Use of a gas turbine engine as the primary power source has been popular in light and heavy industries, aerospace engineering, marine engineering, etc. Gas turbine engine is also used in our modern national defense weapons in Taiwan. For instance, most of Air Force fighters use gas turbine engines as the source of power. Gas turbine engines are usually associated with various sensors for real-time condition surveillance and require periodical maintenance for providing proper functioning and safety guarantee. In contrast, real-time failure prediction of gas turbine engine components could be achieved by applying data mining or statistics techniques. However, such failure prediction will not be effective when applying to engines which are deteriorated by long-term running in high temperature and high stress environment. In this study, we collected maintenance and operating logs according to the engine deterioration history and established and empirically evaluated four different data-mining-based prediction models. The proposed data-mining-based prediction approach attempts to predict the time-to-deterioration for a gas turbine engine after its prior deterioration occurrence, to provide maintenance personnel accurate prediction for better making or revising maintenance schedules, and to achieve the ¡§foreseeing maintenance and management policy.¡¨

River bridges get damaged or even collapse because of various reasons, such as development of adverse hydraulic conditions during severe floods, disastrous earthquakes, deficiencies in structural and geotechnical design, material deficiencies, or other unexpected external factors. Failure of service at vital lifelines, bridges, can lead to loss of several lives and properties, traffic disruption, and/or deficiencies in daily usage. Existing structures should be monitored periodically for decision-making and necessary protective works should be implemented to increase the safety. Types of items to be inspected would be categorized as structural, geotechnical, hydraulic, and status of materials. Requirement for periodic inspections and the ways of handling these activities are discussed within the framework of aforementioned aspects with special reference to the current situation of river bridges in Turkey and current practices in USA. An algorithm, composed of sets of checklists, is proposed. In such an algorithm, rank-based prioritization of events is identified. The evaluation and interpretation are displayed with the help of a few case studies, selected among several river bridges around Ankara.

The inspection (verification) or Certification firm is to utilize professional specialist, technology and equipment, standing on an independent¡Aimpartial and objective position to conduct inspection, testing and assessment on the quantity/quality of commodity, performance of machinery and components, and implementation of the established quality system, then provide the supplier/buyer and stakeholder with certificate or report for fulfilling the contractual obligation or commitment made in the trade transaction activities. The inspection and certification are playing the role of pioneer in the process of technological development, and they are also one of the necessary pusher for business and industrial enterprises to achieve the target of enhancing product quality¡A obtaining international accreditation and increasing international competence. In the current society of free trade and free economy, the inspection or certification firms, along with the consumers¡¦ awareness and the drastic competitions among inspection or certification industries, facing the daily increasing competition and consumers¡¦ demanding, should make research of how to adopt an appropriate competitive strategy, to look for the market niche, to enhance service quality, to understand customers¡¦ real needs and customers¡¦ satisfactions so as to broaden service scopes and customer groups for the purpose of accomplishing the objective of building the firm to last forever. - iii - This study is to explain the characters, current status and outlook of the inspection or certification industry, and to analyze the development history, performance and achievement of SGS Group in Taiwan - the world leader of verification, testing and certification organization. By employing the industry analysis method addressed by Porter and the SWOT analysis for Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat, we discussed the effect of ¡§five forces¡¨ on SGS Taiwan¡¦s business strategy, the correlation of service quality and customers¡¦ satisfaction, and currently its implementation of the managing tools of Balanced Scorecard and ISO 9001 quality management system. In summary, we have derived the Key success factors for the inspection or certification industry, and submitted suggestions of strengthening business model and management strategy for other inspection or certification firms as reference and benchmark enabling them to provide best and integrated services for the business and industrial enterprises in Taiwan who are pursuing quality. Key words:Inspection, Verification, Certification, Business Strategy, Service Quality, Customers Satisfaction.

With ever-increasing demands for high-speed data transmission and device capacity to handle various telecommunication data links, the high reliability of these transmission devices is expected for uninterrupted service. A typical optical communication system consists of transmitters in which laser diodes convert electrical signals into light signals, optical fibers with a few pumps transmitting and maintaining these light signals over long distances, and receivers in which photodiodes convert the light signals back into an electronic form. The efficiency of optoelectronic devices in a communication system, which include transmitters and receivers, plays the most important role in determining the quality and the bandwidth of a communication system. For transmitters, the efficiency is defined as the ratio of the light entering the optical fiber to the light generated by the laser diode. Therefore, the optical fiber should be aligned as precisely as possible with the laser diode to ensure the high efficiency. For high performance optoelectronic devices, box-type packages including the dual-in-line package (DIP) and butterfly package with fiber-solder-ferrule (FSF) are widely used. An optical fiber with a metallized end is soldered inside a ferrule tube to form the FSF. The FSF is joined on a u-channel mount in front of laser diode by laser welding. No matter where the fiber locates in the ferrule tube, the place for maximum coupling power can be dynamically measured and then the FSF is fixed. But, researches have shown that the redistribution of residual stress and the stress relaxation of creep phenomenon within the solder will push the fiber shift to the geometrical center of the ferrule and the shift reduces the coupling efficiency of laser module after temperature cycle testing. The efficiency is worse when the initial fiber eccentric offset increased. An optimum approach for reduction of the fiber alignment shift in laser module is to solder the fiber near to the center of the ferrule. A method for automating the FSF packaging process has been developed to fix the fiber within less than 20um of the center of the ferrule. This method makes use of CCD cameras as position sensors to locate the fiber, and compensates all the major sources of inaccuracy resulting from a typical CCD-based packaging system. The accuracy of the fiber position is highly improved from 80um by traditional packaging process to 20um shown in the experiments. Further work is underway to better the accuracy by compensating the minor sources of inaccuracy.

As the population density increases dramatically and metropolises develop rapidly, which lead to the trend in construction of higher and complex buildings, fire has become the number one disaster inflicted on buildings, imposing great impact on society and causing disturbance to residents in community. Therefore, the government established an professional inspector system in 1997, stipulating building owners and users to entrust private professional institutions and technicians with the implementation of inspection report system for building public safety, for the purpose of fulfilling the principle of separation between ¡§administration¡¨ and ¡§technique.¡¨ As a result, a new service industry called ¡§Building Public Safety Inspection Institution (BPSII),¡¨ transformed from Japan¡¦s fire-fighting inspection system, is spawned by new codes and regulations in response to several severe public safety incidents in recent years. More specifically, the aim of BPSII is to establish professional technician acting system by way of private industries¡¦ participation, thereby facilitating public safety inspection and reporting system. Based on personal experience and practice in managing building public safety inspection tasks, the researcher attempts to in depth explore the related policies, regulations, and research literature, utilizing systemic analysis approach to study the status of BPSII, to explain its difficulties and developmental bottleneck, and thereby depict its future vision. The purpose of this present study is to investigate, after the burgeoning of BPSII, how to enhance its developmental strategies and organizational goals, as well as to predict its future trend, and to propose recommendations for adjusting the current construction-related codes and regulations accordingly. Therefore, to facilitate this study, a survey questionnaire is conducted to probe into current situation and issues. The findings of this study are as follows: ¤@¡BThe Features of Management (¤@)Characteristics of Organizations 1. Unified professionalism. 2. Cross-regional operation. 3. Subcontracting. (¤G)Characteristics of Operation 1. Institution chiefs must be professional inspectors. 2. The minimum capital is 2 million NT dollars. 3. Closely scheduled deadlines cause difficulties in managing manpower and finance. (¤T)Characteristics of Management 1. A lack of marketing management. 2. A difficulty in keeping customers. (¥|)Characteristics of Human Resource 1. High turnover. 2. High educational training cost. 3. High moral standards. ¤G¡BManagerial Issues (¤@)In Business 1. A failure to declare safety and fire-fighting inspection together causes complaints. 2. The market is decided by price, rather than service quality. (¤G)In Operation 1. Price undercutting causes vicious competition. 2. Unpredictable manpower caused by high turnover affects service quality. (¤T)In Management 1. Employee quality is uneven. 2. Educational training is insufficient. (¥|)In Regulations 1. Only institution chiefs are held accountable, which results in inspectors¡¦ poor practices. 2. Some checking items of building safety inspection overlap with that of fire-fighting inspection. This study discusses the issues concerning the operation of BPSII, hoping to promote service quality through participatory discussions among labor unions. In addition, it intends to inform authorities and the public of situations of BPSII, and thereby protect legal businesses, improve their image, and join related industries to engage in multiple operations and services, as well as inventing cutting edge fire-fighting technology. In doing so, BPSII is able to prosper in the 21st century, set up an paradigm for building safety inspection industry, promote a safer living environment and quality, and enhance the cooperation between the government and businesses to weave a seamless social security net.

Abstract Taiwan is an island surround by sea. The fishery is well developed, and fishing boats numbered a lot. The amount of vessels getting in and out of seaports is too many to estimate. Therefore the advance of the quality of the Coast Guard¡¦s security inspection is especially connected with fishermen¡¦s rights and interests. The contact experience with the Coast Guard during vessel safety check is the critical moment which determines the service quality. To understand this process of the dynamic contact experience is the key to know the fishermen¡¦s cognition to service quality; by this understanding the Coast Guard can design service content to satisfy fishermen¡¦s expectation. For this reason, the degrees of the fishermen¡¦s cognitive correctness and satisfaction in fishermen¡¦s field contact experience with security inspectors, which is a kind of intuition and composite impression, deeply influence the planning of policy, the development, and the image of the Coast Guard Administration, hence it behooves us to probe into this contact experience. This study investigated the key factors which affected fishermen¡¦s public praise response during the contact experience, in the real scene of the Coast Guard Administration safety inspection, in which the first line of safety inspection and the inspected fishermen were involved. Furthermore, this study probed into the interaction and afterward influence in the process of the service delivery. This study started with case study, in which I collected and qualitatively analyzed the fourteen satisfying cases and nineteen unsatisfying cases offered by Tong-Kong office , the Coast Patrol Corps 6 of Southern Coastal Patrol Office. With this analysis I concluded the factors affecting fishermen¡¦s satisfaction, and then devised, mended the questionnaire referring to relevant literature, and circulated 300 copies of the questionnaire among the native captains, shipmen in the vessels getting in and out of Tong-Kong , which were not limited to the vessels registered in Tong-Kong. Using SPSS program to proceed credibility analysis, factor analysis, variable analysis, t-test, relevance analysis, and regression analysis, the results suggest that ¡§safety inspection skills¡¨, ¡§safety inspection equipment¡¨ and ¡§safety inspection time period¡¨ are the three factors which can explain 4.3% variable of ¡§public praise response¡¨ and this finding is statistically effective.The conclusion is that under the restricted expenditure, if the government wants to raise the fishermen¡¦s public praise response, she should first improve the corps¡¦ safety inspection skills, then purchase professional safety inspection equipment, and shorten the safety inspection time period.

Increased cooperation among in people leads to social growth and security and encourage public interaction and cooperation. The government has established the mutual attention makes an inspection tour the team to provide more care and services to the public, encouraging cooperation among the local people and the government, in order to improve the every day life of the public. The basis of the idea of empowering the public comes from the fact that the government has limited resources and abilities. Therefore, when it comes to building a better society, it is both practical and beneficial to involve the community. However, what resources has the government offered to the community in order to allow them to better contribute to the public goal? On the other hand, what does the community and the mutual attention makes an inspection tour the team feel about the government¡¦ s support? The work environment, requirements, and moral are critical to their performance. This paper analyses and studies the relationships among these elements in order to review the mutual attention makes an inspection tour the team¡¦s activities and strategic plans. The study looks at things such as how is a team¡¦s performance is affected by whether or not the individual members are satisfied. Using a variety of survey and analysis technicques, this study seeks to understand how to improve the efficiency of mutual attention makes an inspection tour the team. The study focuses on studying the aforementioned issues of the Sanmin Distric Office Kaohsiung City and hopes to discover more empirical data to further support future development and strategic planning for increasing public cooperation through mutual attention makes an inspection tour the teams.

Thesis (M.P.A.)--Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, 2001. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 2944. Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 140-141).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 187-198).

Thesis (M.P.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 123-127).