No description available.

No description available.

Departure punctuality has increasingly gained attention over the last few years. This development is due to the realization what important role this issue plays in the economics of the airline industry. Punctuality is not just a sound performance indicator but also allows airlines to differentiate themselves from their competitors. In addition the issue holds a significant potential for cost savings. For this reason many airlines have started special programmes to improve their punctuality performance, and so did Lufthansa. However, despite this increasing attention, outbound punctuality levels have not yet reached satisfactory levels. Therefore, this study aimed at contributing to this process by identifying potential ontime performance improvements at the Lufthansa station at Frankfurt Airport. As an underlying framework, a Human Factors approach was chosen. Central issues in the focus of the study were the individual perceptions and attitudes towards punctuality by the relevant front line staff. In order to examine these issues a survey among the Flight Managers, Assistant Flight Managers, and Section leaders was carried out. The results of this survey were then put into correlation with the delay statistics published. The results of the survey indicate a potential lack of communication among the front line staff as well as between them and higher organizational entities. Moreover, certain distrust towards the delay statistics became evident. Although the staff members seem quite well motivated, they feel a lack of commitment by their superiors. In addition, the survey gathered some interesting ideas for punctuality improvements held by the front line staff members. Besides very concrete topics for discussion, the central outcome of the study was the recommendation to analyze all relevant processes at the Lufthansa station from a Human Factors perspective in order to improve the communicative situation. Moreover, the study suggests introducing appropriate incentive schemes in order to promote better on-time performance. Altogether these should result in a noticeable improvement of the punctuality situation at the Lufthansa station.

The purpose of accident investigation is the discovery of causal factors, so that they may be remedied, in order to avert the recurrence of accidents (ICAO, 1994). However, experience has shown that the present intuitive methods of analysis do not always achieve this aim. Investigation failure may come about because of failure to discover causal factors, or to devise effective remedies, or to persuade those in a position to act of the need to do so. Each of these types of failure can be made less likely by the use of formal analytical methods which can show whether information gathering has been incomplete, and point to the sources of additional information that may be needed. A formal analysis can be examined by formal logical tests. Also, the use of formal change mechanisms can not only devise changes likely to be effective, but can present these changes in such a way that the case for them is compelling. Formal methods currently available are concerned with what happened, and why it happened. To produce generic remedies which might avert future accidents of similar type, some formal change mechanism is needed. The Theory of Constraints has become widely adopted in business as a way of replacing undesirable effects with desired outcomes. The Theory of Constraints has not previously been used for safety investigation, and a principal object of this thesis is to see whether it can usefully be employed in this area. It is demonstrated that the use of formal methodology can bring to light factors which were overlooked during an official accident investigation, and can ‘tell the story’ in a more coherent manner than is possible with present methods. The recommendations derived from the formal analysis are shown to be generic in nature, rather than particular to the airline involved and the accident studied, and so could have a wider effect in improving safety.

No description available.

No description available.

The key objective of this multi-disciplinary research was to seek for feasible solutions to avoid effluent from livestock trucks spilling onto roads. Stock effluent spillage mainly poses road safety hazards and environmental damage, and also causes offence to road users and tourists. This task required reviewing previous institutional actions, assessing the power of the existing legislation, and evaluating the interests and attitudes of the stakeholder groups involved in the overall livestock supply chain. It was also necessary to consider politics, administration, public policy and economics, gaining the willing cooperation and confidence of the stakeholder groups through application of 'Soft Systems Methodology' (SSM). A key component was the creation of a 13 minute video and its associated brochure as a primary tool for a stakeholder educational awareness programme. It was necessary to analyse the complex relationships between livestock preparation prior to transport; effluent produced in-transit; and end product quality factors. Detailed information pertaining to the nature of livestock shipments by truck in the South Island of New Zealand had to be collected and verified. All the above information were fed into the calculation of an ideal network of in-transit effluent discharge sites on State Highways in the South Island of New Zealand. Assuming the adoption of best practice throughout the supply chain, it was possible to recommend sustainable solutions. The problem is amenable to solution. Adoption of a strong Industry Code of Practice, coupled with the construction of a strategic network of dump sites will enable the industry to avoid the heavy-handed legal consequences of allowing the status quo to continue.

In the final decade of the nineteenth-century, when New Zealand women began riding the bicycle, they excited intense public debate about contemporary middle-class ideals of femininity. The research question posed is: "why did women's cycling provoke such a strong outcry?" Three nineteenth-century cycling magazines, the New Zealand Wheelman, the New Zealand Cyclist, and the New Zealand Cyclists' Touring Club Gazette, were examined, along with numerous New Zealand and British contemporary sources on women's sport and recreation, etiquette, femininity, and gender roles. The context of the late-nineteenth century signifies a high point in the modernisation of Western capitalist societies, which is characterised in part by significant and widespread change in the roles of middle-class women. The bicycle was a product of modern ideas, designs, and technology, and eventually came to symbolise freedom in diverse ways. The dual-purpose nature of the bicycle (i.e., as a mode of transport and as a recreational tool) enabled women to become more physically and geographically mobile, as well as to pursue new directions in leisure. It afforded, moreover, increasing opportunities to meet and socialise with a wider range of male acquaintances, free from the restrictions of etiquette and the requirements of chaperonage. As a symbol of the 'New Woman', the bicycle graphically represented a threat to the proprieties governing the behaviour and movements of respectable middle-class women in public. The debates which arose in response to women's cycling focused on their conduct, their appearance, and the effects of cycling on their physical and moral well-being. Ultimately, these debates highlighted competing definitions of nineteenth-century middle-class femininity. Cycling presented two dilemmas for respectable women: how could they cycle and retain their respectability? and, should a respectable woman risk damaging herself, physically and morally, for such a capricious activity as cycling? Cyclists aspired to reconcile the ignominy of their conspicuousness on the bicycle with the social imperative to maintain an impression of middleclass respectability in public. The conceptual framework of Erving Goffman's dramaturgical perspective is used to interpret the nature of heterosocial interactions between cyclists and their audiences. Nineteenth-century feminine propriety involved a set of performances, with both performers (cyclists) and audiences (onlookers) possessing shared understandings of how signals (impressions) ought to be given and received. Women on bicycles endeavoured to manage the impressions they gave off by carefully attending to their appearances and their behaviour, so that the audience would be persuaded to view them as respectable, despite the perception that riding a bicycle in public was risqué. In this way, women on bicycles attempted to redefine middle-class femininity. Women on bicycles became a highly visible, everyday symbol of the realities of modem life that challenged traditional gender roles and nineteenth-century formality. Cycling for New Zealand women in the 1890s thus played a key part in the transformation of nineteenth-century gender roles.