Supply chain managers in the food and beverage industry face significant challenges regarding the use of effective reverse logistics strategies to reduce supply chain disruptions, control risk, and reduce costs. Through the lens of resource dependence theory, the purpose of this multiple case study was to explore reverse logistics strategies used by supply chain managers in the United States to control cost through risk mitigation. Participants in this study included 5 supply chain managers in the food and beverage distribution industry in the state of Georgia who implemented successful reverse logistics strategies to control cost through risk mitigation. Data were collected using face-to-face, semi-structured interviews and a review of relevant company documents. Data were thematically analyzed using Yin's 5-step process of compiling, disassembling, reassembling, interpreting, and concluding the data. The 3 key themes that emerged from data analysis were a communication strategy, an inspection strategy, and a cost allocation strategy. Supply chain leaders may use the findings of this study to improve their communication flow with internal and external partners, implement an effective inspection strategy to reduce damaged goods, and implement a cost allocation strategy to reduce their financial exposure regarding products in need of return to the original source because of damage or spoilage. The implications of the research for positive social change include the potential for supply chain leaders to lower the cost of food and beverage products for consumers and avoid or reduce the flow of damaged or spoiled food and beverage products into consumer markets through effective implementation of reverse logistics strategies.

During the mid 70's and early 80's, several precast deck panel bridges were constructed in Florida. These utilize prestressed precast panels as stay-in-place forms and are designed to act compositely with a cast-in-place deck which is poured subsequently. Such bridges offer advantages of quicker construction and lower costs. However, several such bridges built in Florida developed extensive cracking and spalling. Following localized failures, the Florida Department of Transportation have decided to replace all 127 precast panel deck bridges in Districts 1 and 7. Since deck replacement is contingent on funding, it is necessary to develop a rational procedure to decide the order in which they are replaced. This work describes the calibration of a software program developed to assist in the replacement prioritization of panel bridges. Prioritization is based on information available with FDOT in the form of biannual inspection reports over the past 20+ years. A new computer language called BRAILE ( BRidge Annual Inspection LanguagE) was developed to input the data from the inspection reports. A compute program PANEL was used to process the BRAILE data to identify trends that could be used to assign weights to observed deficiencies. The prioritization developed based on the method presented here was found to correctly identify high risk bridges and was reliable than one based solely on National Bridge Inventory (NBI) condition rating.

L’idée de la législation sociale est contemporaine de l’émergence d’un droit protecteur des travailleurs puisqu’il traduit la volonté politique de faire appliquer ses normes pour que chaque homme accède à un travail décent. Principe au demeurant fécond, puisqu’il a pour corollaire celui de l’égalité de traitement, la régulation des rapports sociaux et la satisfaction du besoin de justice et de paix sociale Dés lors, conçu pour les grandes industries, le droit du travail a pu croître et embellir pendant les trente Glorieuses, porté par une croissance économique sans précédent et structuré sur le modèle de la révolution industrielle, l’univers du travail s’étant trouvé modifié en profondeur. Seulement, ce bon vieux temps est révolu : actuellement les entreprises se restructurent profondément et un fort courant d’internationalisation des marchés et de mutations techniques et technologiques ont ébranlé les acquits sociaux :Ainsi, précarité, contrat de sous-traitance, externalisation de la main d’œuvre sont désormais les contraintes majeures qu’il faut prendre en compte pour déterminer les relations de travail. Au cœur de ses déconvenues se trouve l’inspection du travail et les lois organisant les relations professionnelles qui ne peuvent se définir que par rapport à une réalité, laquelle dépend des intérêts des employés et de la régulation des mécanismes du marché. Dans cette perspective, l’amélioration du sort des hommes au travail apparait ainsi comme un effet naturel de la croissance économique et de l’application effective de cette législation sociale. Partant de ce constat, c’est d’une réflexion portant sur le lien existant entre le développement progressif du droit du travail et le concept de contrôle et de conciliation dont il sera question dans le cadre de notre thèse.. En effet, face à la régulation des rapports sociaux, principalement dans les rapports entre employeurs et salariés, l’inspection du travail en Tunisie, s’est forgé progressivement une identité forte de considération car débordant le domaine de la protection ouvrière au sens étroit du terme, son rôle qui puise sa source dans le caractère généraliste de cette institution, va en dépasser la structure. Elle ne peut pas ne pas toucher à l’application concrète de la règle, et par conséquent au rôle de l’inspecteur du travail, acteur clé de l’exécution de ses lois. A ses missions traditionnelles, 1'exigence de la paix sociale en Tunisie ajoutait celle, toute nouvelle, de rapprocher les parties sur le terrain, en essayant de convertir au droit les plus sceptiques et de hâter l’intégration du syndicat dans la stratégie de développement. Avec un effort de consolidation de quelques années, plus précisément depuis 1976, l’inspection tunisienne du travail intervient dans un champ particulier dans le domaine de conciliation. Cette institution deviendra l’un des rouages essentiels de la pacification sociale. Tel un coupe-circuit empêchant la solidarité base de la paix sociale de disjoncter, elle sera tout à la fois le reflet des insuffisances des pouvoirs publics et celui des revendications ouvrières. Chose étrange, 1'Inspection ne trouvera pourtant que fort peu d'appui hors de son sein, comme si la nature même de sa mission sociale 1'exposait sans défense aux critiques les plus virulentes. Les nombreux problèmes et dysfonctionnement que connaît actuellement l’inspection du travail, certains sont fort anciens, notamment ceux liés à l’insuffisance de moyens face à l’élargissement des prérogatives, aux réalités rencontrées surtout que ces fonctions sont indissociables de l’action de l’Inspection du travail et d’autres problèmes de fond lié à un dysfonctionnement organisationnel ou un malaise latent inhérent selon certains à l’évolution des missions de l’inspection du travail. Dans cette perspective le problème s’accentue davantage puisque la définition du champ d’intervention de l’inspection du travail, de son rôle bascule entre deux fonctions. La première fonction est le contrôle qui témoigne plutôt, d'une conception généraliste la seconde concerne la conciliation exprimant une extension des missions et caractérise 1'essor autour d’un consensus que l’Etat veut imprimer sur les relations du travail. Cependant, si le rôle de l’inspecteur du travail avait acquis une crédibilité certaine par ses attributions de contrôleur en lui permettant de préserver sa légitimité institutionnelle, la situation est tout autre aujourd’hui : l’histoire se renouvelle et on va reprocher à l’inspecteur de porter une vision de la société étriquée et plutôt traditionnelle. Ainsi, l’étendue des prérogatives confiées à l’inspecteur dans la conciliation et le conseil le place dans une position stratégique car ne se limitant plus à normaliser les dispositifs des relations professionnelles ou à promouvoir les démarches globales de contrôle, mais plutôt à accompagner et à anticiper les évolutions des relations professionnelles. L'examen du fonctionnement de l’inspection du travail, avec la prise en compte des caractéristiques du métier de l’inspecteur du travail et de sa composition, nous permettra de mettre l’accent sur le degré d’adaptation et d’efficacité de cette institution, caractérisant fondamentalement le rôle que l’Etat entend jouer dans la régulation des rapports sociaux et principalement dans les rapports entre employeurs et salariés.

The political motives for reinstating national school inspection in 2003 and reinforcing it through the establishment of the Swedish School Inspectoratein 2008 stressed the necessity of sufficient state involvement in order to retain and ensure nationwide educational quality and equivalence. Since then, additional political efforts have been made to intensify and exercise national state control over education. On July 1, 2011, the Education Act gave the agency enhanced legal support. The aim of this study was to describe and analyze a sample of school leaders' stories of the regular inspection that have been conducted in their schools since the legal changes came into force. School leaders of 20 compulsory schools were interviewed. Theinterviews were analyzed and the results were presented in eight themes. In the following analysis, change mechanisms that had been initiated in the schools during the inspection process were examined through a theoretical framework of evaluation influence. The results from the second analys is also illustrated conceivable forms of pathways that link inspection processes to inspection outcomes. Finally, the empirical findings were discussed in terms of constitutive effects and education governance. The study was a part of the research project "Governing by inspection. School inspection and education governance in Sweden, England and Scotland".

With the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley in 2002, external auditors face a new regulatory inspection process in addition to an increase in litigation (or engagement) pressure. It has been communicated that this new inspection process will place an increased emphasis on the efficiency of integrated audits while maintaining the same level of effectiveness. In an experiment, I explore how external auditors’ reliance decisions on the internal audit function will be affected by different inspection focuses, varying levels of engagement risk, and the level of risk associated with the audit test or procedure. While I expect that there will be significant main effects for inspection focus, engagement risk and the riskiness of the audit test, I explore the potential presence of a three-way interaction between these three factors. My findings suggest that the auditor reliance decisions are impacted by differing levels of engagement risk, the focus of the inspection process, and the riskiness of the audit tests. In general, as engagement risk increased, auditors’ reliance decreased. Also, as the riskiness of the audit test increased, auditors placed less reliance on the internal audit function. However, when the focus of the inspection changed, these factors interacted with one another. Specifically, when auditors faced a focus of both effectiveness and efficiency, their reliance decisions increased as engagement risk and riskiness of the test decreased, but when auditors faced a focus of effectiveness only, their reliance decisions were not impacted by the engagement risk when the riskiness of the test was high. Thus, the impact of engagement risk on auditors’ reliance decisions depends on the focus of the inspection process and the riskiness of the tests.

El principal objectiu d'aquest treball de tesi és tractar el problema de la representació de la textura en color des del punt de vista de la visió per computador. L'extensió dels mètodes classics de processament de textura per imatges en nivells de grisos als canals d'una imatge color no assegura resultats semblants als de la percepció humana en aquesta tasca. Els mecanismes d'inducció cromàtica del sistema visual humà, estudiats en psicofísica, són fonamentals en la dependència que crea l'entorn en la percepció del color. La inducció cromàtica inclou dos efectes complementaris: l'assimilació i el contrast cromàtic. Mentre el primer ja ha estat mesurat des de la psicofísica i extés a la visió per computador, molts aspectes del segon encara queden per fer. La contribució principal d'aquesta tesi és la definició d'un operador computacional que simula el fenòmen del contrast cromàtic i que té un comportament coherent amb el del sistema visual humà en diferents problemes de la percepcció de la textura en color, ja que permet enfatitzar les diferències de color en distribucions que són quasibé unimodals i així millorar la segmentació de les regions de color. El problema que encara queda obert és la realització de mesures psicofísiques pels paràmetres de l'operador, tal com es va fer amb l's-cielab per al procés d'assimilació.La definició de representacions computacionals de textura i color perceptuals és un objectiu de gran importància en els problemes d'inspecció automàtica de superfícies en els que els dispositius de la colorimetria clàssica no permeten donar bones mesures d'aparença de color. La segona contribució de la tesi defineix una representació computacional basada en mesures globals de color incloent-hi l'assimilació de color i mesures locals de les propietats de les regions segmentades considerant el contrast cromàtic. Aquesta representació és aplicada a la classificació de gres porcelànic.Tenint en compte que s'han de realitzar mesures molt acurades de petites diferències, s'ha dedicat una part d'aquest treball a l'adquisició d'imatges en color, i en concret a aconseguir bones propietats de constància de color. En aquest sentit, la darrera contribució de la tesi és la definició d'un algorisme de contància de color en línea per a una càmera lineal d'alta precisió de color. Aquest mètode s'ha basat en el model lineal diagonal de constància de color prèviament garantit amb una transformació que canvia les propietats de la sensibilitat de la càmera. / The main goal of this thesis is to deal with the colour texture representation problem from a computer vision point of view. It is easy to demonstrate that the extension of classical grey level methods for texture processing to the three channels of the corresponding colour texture does not succeed in having a human-like behaviour on this visual task. Chromatic induction mechanisms of the human visual system, which have been widely studied in psychophysics, play an important role on the dependency of the colour perception from its surround. Chromatic induction includes two complementary effects: chromatic assimilation and chromatic contrast. While the former has been psychophysically measured and lately extended to computer vision, some aspects on the last one still remain to be measured. The main contribution of this thesis is a computational operator that simulates the contrast induction phenomena that has demonstrated a coherent behaviour on different texture colour perception problems, since it allows to emphasise colour differences on almost-unimodal colour distributions and consequently improving the segmentation of colour regions. An open problem that will remain open from this work is the psychophysical measurement of the operator parameters, in the same sense as it was done with the s-cielab for the assimilation process.A perceptually consistent colour texture computational representation is a goal of extreme importance in automatic colour-textured surface inspection problems, where the classic colorimetric tools does not succeed in given good colour appearance measurements. In this scope, a second contribution is a colour-texture representation based on global colour features considering colour assimilation and local features based on properties of colour blobs considering colour contrast. This representation is applied to an automatic tile classification problem.Since an important accuracy is needed to measure such small differences, we have devoted a great part of this work to the colour acquisition issue, and to the problem of achieving good colour constancy properties on the acquired images. In this sense, a last contribution of this work has been to define an on-line colour constancy algorithm for a high colour precision scan line camera based on a diagonal linear colour constancy model previously guaranteed by linear transform changing the camera sensitivity properties.

In last few years we have observed a significant increase in the usage of computing devices and their capabilities to communicate with each other. With the increase in usage and communicating capabilities the higher level of network security is also required. Today the main devices used for the network security are the firewalls and IDS/IPS that provide perimeter defense. Both devices provide many overlapping security features but they have different aims, different protection potential and need to be used together. A firewall is an active device that implements ACLs and restricts unauthorized access to protected resources. An IDS only provides information for further necessary actions, not necessarily perimeter related, but some of these needed actions can be automated, such as automatic blocking in the firewall of attacking sites, which creates an IPS. This thesis report analyzed some common firewall and IDS products, and described their security features, functionalities, and limitations in detail. It also contains the comparison of the security features of the both devices. The firewall and IDS perform different functions for the network security, so they should be used in layered defense architecture. The passwords, firewalls, IDSs/IPSs and physical security all together provide a layered defense and complement each other. The firewall and IDS alone cannot offer sufficient network protection against the network attacks, and they should be used together to enhance the defense-in-depth or layered approach.

This research is to develop an auto optical inspection system for surface mount device light emitting diodes. The principal purpose is to inspect SMD LED for 2D defects which are mixed-material and resin-tearing and for3D defect which is tombstone. In terms with mixed-material inspection, using the count of gradient operator to recognize LED chip. The false alarm rate is 4.29% and misdetection rate is 7.19%. It successfully detects defects with accuracy up to 94.24%. The average computation time is 12.97 ms. In terms of resin-tearing inspection, the research uses the gray scale correlation for SMD LED image registration. The false alarm rate is 5.15% and misdetection rate is 11.34%. The accuracy is up to 91.75%. The average computation time is 10.95 ms. 3D defect continues to use 2D view finder. The advantage of this structure is simple and cost-saving. The investigation which is inspected by the 3D system, comparing with real situation, the average measurement deviation is 4.51%. The average computation time is 8.05 ms. This propose of this system is not only to inspect 2D quickly, precisely and steady, but also to inspect 3D flaws which is hard to detect, and make the wole detective system more artificially-intelligent.

This dissertation focuses on developing inspection schedules to detect non-self- announcing events which can only detected by inspections. Failures of protective sys- tems ,such as electronic equipments, alarms and stand-by systems, incipient failures and the emergence of certain medical diseases are examples of such events. Inspec- tions are performed at pre-determined times to detect whether or not the event has occurred, and necessary actions are taken upon the detection. In this research, my interest is in developing effective inspection schedules to detect non-self-announcing events that balance system downtime and inspection effort. To evaluate the quality of an inspection schedule, I use the availability (for re- placeable) and the detection delay (for non-replaceable systems) as performance mea- sures. When the monetary cost of inspection and the cost of delay are difficult to determine, non-monetary performance measures become more meaningful. In this research, the focus is on maximizing availability or minimizing detection delay given a limited number of inspections or a limited inspection rate. I show that for replace- able and non-replaceable systems, it is possible to construct inspection schedules that perform better than periodic inspection with respect to our performance measures. The occurrence of the event I would like to detect may be influenced by certain individual characteristics. For instance, the risk of developing a certain type of dis- ease might be different for different subgroups within the population. In this case, because of the non-homogeneity in the population, benefits of performing screening tests may not be fully achieved for each sub-group by using an inspection strategy developed for the entire population. Thus, it may be of value for an individual to learn more information about his/her likehood to have the disease. To address this issue, I analyze the change in the expected delay if schedules are based on the whole population information or the individual information and provide numerical results.

Segmental post-tensioned (PT) bridges are major structures that carry significant traffic. Recent investigations of these bridges have identified voids in their ducts. and some of these exposed strands at these void locations are undergoing corrosion. The corrosion of strands may lead to the failure of tendons. As such, an effective inspection process for identifying these voids is needed. From a literature review, several non-destructive testing (NDT) methods are compared for applicability in inspecting voids in external tendons. The impact echo (IE), ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV), and sounding inspection methods were selected and assessed for identifying voids in preliminary test setup. The sounding inspection method is further assessed for its effectiveness in identifying voids in a full-scale, external tendon system. The results indicate that the sounding inspection slightly underestimates the size of the voids. However, the inspected size and locations of voids have a close correlation with actual voids in ducts. Thus, the sounding inspection can be an effective tool for identifying voids because of its easy application in the field. Recently, the investigated failures of segmental post-tensioned (PT) bridges called attention to the rehabilitation and mitigation methods of voided ducts in PT structures. Although controversy exists on how to best protect PT tendons from corrosion, filling these voids with grout may be one option. An optimized grouting procedure for repairing these voids is needed how best to protect the strands from corrosive environments. This research investigates three grouting methods for efficiently repairing the voids in PT duct systems. These methods are (1) vacuum grouting (VG), (2) pressure grouting (PG), and (3) pressure-vacuum grouting (PVG). Each method is being evaluated for filling capability, filling performance, and economic feasibility. Also, three different pre-packaged grouts for repair are assessed in this research to propose the most suitable material for repairing voided PT ducts. The results indicate that the PG and PVG methods are more constructible and likely more economical than the VG method. However, the PVG and VG methods seem to be more effective than the PG method in filling the voids. As a result of these tests, the PVG method is recommended for filling voids in tendons. The results also show that C-1 and C-2 grouts have better filling capability than C-3 grout. Although experimental tests using prototype specimens of external PT tendons are performed to propose an effective repair grouting method and material, the experimental conditions cannot cover all voids types, duct types, and other effects of repair grouting methods in the field. Thus, the grout flow in voided ducts is predicted using a commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) program. The simulation of the flow is challenging due to the complicated geometry of voided ducts, but the simplified model in this research shows close correlations with experimental results. Thus, various parameters of repair methods and materials are assessed in this research, and the PVG method with grouts having low viscosity exhibited the best performance. If it is determined that filling voids with grout is appropriate and prevents future corrosion, it is recommended that voids in the field be filled using the PVG method with grouts exhibiting low viscosities.