Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-12T15:53:37Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 arquivo1924_1.pdf: 3478481 bytes, checksum: a0f58f98b37132402ca52683d62410df (MD5) license.txt: 1748 bytes, checksum: 8a4605be74aa9ea9d79846c1fba20a33 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009 / Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Amazonas / As empresas de software brasileiras buscam conquistar cada vez mais o mercado nacional e internacional, os quais estão mais competitivos. A estratégia viável é investir no aumento da qualidade e produtividade. O foco desse trabalho é investigar fatores relevantes para mensurar o Return on Investment (ROI) em Melhoria de Processo de Software (MPS). Com o objetivo de propor um framework constituído por fases baseado nos conceitos da ROI Methodology, utilizando indicadores utilizados por David Rico em ROI of SPI e uma seleção de medições utilizadas para MPS. As fases são: Identificação do problema; Diagnóstico detalhado; Estimativa de ROI; Implementação e Encerramento. Para cada fase, baseados no paradigma GQM Goal-Question-Metric foram definidos indicadores de medição para monitorar o FROISPI. As quatro primeiras fases seguem o conceito clássico do PDCA, que para cada solução sugerida de melhoria, analisa seus resultados e se os mesmos forem considerados plenamente satisfatórios, seguirá para a fase de Encerramento, caso contrário o processo cíclico continua até a necessidade de melhoria ser satisfeita. Na fase de Encerramento serão apresentados à alta direção os resultados alcançados com a utilização do FROISPI. O experimento foi executado em três organizações de maturidade bem distintas, mas somente uma organização conseguiu concluir com êxito

The problem in this research lies in the lack of appropriate guidelines for managing the Quality Management System (QMS) in schools. The research endeavours to reveal the most effective and efficient guidelines for managing the QMS. The main purpose of the study was to investigate and reveal the most appropriate and effective ways of managing the QMS as a strategy and as an ongoing process of evaluating and managing both the performance and outcomes in schools. This research adopted a qualitative research approach. Phenomenological and ethnographic research methods were employed. The purpose of adopting the qualitative research for this study was to gather non-numerical data to help explain and develop a theory about managing the QMS. The researcher collected data using multiple means of data collection, namely, interviews, survey and observation. Interpretations of data led to the research recommendations and the conclusion. The sample comprised of three District officials, the school Principal from each sample school, two Departmental Heads, two teachers and their classes, two School Governing Body (SGB) members, one member of the Staff Development Team (SDT) and four former members of the Quality Management (QM) team. The findings of the study described the informants’ perceptions and experiences of the QMS as a process for school improvement. The perceptions and the experiences of the teachers and the principals suggest that the participants had a limited understanding, knowledge and skills in managing the QMS. Thus guidelines managing the QMS were provided. In addition, guidelines for the educational psychologist that would facilitate the successful management of the QMS were developed. / Prof. J.R. Debeila

Examensarbetet genomfördes åt företaget Corus Byggsystem AB. Ett företag placerat i Halmstad som tillverkar profilplåt och lättbalk till tak och fasader. Företaget erbjuder även god rådgivning och skapar optimala lösningar för kunden. I företagets produktion finns det en maskin som pressar specialbalkar. Denna arbetsplats är varken produktionseffektiv eller ergonomiskt riktig då materialet och balkarna lyftes manuellt, i vissa fall även över huvudet. På tunga arbetsplatser är det oerhört viktigt att se över ergonomin, både för att förbättra säkerheten och för att öka produktionsvolymen. Fokus lades därför vid att förbättra arbetsplatsen ergonomiskt för att resultera i ett säkert och produktionseffektivt resultat. Som metod har tre olika varianter använts. Främst Ullmans metod The Mechanical Design Process och Fredy Olssons Primär- och Principkonstruktion. Även SVID’s Designprocess har funnits väl till pass. / This thesis work has been conducted for Corus Byggsystem AB. The company is located in Halmstad and manufactures profile claddings and purlins from sheet metal. The company also offers the customers professional advice and creates optimal solutions. In the production there is a press brake that manufactures purlins. This work station has neither efficient production or is ergonomically correct. The material and purlins are lifted manually by the workers and in some cases over the head. For heavy work, it is extremely important to apply an ergonomic approach, both to improve security for the workers and to increase the manufacturing volume. The focus was therefore on how to improve the workplace ergonomically to result in a safe workplace with efficient manufacturing results. The method that was mainly used in this project was David G. Ullmans The Mechanical Design Process and Fredy Olssons Primärkonstruktion and Principkonstruktion. Also SVID’s Design Process has been used as support.

Enduring cardiac surgery can result in physical pain and feelings of anxiety during the recovery period. Although pharmaceutical interventions exist to help alleviate these symptoms, complimentary therapies are seldom encountered in hospital settings. Listening to calming music has been shown to improve the patient experience and can be a safe adjunct to standard pharmaceutical management of pain and anxiety. The aim of this project was to implement music as a nursing intervention for open-heart patients and to evaluate both nurse attitudes and trends in use and patient experiences of pain, anxiety, and satisfaction. A descriptive, quality improvement project following the Plan-Do-Study-Act format for healthcare improvement was conducted on a cardiac telemetry unit at a suburban hospital in Arizona. Thirty percent of staff nurses provided feedback. The majority of participating nurses had a bachelor’s degree (58%) and less than 10 years of nursing experience (79%). Of the participating nurses, 79% recommended the intervention, with two fully providing the intervention to the patient when requested. Patient surveys were completed by 13% of potential patient participants, though only two surveys were suitable for analysis. Patients (n=2) reported improvements in satisfaction levels and would recommend the intervention for others. One reported an improvement in pain and the other patient reported an improvement in anxiety. Overall, music was viewed favorably by nurses and patients as a complementary therapy, but because of the short study period and limited nurse and patient feedback, more quality improvement projects are needed to determine its direct effects on patients. Engaging and recruiting frontline staff in the design of the project and enlisting more financial support from the organization would be advised.

Improving program performance through the use of multiple homogeneous processing elements, or cores, is common-place. However, these architectures increase the complexity required at the software level. Existing work is focused on optimising programs that run in isolation on these systems, but ignores the fact that, in reality, these systems run multiple parallel programs concurrently with programs competing for system resources. In order to improve performance in this shared environment, cooperative tuning of multiple, concurrently running parallel programs is required. Moreover, the set of programs running on the system – the system workload – is dynamic and rapidly changing. This makes cooperative tuning a challenge, as it must react rapidly to changes in the system workload. This thesis explores the scope for performance improvement from cooperatively tuning skeleton parallel programs, and techniques that can be used to cooperatively auto-tune parallel programs. Parallel skeletons provide a clear separation between algorithm description and implementation, and provide tuning knobs that the system can use to make high-level changes to a programs implementation. This work is in three parts: (i) how many threads should be allocated to each program running on the system, (ii) on which cores should a programs threads be executed and (iii) what values should be chosen for high-level parameters of the parallel skeletons. We demonstrate that significant performance improvements are available in each of these areas, compared to the current state-of-the-art.

This research project focuses on skillful conversation as a strategic tool for school success in the Zeerust Central Region. The project is located within the theories of school improvement. The research project set out to investigate the improvement of teaching and learning practices in secondary schools through skillful conversation. The research project is divided into five chapters. Chapter One focuses on the problems arising in schools when there is no skillful conversation. These problems demonstrate that when there is no skillful conversation in a school, it would be difficult for educators to improve their teaching strategies. Skillful conversation was then used in this research as a strategic tool to improve secondary schools. Chapter Two focuses on a literature review about skillful conversation in secondary schools. The main discussion is based on skillful conversation as a strategic tool in managing secondary schools. Reflection and inquiry, competitive advantage and skill conversation as ongoing processes are discussed. The literature review also considers the learning loop for educators and innovation for learner success. Other factors of importance in this research project are parental involvement and external and internal environments. Chapter Three concentrates largely on empirical design. A quantitative research method was used to study the opinions of the population studied. This research was conducted from schools randomly selected out of the 39 secondary schools in the Zeerust Central Region. Chapter Four deals with the analysis and interpretation of data collected from secondary schools. The main focus was on the reliability and validity of the research instrument, which was the questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of 40 closed-ended items. The questions were designed to obtain the perceptions of educators and principals on skillful conversation as a strategic tool in secondary schools of the Zeerust Central Region. The questionnaire was divided into three sections namely: section A biographical details, section B, whereby each question started with the header ‘how important it is for educators to discuss’ and section C whereby each question started with the header ‘how often do the educators at your school discuss?Of the 40 closed-ended questions only two factors were realised namely, factor one, conversation with everybody and factor two, conversations with the principal. Chapter Five deals with the findings, recommendations and conclusion of the whole research project. / Prof. K.C Moloi

The purposes of this study are to determine the level of growth by reading improvement students when metacognitive skills are taught and to determine which instructional approach is the most effective in maximizing reading comprehension.

Class of 2005 Abstract / Objectives: To determine the level of patient satisfaction regarding counseling services provided at a local community pharmacy. Methods: 100 questionnaires were handed out randomly to pharmacy customers who received counseling services on new prescription medication(s). The questionnaires contained multiple criteria/statements regarding the provision of counseling services. Customers were also asked to select from a list of potential additional categories of information that they would like to receive during counseling. Results: 48 of 100 questionnaires were received at the time this report was written. Customers strongly agreed that the criteria regarding the content of the counseling services were met: (name/strength/dose, and with all of the statements regarding the pharmacist's professional attributes and the counseling environment except one regarding privacy involved with counseling). Suprisingly, only 20% of customers would feel more comfortable being counseled in a more private area such as a separate room or walled off area. Implications: This study provided important feedback to the community pharmacy as well as the pharmacists working there in regards to the evaluation of counseling services provided to their valued customers. Customers have the opportunity to provide their input in regard to their satisfaction level of the quality of counseling services they receive at this community pharmacy (in the form of a questionnaire). Customers, through the completion of the questionnaire, may realize the value of this questionnaire and its use as a tool to improve the areas of the counseling services that customers agree need improvement as well as the opportunity to realize that this community pharmacy does care and value it’s customers and their level of satisfaction in the counseling services provided. This questionnaire may be used as a tool by the community pharmacy in the future to re-assess these criteria of counseling services in the overall purpose of improving the quality of counseling services provided by this community pharmacy.

Master of Regional and Community Planning / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / John W. Keller / In the mid-20th century a migration took place taking residents of American downtowns to the newly-developed, master-planned suburbs. In the wake were abandoned urban cores that evolved into poorly-perceived conditions. One of the many responses to correct these deteriorating central districts was the establishment of Business Improvement Districts (BID), a public-private partnership that develops complementary services to what a city already provides and is paid for by assessments collected from property and business owners in a defined area. With more than 1,000 BIDs in existence in the United States as of 2010 (Becker, Grossman, Dos Santos, 2011), the concept has caught on as a tool utilized to bring downtowns back to life. However, despite the popularity of BIDs and their nearly 50-year existence as a planning tool, the question of how successful they are in improving the conditions of safety, cleanliness, and business growth in the districts over time needs continued analysis. This study gauges the impact of BIDs through a case study of Fresno, California and its BID, the Downtown Fresno Partnership. To measure how the Downtown Fresno Partnership has been successful or unsuccessful, interviews with Downtown Fresno stakeholders were conducted to measure the BID’s ability to change perceptions and advocate for the property owners in its boundary. Also, to measure further impacts, crime, property values and retail data was investigated. A perceived injection of new energy seems to exist in Downtown Fresno, as evidenced by the activity taking place and the change in perception of the area since the Downtown Fresno Partnership was formed in 2011. The BID has played a central role in instituting physical change to the space while it has been a strong advocate for its property owners. In its first five years of existence, the Downtown Fresno Partnership has proven to be necessary, but it is not sufficient on its own. From a planning standpoint, it is important to recognize that in order to revitalize, a community must first organize. In the case of Fresno, the BID provided an opportunity to collect formerly competing interests and put itself at the center of an underperforming downtown to alter the course towards a more vibrant and thriving area. It has established positive momentum down this path, and it is expected to be a strong voice for downtown in the future as others join in on the fully-experienced revitalized state of Downtown Fresno.

This thesis is divided into two parts. First part includes simple analyse of recieved complaints in 2005 - 2008. Target of this tehsis is finding of the most problematic places in system of quality management by the way of complaints. In second part are solved individual complaints taken in 2008. Effect of this thesis is formulation of proposals and actions for improvement of whole quality management system in Black and Decker.