In this dissertation, we consider a multi-item two-echelon inventory distribution system in which the central warehouse operates with (Q, R) policy, and each local warehouse implements base-stock policy. The objective is to find the policy parameters minimizing the relevant system-wide costs subject to an aggregate mean response time constraint at each facility. We first propose an exact solution procedure based on a branch-and-price algorithm to find the relevant policy parameters of the system considered. Then, we propose four alternative heuristics to find the optimal or near-optimal policy parameters of large practical-size systems. The first heuristic, which we call the Lagrangian heuristic, is based on the simultaneous approach and relies on the integration of a column generation method and a greedy algorithm. The other three heuristics are based on the sequential approach, in which first the order quantities are determined using a batch size heuristic, then the reorder levels at the central warehouse and the basestock levels at the local warehouses are determined through the same method used for the Lagrangian heuristic. We also propose a lower bound for the system-wide cost. Later, we extend our study to compound Poisson demand. The performance of the Lagrangian heuristic is found to be extremely well and improves even further as the number of parts increases. Also the computational requirement of the heuristic is quite tolerable. This makes the heuristic very promising for large practical industry-size problems. The performance of the sequential heuristics is also satisfactory, but not as much as the Lagrangian heuristic.

Inventory management policies of two independent dealers in a service parts system with transshipment is studied in this thesis. Dealers can collaborate by pooling inventory or service. Revenue is shared in transshipment, can sometimes be contrary to profit maximization of one of the parties albeit sum of profits is increased. To assess the benefits of inventory pooling under equilibrium strategies, and the effect of competition on profits, a Markov Decision Process is formulated. A simpler variant of the optimal four-index threshold policy is used to characterize the production, service and transshipment related inventory decisions. A game theoretical approach as well as notions from policy iteration is taken to find the best response policy and equilibrium policies of the dealers. Numerical study is conducted to investigate the effect of cost, revenue and demand parameters, as well as dealer asymmetricities on benefit of pooling, service levels and transshipment flows. Analysis shows that commission schemes fairly allocating transshipment value to the players, high customer traffic intensities, and low transshipment costs are most suited environments for pooling. System centralization is beneficial when the inventory holding costs are high, transshipment costs are low, customer traffic intensities are high or the commission structure is distracting a party. Competition, within the experimental settings, dampens about 45% of the benefits of pooling.

The rapid advancement of information technology and its integration with the manufacturing technology increased the necessity of consistent and coherent data flow in the chain of Computer Aided Design (CAD)-Computer aided Manufacturing (CAM)-Computer Numerical Control (CNC). To achieve this, ISO 10303 standard (STEP), developed by ISO, is seen as a solution since STEP is independent of the environment on which design data, manufacturing data or machining data produced. In this thesis, efficiency of NC-code generation, with the inclusion of process planning data, from a STEP based CAD data is investigated. For the investigation purposes, software responsible for both building the STEP based CAD data and generating related NC-code automatically is developed. Using this software, several parts are designed / generated NC-codes are verified via CNC simulators and some test parts are produced. STEP AP224 based feature modeler, developed specifically for 2- axis rotational part design, includes / feature library, feature modeler employing SW2007 via API for visualization and preprocessor responsible for generation of STEP file in neutral format, called STEP Part 21. The NC-code generator includes / postprocessor responsible for STEP Part 21 interpretation, CNC machine tool and cutting tool database and preprocessor responsible for NC-code generation.

Software development of R.O.C. military maintenance parts inventory control system¡¦s integrated requirement used to adopt data flow approach. Data flow approach not only flunks to guide users to describe their real need but also fails to provide a coalescence picture that integrates the operating personnel, materials data sources and logistic system together with completeness and consistency. Using architecture-oriented approach, structure elements, services, connections, and interaction behaviors of R.O.C. military maintenance parts inventory control system¡¦s integrated requirement are adequately documented. With this transparent document, developers and users shall obtain full integrality and consistency of technical support and requirement provision during the system development. This research embraces the structure behavior coalescence, abbreviated as SBC, approach to construct the architecture-oriented analysis-model of military maintenance parts inventory control system¡¦s integrated requirement, abbreviated as AOAMMMPICSIR. AOAMMMPICSIR shall be referred as an R.O.C. military architecture-oriented analysis tool and it shall help outsource the software development of military maintenance parts inventory control system¡¦s integrated requirement with success and quality.

<p>The steadily increasing demand of wood forces sawmills to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their equipments. The weak parts and the twist in wooden logs have been documented as the most common and crucial defect in sawn lumber.</p><p>In this thesis we are going to implement a program which is able to determine the weak parts in wooden logs. The implementation will be in two languages C++ and Matlab. Parts of the program are going to be implemented sometimes by C++ and sometimes by Matlab therefore different designs are going to be tested. The aim of this thesis is to check whether these designs will meet the real time bound of 10 m/s.</p><p>The result shows that there is a huge difference in time performance for the different designs. Therefore, different discretization levels were used in order to meet the deadline of 10m/s. We found that in order to get better speed one should calculate the matrix for the function <em>F </em>and the Jacobian function <em>J </em>by using C++ not by Matlab. Also we found that when we called functions from one language to another an extra time is added.</p>

The purpose of this paper was to analyse “Identity- about trademarks, signs and symbols”. The project was a co-operation between the National museum of Art and Stockholm School of Economics in the spring of 2002, which consisted of an exhibition, a book and a series of seminars. The goal was to illustrate how the trademark had developed through history, which role it has in the modern society and how the trademark serves as a creator of identities. The project, mostly the exhibition, was exposed to criticism, which was directed towards the sponsorship deals between The National Museum of Art and five companies.

Blackfoot (Siksika), an Algonquian language spoken in Southern Alberta and in Northwestern Montana, is claimed to have a pitch-accent system (Frantz 1991). However, no complete analysis of the Blackfoot word accent system is available in the literature. This thesis examines Blackfoot nominal accent by means of metrical analysis (Halle and Vergnaud 1987) in Optimality Theory (OT) (Prince and Smolensky 1993). All of the data in this thesis are elicited from native speakers of Blackfoot. Regardless of noun type, every word contains one and only one pitch peak. Bare nouns (mono-morphemic nouns) and relational nouns (dependent nouns) show that Blackfoot has a mixed predictable and lexical accent system. Accent is quantity-sensitive, i.e. a heavy syllable attracts accent, while in nouns which contain no heavy syllable or more than one heavy syllable, it is lexically specified. An interesting contrast is found in long vowels - they contrast a high-level pitch, a falling pitch, and a rising pitch. Derived nouns (compounds) demonstrate four kinds of accent patterns, depending on the status (free vs. bound) and the accentual property (accented vs. unaccented) of morphemes. The leftmost accent of the compound members is retained, but the accent shifts to the juncture of them if it is word-final. If compound members are unaccented, the accent is assigned to word-final position by default. Speaker variation also occurs. One speaker systematically changes vowel length depending on the type of accented syllable, while the other speaker shows a wide variety of accent patterns. This thesis concludes that all the accent patterns can be accounted for by a single ranking of constraints in an OT analysis, in spite of the fact that the accent system is both lexical and predictable. Addition of constraints is needed specifically for compounds! Speaker variation is accounted for by reranking the same set of constraints. Priority is given to constraints that refer to the predictable accent in the grammar of one speaker. The lexical information is more respected in the other speaker's grammar. In addition to the analysis of general pitch-accent patterns, four types of irregular patterns are examined. The conclusions reached in this thesis demonstrate that the accent system interacts with other phonological properties of Blackfoot.

Quality defects are a common problem for producing companies, but causes and consequences are often unknown. The purpose of this thesis assignment is to develop a step-by-step analysis method for identifying the root causes of quality defects based on previously examined consequences. The first steps focus on customer recovery meanwhile the following steps concentrate on process recovery. The analysis method is process-orientated as the complete production and delivery process are scrutinized upstream by the combination of commonly used quality tools.   For testing the applicability of the presented method this thesis comprises a case study conducted at one company receiving complaints about quality defects. For the Case Study Company the consequences and causes of quality defects are described, analyzed and suggestions for improvement are developed.   In the investigated case, the developed method helps to identify causes and consequences of incomplete delivery, the company’s major quality problem. The upstream approach proved advantages for two reasons. First of all including the customer side guarantees that the cause analysis is limited to the relevant problems. With the help of the method the severity of consequences depending on the customers’ awareness of defects and available time can be detected. Secondly problems can be scrutinized in natural order as difficulties in production once identified can be followed step by step to the causes in a preceding step. The main causes identified in this case study are a lack of process definition and of standardization. Thus, the portrayed case suggests that regular appearances of quality defects are not a coincidence. The reasons are the underlying, possibly insufficiently defined and managed processes.   The general finding of the thesis assignment is the presented analysis method that comprises a systematic process-oriented approach designed to examine consequences and causes of quality defects. In contrast to the root cause analysis approaches found in literature each analysis step is described in detail. This makes the method easy to apply in practice. Therefore the method is a valid tool to deal with a high degree of complexity. The case study proved that it is effective and efficient to scrutinize problems with these characteristics. Under different circumstances the application of single quality tools might be sufficient and hence resource effective. Further investigation is necessary since this method has only been tested in one case study.

„Researches of part joints“ Process of peg and hole connection for automatic assembly is analyzed in the work. Mathematical model of the parts connection was formed. Programs for simulation of the connection process were written using MatLab software. Characteristics of connecting forces variation and movement of the peg were determined. Parameters influencing lower loading of the assembly equipment and values of these parameters were determined. It was determined that probability of the connection process can be increased by selecting particular values of correspondent parameters of the connection process. Results of the analysis can be used for designing of new, economic, high performance and reliable assembly equipment.

Lietuvos valdančiųjų partijų socialinė politika yra įtakingų Lietuvos politinės sistemos jėjų bandymai įgyvendinti savas socialinės politikos sampratas, kurias apsprendžia partijų ideologinė skirtis. Socialinė politika yra valstybės pastangos užtikrinti žmonėms lygias galimybes ir pagrindines žmogaus teises. Socialinė politika visada orientuota į labiausiai socialiai pažeidžiamus visuomenės sluoksnius. Globalizacija išplečia minimus sluoksnius, tokiu būdu suteikdama socialiniam darbui vis didesnės reikšmės ir didindama socialinių darbuotojų atsakomybę. Tačiau socialinės politikos ryšys su socialiniu darbu nenagrinėjamas, o socialinio darbuotojo vaidmuo socialinės politikos konstravime apribojamas bendromis pilietinėmis teisėmis. Socialinio darbo tyrėjai neanalizuoja socialinių darbuotojų tarpusavio sąveikos aspektų, politikos analitikai mažai dėmesio skiria praktikams – politikos įgyvendintojams, o patys socialiniai darbuotojai dėl praktinio darbo sunkumų ir laiko stokos nemato galimybės bendrauti ir dalytis sukaupta patirtimi, ieškoti galimybės veikti socialinėje politikoje ne pasyviai, tik ją įgyvendinant, bet ir aktyviai, prisidedant prie socialinės politikos konstravimo. Lietuvoje socialiniai darbuotojai yra neorganizuoti, jie neturi jokios prieigos prie visuomenės informavimo priemonių, todėl jų nuomone ir patirtimi socialinės politikos konstravime politinės partijos neturi galimybės pasinaudoti. Šio darbo tikslas yra atskleisti Lietuvos valdančiųjų politinių... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The social policy of Lithuanian ruling batches is making assays to implement political conceptions of important Lithuanian political system’s forces, which are affected by ideological difference of batches. The social policy is national assays to ensure the equal possibilities for people and their basic rights. All the time the social policy is oriented to the most assailable layer of society. The globalization broadens these layers, thus social work becomes more significant and the responsibility of social workers is increasing. However the relation of the social policy and social work is not analyzed and the role of social worker in the social policy’s construction is restricted by the common civil rights. The researchers of the social work are not analyzing the aspects of workers; interaction, policy analysts too less attention pays on practical workers who implements policy, while the social workers don’t have possibilities to communicate and share collected experience, to look for possibilities of acting in the social policy not only in passive way, just implementing it, but in active way as well joining the construction of the social policy. The social workers in Lithuania are not organized, they don’t have any approaches to the instruments of public information, and thus political batches don’t have possibilities to take into account their opinion and experience constructing policy. The aim of this work is to discover the relation of Lithuanian ruling batches’ program... [to full text]