each problem. This research presents a new approach to control system design that looks beyond end-of-lifecycle performance and considers control system structure, flexibility, and extensibility. Toward these ends the Control ad libitum philosophy is proposed, stating that to make significant progress in the real-world application of mobile robot teams the control system must be structured such that teams can be formed in real-time from diverse components. The Control ad libitum philosophy was applied to the design of the HAA (Host, Avatar, Agent) architecture: a modular hierarchical framework built with provably correct distributed algorithms. A control system for exploration and mapping, search and deploy, and foraging was developed to evaluate the architecture in three sets of hardware-in-the-loop experiments. First, the basic functionality of the HAA architecture was studied, specifically the ability to: a) dynamically form the control system, b) dynamically form the robot team, c) dynamically form the processing network, and d) handle heterogeneous teams. Secondly, the real-time performance of the distributed algorithms was tested, and proved effective for the moderate sized systems tested. Furthermore, the distributed Just-in-time Cooperative Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (JC-SLAM) algorithm demonstrated accuracy equal to or better than traditional approaches in resource starved scenarios, while reducing exploration time significantly. The JC-SLAM strategies are also suitable for integration into many existing particle filter SLAM approaches, complementing their unique optimizations. Thirdly, the control system was subjected to concurrent software and hardware failures in a series of increasingly complex experiments. Even with unrealistically high rates of failure the control system was able to successfully complete its tasks. The HAA implementation designed following the Control ad libitum philosophy proved to be capable of dynamic team formation and extremely robust against both hardware and software failure; and, due to the modularity of the system there is significant potential for reuse of assets and future extensibility. One future goal is to make the source code publically available and establish a forum for the development and exchange of new agents.

As the applications of mobile robotics evolve it has become increasingly less practical for researchers to design custom hardware and control systems for each problem. This research presents a new approach to control system design that looks beyond end-of-lifecycle performance and considers control system structure, flexibility, and extensibility. Toward these ends the Control ad libitum philosophy is proposed, stating that to make significant progress in the real-world application of mobile robot teams the control system must be structured such that teams can be formed in real-time from diverse components. The Control ad libitum philosophy was applied to the design of the HAA (Host, Avatar, Agent) architecture: a modular hierarchical framework built with provably correct distributed algorithms. A control system for exploration and mapping, search and deploy, and foraging was developed to evaluate the architecture in three sets of hardware-in-the-loop experiments. First, the basic functionality of the HAA architecture was studied, specifically the ability to: a) dynamically form the control system, b) dynamically form the robot team, c) dynamically form the processing network, and d) handle heterogeneous teams. Secondly, the real-time performance of the distributed algorithms was tested, and proved effective for the moderate sized systems tested. Furthermore, the distributed Just-in-time Cooperative Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (JC-SLAM) algorithm demonstrated accuracy equal to or better than traditional approaches in resource starved scenarios, while reducing exploration time significantly. The JC-SLAM strategies are also suitable for integration into many existing particle filter SLAM approaches, complementing their unique optimizations. Thirdly, the control system was subjected to concurrent software and hardware failures in a series of increasingly complex experiments. Even with unrealistically high rates of failure the control system was able to successfully complete its tasks. The HAA implementation designed following the Control ad libitum philosophy proved to be capable of dynamic team formation and extremely robust against both hardware and software failure; and, due to the modularity of the system there is significant potential for reuse of assets and future extensibility. One future goal is to make the source code publically available and establish a forum for the development and exchange of new agents.

Integration of knowledge to the control system of a robot is the best way to emerge intelligence to robot. The most useful knowledge for a robot control system that aims to visit the landmarks in an environment is the enviromental knowledge. The most natural representation of the robot&rsquo / s environment is a map. This study presents a behavior based robot control system architecture that is based on subsumption and motor schema architectures and enables the robot to construct the map of the environment by using proximity sensors, odometry sensors, compass and image. The knowledge produced after processing the sensor values, is stored in Short Term Memory (STM) or Long Term Memory (LTM) of the robot, according to the persistence requirements of the knowledge. The knowledge stored in the STM acts as a sensor value, while LTM stores the map of the environment. The map of the environment is not a priori information for the robot, but it constructs the map as it moves in the environment. By the help of the map constructed the robot will be enabled to visit non-visited areas in the environment and to localize itself in its internal world. The controller is designed for a real robot Khepera equipped with the sensors required. The controller was tested on simulator called Webots version 2.0 on Linux operating system.

<p>Traditional financial management has lately been criticized, since it gives inadequate and unilateral information for decisions and strategy of the operation. The purpose of this essay is to investigate if a balanced scorecard is able to work together with a budget and become a stronger control system for the management. Essential theory underlies the gathering of data as well as the analysis, and the empirical investigation is based on personal interviews. The conclusions drawn from my analysis are that two parallel control systems could complement each other’s weaknesses. The budget and the balanced scorecard seem to harmonize very well, as the balanced scorecard has a long term strategy while the budget has a short term strategy. In my combination model, the difference in working only with a balanced scorecard is that the budget will have a stronger position than the financial perspective in a balanced scorecard.</p>

Thesis (M.S.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering and Applied Science, Department of Systems Science and Industrial Engineering, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.

A lateral jet in a supersonic crossflow creates a highly complex three-dimensional flow field which is not easily predicted. The aim of this research was to assess the use of a RANS based CFD method to simulate a lateral jet in supersonic crossflow interaction by comparing the performance of available RANS turbulence models. Four turbulence models were trialled in increasingly complex configurations; a flat plate, a body of revolution and a body of revolution at incidence. The results of this numerical campaign were compared to existing experimental and numerical data. Overall the Spalart-Allmaras turbulence model provided the best fit to experimental data. The performance of the lateral jet as a reaction control system was assed by calculating the force and moment amplification factors. The predicted flowfield surrounding the interaction was analysed in detail and was shown to predict the accepted shock and vortical structures. The lateral jet interaction flowfield over a body of revolution was shown to be qualitatively the same as that over a flat plate. An experimental facility was designed and manufactured allowing the study of the lateral jet interaction in Cranfield University’s 2 ½” x 2 ½” supersonic windtunnel. The interaction was studied with a freestream Mach number of 1.8, 2.4 & 3.1 and over a range of pressure ratios (50≤PR≤200). Levels of unsteadiness in the interaction were measured using high bandwidth pressure transducers. The level of unsteadiness was quantified by calculating the OASPL of the pressure signal. OASPL was found to increase with increasing levels of PR or MPR and to decrease with increases of Mach number. The levels of unsteadiness found were low with the highest levels found downstream of the jet.

Background: The number of small and medium-sized enterprises has been increasing and has gradually become the main part of economic development over years. However, it is challenging for them to compete in the fast-changing business environment, especially with the changing demands of their stakeholders. In order to control and improve business processes, Management Control System is important for monitoring each process while Performance Measurement System, as an essential part, is a good way of managing goals and targets and help companies improve. Since the business process is closely related to stakeholders, it is necessary to study how small and medium-sized enterprises manage their stakeholders’ expectations to improve their use of performance measurements and control business processes. Findings: We have selected two small and medium-sized enterprises in Kronoberg County in Sweden for our case study. We have found that our research model based on literature is well explained more in detail in practice. Based on the literature, we identify that key stakeholders for small and medium-sized enterprises are basically primary stakeholders, including customers, suppliers, employees, owners/shareholders and community. Performance Measurement System can be used and developed by managing these stakeholders’ expectations. After collecting empirical data, we have discovered that competitors or other companies have an impact on the use of Performance Measurement System as well. Small and medium-sized enterprises also have several important stakeholders to consider and they try to develop and improve Performance Measurement System by managing their stakeholders’ expectations from different perspectives. Results: It is important for small and medium-sized enterprises to find out what their main stakeholders are first before they can manage their expectations. After identifying key stakeholders, different aspects of these stakeholders need to be considered. For instance, employees’ capability of working need to be measured and they have a big impact on Performance Measurement System use and development, especially in small and medium-sized enterprises. Suppliers and customers situations need to be considered since they may come from different regions or countries where there are political issues. Therefore, risks of doing business require enterprises to be flexible and react quickly. Managing these aspects regarding stakeholders is crucial for developing and improving Performance Measurement System in small and mediumsized enterprises.

It is a difficult challenge to develop a feedback control system for Statistical Process Control (SPC) because there is no effective method that can be used to calculate the accurate magnitude of feedback control actions in traditional SPC. Suitable feedback adjustments are generated from the experiences of process engineers. This drawback means that the SPC technique can not be directly applied in an automatic system. This thesis is concerned with Fuzzy Sets and Fuzzy Logic applied to the uncertainty of relationships between the SPC (early stage) alarms and SPC implementation. Based on a number of experiments of the frequency distribution for shifts of abnormal process averages and human subjective decision, a Fuzzy-SPC control system is developed to generate the magnitude of feedback control actions using fuzzy inference. A simulation study which is written in C++ is designed to implement a Fuzzy-SPC controller with satisfactory results. To further reduce the control errors, a NeuroFuzzy network is employed to build NNFuzzy- SPC system in MATLAB. The advantage of the leaning capability of Neural Networks is used to optimise the parameters of the Fuzzy- X and Fuzzy-J? controllers in order to obtain the ideal consequent membership functions to adapt to the randomness of various processes. Simulation results show that the NN-Fuzzy-SPC control system has high control accuracy and stable repeatability. To further improve the practicability of a NN-Fuzzy-SPC system, a combined forecaster with EWMA chart and digital filter is designed to reduce the NN-Fuzzy-SPC control delay. For the EWMA chart, the smoothing constant 0 is investigated by a number of experiments and optimised in the forecast process. The Finite Impulse Response (FIR) lowpass filter is designed to smooth the input data (signal) fluctuations in order to reduce the forecast errors. An improved NN-Fuzzy-SPC control system which shows high control accuracy and short control delay can be applied in both automatic control and online quality control.

[pt] Nesta tese é feito um estudo sobre os Sistemas estritamente reais Positivos e suas aplicações no controle de sistemas com incertezas, tais como adaptativo com memória e o controle com estrutura variável e modos deslizantes. Os resultados obtidos ampliam o conhecimento sobre os sistemas estritamente reais Positivos e o seu emprego em sistemas de controle, e apresentam novas leis de controle que melhoram as configurações existentes em aspectos tais como a estabilidade, a estimação de transitórios, a necessidade do acesso às variáveis de estado e detalhes práticos de implementação. Este trabalho aborda e fornece contribuições a alguns problemas de controle, tais como o controle adaptativo com modelo de referência, a estabilização de sistemas com incertezas e o problema do servomecanismo com referência parcialmente conhecida. São obtidos também alguns resultados sobre os sistemas estritamente reais positivos: definições equivalentes, condições para tornar um sistema estritamente real positivo e relações entre os sistemas de controle com estrutura variável e modos deslizantes e os sistemas com alto ganho, com os sistemas estritamente reais positivos. Uma parte dos resultados acima, desenvolvidos inicialmente para sistemas lineares e invariantes no tempo, é generalizada para uma classe de sistemas lineares variantes no tempo. / [en] This thesis addresses strictly positive real systems and their application in the control of uncertain dynamical systems, as for exemplare, in adaptative control with memory and in variable structure systems with sliding motions. The results of this work extend the knowledge about strictly positive real systems and their application in control systems, and offer new control laws that improve the existing configurations, as for example in transient estimation, state variable access and practical details of implementation. The model reference adaptive control, the stabilization of uncertain dynamical systems and the servo system problem are considerad new results are obtained. For the strictly positive real systems, equivalent definitions, conditions to turn a transfer matrix into a strictly positive real and relations of the variable structure systems with sliding motions and high gain system with the strictly positive real systems are presented. Some of the results above are extended for the linear time varying sytems.