Outsourcing refers enterprises to take advantage of external resources for their own professional services, so as to achieve lower costs, improve efficiency and give core competencies to enhance their own ability as well as a management model. The term of service outsourcing is the production and management services of owners, who utilize commercial activities to the owners of the service providers. Within the low-profit time, enterprises pursue growth to some scale and, due to the restriction of the market can not break through, the use of outsourcing is able to save costs and enhance operating efficiency immediately. Service outsourcing is the most fashionable in today's global services sector, and the service outsourcing industry will become the new essential trend of economic growth. This study surveyed by the outsourcing theory of McHugh et al. (1995) conducts research on small passenger car rental industry; on the analysis of elements of cost, service, responsibility with competitiveness, the theater theory of Goffman (1959) delves into the relationship between performance of employees, customer performance and service entities and the impact of the relationship for satisfaction degree. At the same time reviewing the quality relationship literature and the adoption of Crosby et al. (1990), it researches the two dimensions of trust and satisfied to see the quality relationship to explore the public and private institutions, enterprise organization units within the public service reform with a small bus to outsourcing. As a result, through contact with the service quality experience, it will explore the effectiveness of service outsourcing. For this study, it sent out 350 questionnaires including 307 valid questionnaires using data analysis and simple regression analysis on the false description of the research to verify the results of discovery; Services outsourcing and relationship quality have some significant positive relationship; The contact experience and the quality relationship have a positive correlation. From the factor analysis of "cost", "professional", "quality", and "efficiency" in service outsourcing, and followed by Goffman (1959) theory of theater management to analysis of the "performance drivers", "customer performance", "vehicle equipment", and "field service". Furthermore, on the basis of the quality relationship, it researches the factors for the "trust" or "satisfied" and the finding result are as follows; Both of contact experience and service quality relationship have some significant positive impact, and the result implies that the public and private business organizations can go along with outsourcing and services providers ¡V such as minibus and driver leasing industry, and then the better relationship will enhance the effectiveness of service outsourcing, and achieve cost savings.

Optimal generation scheduling attempts to minimise the cost of power production while satisfying the various operation constraints and physical limitations on the power system components. The thermal generation scheduling problem can be considered as a power system control problem acting over different time frames. The unit commitment phase determines the optimum pattern for starting up and shutting down the generating units over the designated scheduling period, while the economic dispatch phase is concerned with allocation of the load demand among the on-line generators. In a hydrothermal system the optimal scheduling of generation involves the allocation of generation among the hydro electric and thermal plants so as to minimise total operation costs of thermal plants while satisfying the various constraints on the hydraulic and power system network. This thesis reports on the development of genetic algorithm computation techniques for the solution of the short term generation scheduling problem for power systems having both thermal and hydro units. A comprehensive genetic algorithm modelling framework for thermal and hydrothermal scheduling problems using two genetic algorithm models, a canonical genetic algorithm and a deterministic crowding genetic algorithm, is presented. The thermal scheduling modelling framework incorporates unit minimum up and down times, demand and reserve constraints, cooling time dependent start up costs, unit ramp rates, and multiple unit operating states, while constraints such as multiple cascade hydraulic networks, river transport delays and variable head hydro plants, are accounted for in the hydraulic system modelling. These basic genetic algorithm models have been enhanced, using quasi problem decomposition, and hybridisation techniques, resulting in efficient generation scheduling algorithms. The results of the performance of the algorithms on small, medium and large scale power system problems is presented and compared with other conventional scheduling techniques.

Increasing penetration of stochastic photovoltaic (PV) generation into the electric power system poses significant challenges to system operators. In the thesis, we evaluate the spatial and temporal correlations of stochastic PV generation at multiple sites. Given the unique spatial and temporal correlation of PV generation, an optimal data-driven forecast model for short-term PV power is proposed. This model leverages both spatial and temporal correlations among neighboring solar sites, and is shown to have improved performance compared with conventional persistent model. The tradeoff between communication cost and improved forecast quality is studied using realistic data sets collected from California and Colorado. n IEEE 14 bus system test case is used to quantify the value of improved forecast quality through the reduction of system dispatch cost. The Modified spatio-temporal forecast model which has the least forecast PV overestimate percentage shows the best performance in the dispatch cost reduction.

Hierdie studie se fokus is op die wit Afrikaanssprekende-gemeenskap van Despatch. Daar word op die sosiale, politieke en godsdienstige geskiedenis van die wit Afrikaanssprekende-gemeenskap op Despatch gekonsentreer. Die studie ondersoek slegs die geskiedenis van die wit Afrikaanssprekende-gemeenskap van Despatch aangesien die dorp bekend daarvoor is dat dit oorwegend ʼn wit Afrikaanssprekende-gemeenskap is. Die ekonomie van Despatch en die bruin en swart inwoners word egter kortliks bespreek. Die tydperk van hierdie studie handel van 1945 – 1995. Dit was tydens hierdie jare wat Despatch amptelik as ʼn munisipaliteit gefunksioneer het. Uit die aard van die saak moet die studie gebeure wat aanleiding tot die nedersetting van wit mense langs die oewer van die Swartkopsrivier bespreek. Daar word ʼn kort studie gemaak van die periode 1700 (toe die eerste wit mense hulle langs die oewers van die Swartkopsrivier gevestig het) tot 1939 (wat die begin was van permanente nedersettings langs die syspoor op Despatch). Sekere gebeure word verder as 1995 bespreek. Dit word gedoen om kontinuiteit te behou wanneer belangrike gebeurtenisse, soos die oorskakeling na demokratiese regering in 1994, ondersoek word. Die doel van die studie is om ʼn verkennende ondersoek rakende die geskiedenis van die wit Afrikaanssprekende-gemeenskap van Despatch te doen. Die studie is ʼn verkennende ondersoek omrede nie al die aspekte van die geskiedenis van Despatch ondersoek sal word nie. Slegs die wit Afrikaanssprekende-gemeenskap se sosiale strukture (onderwys, godsdiens en kultuur), munisipale bestuur en politiek sal ondersoek word.

This master's thesis describes Grand Central Dispatch technology. It is technology for parallel computing and task processing. It also describes history and techniques of parallel computing. As an example stand simple HTTP server with 4 methods of request parallel processing. Server is connected to AVG antivirus software and check each request for viruses.

The frequent occurrences of natural and technological disasters have incurred grave loss of life and damage to property. For mitigating the miserable aftermaths, multi-robot teleoperation systems have been developed and deployed to cooperate with human rescuers in post-earthquake scenarios, and to sample, monitor and clean pollutants in marine environments. With a bidirectional communication channel, human users can deliver commands/requests to guide the motions of the remote robots, and can receive visual/audio feedback to supervise the status of the remote environment, throughout multi-robot teleoperation. Furthermore, the remote robots can send force feedback to human operators to improve their situational awareness and task performance. This way, a closed-loop multi-robot teleoperation system becomes bilateral in which coordinated robots physically interact and exchange energy with human users, and hence needs to be rendered passive for safe human-robot interaction. Beyond guaranteeing closed-loop passivity, the control of a bilateral multi-robot teleoperation system faces two challenging problems: preserving the communication connectivity of the remote robots; and dispatching the teleoperation authority to multiple human users. Because wireless transmission of radio/acoustic signals between the remote robots is constrained by their distances, bilateral multi-robot teleoperation control must coordinate the motions of the remote robots appropriately so as to maintain their communication network connected. Further, multiple human users can send possibly conflicting teleoperation commands to the remote robots, a distributed authority dispatch algorithm is thus needed for the remote robot network to recognize and follow the most urgent user commands at runtime. This thesis develops an energy shaping strategy to preserve the connectivity of the remote robots, and to dispatch control authority over the remote robots to human users, during bilateral multi-robot teleoperation. Chapter 1 introduces the application background of multi-robot teleoperation as well as the state-of-the-art development in related research areas. In Chapter 2, a dynamic interconnection and damping strategy is proposed to reduce and constrain the position error between the local and remote robots to any prescribed bound during bilateral teleoperation. Chapter 3 derives a gradient plus damping control from a bounded potential function and then unifies it into an indirect coupling framework to preserve all communication links of an autonomous multi-robot system with time-varying delays and bounded actuation. On these bases, Chapter 4 develops a dynamic feedforward-feedback passivation strategy to preserve all communication links and thus the connectivity of the tree network of the remote robots while rendering the bilateral multi-robot teleoperation close loop passive. Specifically, by blending the sliding variable in Chapter 2 with the bounded potential function in Chapter 3, the dynamic passivation strategy decomposes the dynamics of the remote robots into a power-preserving interconnection of two subsystems, and regulates the energy behaviour of each subsystem to preserve the tree communication connectivity of the remote robots. To handle time-varying communication delays, the strategy further transforms the communication channels between the local and remote robots into a dynamic controller for passivating bilateral teleoperation. Superior to existing controls, the strategy using a bounded potential function can circumvent numerical instability, reduce noise sensitivity and facilitate future extensions to accommodate robot actuator saturation. On the other side, Chapter 5 designs a distributed and exponentially convergent winners-take-all authority dispatch algorithm that activates the teleoperation of only human users with the most urgent requests in real time. After formulating the problem as a constrained quadratic program, we employ an exact penalty function method to construct a distributed primal-dual dynamical system that can solve the problem at an exponential rate. Because the equilibrium of the system changes with user requests, we then interconnect the dynamical system with physical robot dynamics in a power-preserving way, and passivate closed-loop multi-robot teleoperation using multiple storage functions from a switched system perspective. Finally, Chapter 6 provides some conclusive remarks and two problems regarding connectivity preservation and authority dispatch for future study. / Graduate

Thesis advisor: Sarah Babb / How does the “World Factory” mediate between the rising labor cost and the intensive order fluctuation to maintain its production? While previous studies have focused on the politics of production at workplace and types of flexible employment to explain the effective control of workers and labor cost, this study argues that more attention needs to be paid to the intermediating power of labor market agencies, which has become the organizational forces for establishing informal and nonstandard employment relations. Based on two-month fieldwork at two labor staffing agencies in Shanghai and a yearlong track of changing labor prices in one of the agencies, this study finds that a flexible hiring system based on seasonal production has been established to maximize the adaptability of the manufacturing industry. This recruiting practice, through adjusting economic incentives and obscuring labor contracts, enables the market to relocate workers into different factories as production requires, thereby redistributing the total workforce under labor shortage. While workers consent to these arrangements because of high economic rewards, they also highlight doing temporary jobs as exercising control over their labor power, a strategic tool to detach themselves from the rigorous factory regime. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

[pt] Uma formulação geral do problema do despacho econômico de carga considerando as perdas nas linhas de transmissão, é apresentada dando ênfase e uma solução pelo método das penalidades de Fletcher Powell. Ao contrário do despacho de carga clássico, onde a solução é por vezes encontrada mediante ajustes repetidos das grandezas arbitradas, propõe-se resolver um sistema de inequações levando-se em consideração as restrições do problema, determinando pontos pertencentes a este conjunto de restrições. Vários testes foram realizados, comparando-se os resultados com aqueles obtidos por intermédio de outros métodos, provando-se a eficiência do algoritmo adotado tanto sob o ponto de vista de precisão quanto de convergência. / [en] The general formulation of a problem of economic dispatch concerning losses in transmission lines and the presentation with emphasis on a solution by the Fletcher Power penalty methold is employed. Not considerating the classic load flow where a solution is encountered by trail methods our purposal is to solve a system of inequalities taking into consideration the limits of the problem, determinig values belonging to the set of restrictions. Various tests were realized comparing the results with those obtained by the means of other methods, proving the efficiency of the algorithm from the point of view of precision and convergence.

No description available.

Reliable, affordable access to electrical power is a requirement for almost all aspects of developed societies. Challenges associated with reducing carbon emissions has led to growing interest in nuclear-renewable hybrid energy systems (N-RHES). Much work has already been done in suggesting and analyzing various N-RHES using a variety of optimization techniques and assumptions. This work builds upon previous techniques for simultaneous combined design and dispatch optimization (CDDO) for hybrid energy systems (HES). The first contribution of this work is the development and application of sensitivity analysis tailored to the combined design and dispatch optimization problem. This sensitivity analysis cover uncertainty in design parameters, time series and dispatch horizon lengths. The result is a deeper insight into which sources of uncertainty are most important to account for and how the uncertainty around these sources can be quantified. The second contribution of this work is a novel multi-scale optimization algorithm for the combined HES design and dispatch optimization. This algorithm supports optimization of nonlinear models over very long-time horizons. This method is based on a multi-dimensional distribution of the optimal capacities for a system as determined by a large number of combined design and dispatch optimization problems each covering a subset of the complete time horizon. This method shows good agreement with the direct solution to multiple example systems and is then used to solve a problem with a dispatch horizon length 112.5 times longer than is solvable directly. The third contribution of this work is the application of the novel multi-scale method to three HES. Each of the application systems is used to demonstrate the strengths, validation and applicability of the developed algorithm to a wide range of possible HES/NHES designs.