Knee osteoarthritis is one of the most debilitating aging diseases as it causes loss of cartilage of the knee joint. Knee osteoarthritis affects the quality of life and increases the burden on health care costs. With no disease-modifying osteoarthritis drug currently available there is an immediate need to understand the factors triggering the onset and progression of the disease. Developing robust segmentation techniques and quantitative analysis helps identify potential imaging-based biomarkers that indicate the onset and progression of osteoarthritis. This thesis work developed layered optimal graph image segmentation of multiple objects and surfaces (LOGISMOS) framework based knee MRI segmentation algorithms in 3D and longitudinal 3D (4D). A hierarchical random forest classifier algorithm was developed to improve cartilage costs functions for the LOGISMOS framework. The new cost function design significantly improved the segmentation accuracy over the existing state of the art methods. Disease progression results in more artifacts appearing similar to cartilage in MRI. 4D LOGISMOS segmentation was developed to simultaneously segment multiple time-points of a single patient by incorporating information from earlier time points with a relatively healthier knee in the early stage of the disease. Our experiments showed consistently higher segmentation accuracy across all the time-points over 3D LOGISMOS segmentation of each time-point. Fully automated segmentation algorithms proposed are not 100% accurate especially for patient MRI's having severe osteoarthritis and require interactive correction. An interactive technique called just-enough interaction (JEI) was developed which added a fast correction step to the automated LOGISMOS, speeding up the interactions substantially over the current slice-by-slice manual editing while maintaining high accuracy. JEI editing modifies the graph nodes instead of the boundary surfaces of the bones and cartilages providing globally optimally corrected results. 3D JEI was extended to 4D JEI allowing for simultaneous visualization and interaction of multiple time points of the same patients. Further quantitative analysis tools were developed to study the thickness losses. Nomenclature compliant sub-plate detection algorithm was developed to quantify thickness in the smaller load bearing regions of the knee to help understand the varying rates of thickness losses in the different regions. Regression models were developed to predict the thickness accuracy on a patient MRI at a later follow-up using the available thickness information from the LOGISMOS segmentation of the current set of MRI scans of the patient. Further non-cartilage based imaging biomarker quantification was developed to analyze bone shape changes between progressing and non-progressing osteoarthritic populations. The algorithm quantified statistically significant local shape changes between the two populations. Overall this work improved the state of the art in the segmentation of the bones and cartilage of the femur and tibia. Interactive 3D and 4D JEI were developed allowing for fast corrections of the segmentations and thus significantly improving the accuracy while performing many times faster. Further, the quantitative analysis tools developed robustly analyzed the segmentation providing measurable metrics of osteoarthritis progression.

John Rawls developed principles of justice to guide the fair allocation of resources in a society. However, his principles did not take into consideration a society’s differing health needs. Norman Daniels attempted to extend Rawlsian principles of justice to apply to the allocation of health resources. In Just Health, Daniels argued that, under certain circumstances, an age-based allocation of health resources can be prudent. He proposed the Prudential Lifespan Account (PLA) to defend age-rationing against claims that it would lead to favoring one age-group over another. In this paper, I analyze Daniels’s PLA and argue that societal aging poses a significant threat to its effectiveness. I then examine and critique alternate theories to extend Rawlsian principles of justice to account for health, specifically those proposed by Dennis McKerlie and Hugh Lazenby.

Over the years, much attention has been given to the analysis of the pull type ordering system to reduce in-process inventory and to improve product quality. Kanban Control Systems are widely used to control the release of parts in multi-stage manufacturing systems operating under a pull mechanism. Considerable research has been done to study the individual manufacturing systems for multi stage and single product. However, not much research has been done to compare different pull control policies for multi product manufacturing systems. Most of the research done in multi-product system assumes that a kanban card is dedicated to a part type. The aim of this research is to compare the Kanban Control System (KCS), Generalized Kanban Control System (GKCS) and Extended Kanban Control System (EKCS) in the context of multi-product manufacturing systems where the kanban cards are either dedicated to a single part type or shared among the different part types. In this study, we analyze the performance of various control policies for a multi-product multi-stage manufacturing system. The manufacturing system considered in this research use a single-card kanban system, where the transportation of materials between the different work-centers is controlled by production kanbans. Demands that arrive to the system are satisfied from the finished goods inventory whenever possible and are backordered otherwise. Performance measures are number of backorders, average waiting time of backordered demand and average work in process. Our results show that Shared GKCS has lower number of backorders when the variability in the processing time is low, while Shared EKCS performs better when variability in the processing time is high. Trade off analysis was performed on average WIP and time to satisfy backorders. The Shared EKCS makes a better service-inventory compromise than traditional KCS. The Shared GKCS results in lower average waiting time to satisfy the backordered demand indicating responsiveness of this control system. The overall results indicate GKCS and EKCS with dedicated or shared kanbans outclass kanban control policy. The shared kanban-like control systems outperform dedicated control systems for all performance measures considered in this research.

No description available.

<p>Reardon, Mitchell. (2010) <em>An Opportunity for Renewal: The Participatory Process and Social and Income Diversity in Brownfield Developments</em></p><p>Urban and Regional Planning, advanced level, master thesis for master exam in Urban and Regional Planning, 30 ECTS credits.</p><p>Supervisor: Dr. Thomas Borén</p><p>Language: English</p><p> </p><p>Participatory planning and the redevelopment of brownfield locations have both figured prominently in urban and regional planning strategies in recent decades. Despite their growing importance, these trends have rarely been analysed in concert however. Further, the issues of social and income diversity within this context have received less attention. In recognizing this void, this paper explores the use of participatory planning in brownfield developments, with an emphasis on social and income diversity. Through a review of the participatory planning theories of communicative action and the just city, strategies for promoting participatory planning and social and income diversity, are identified. A case study of Norra Djurgårdsstaden, a brownfield development in Stockholm, Sweden is employed to analyse these strategies. In undertaking the case study, data was collected through interviews and planning documents. This study found that the inherently high cost of redeveloping brownfield locations inhibits social and income diversity and requires an overt response to mitigate it. Participatory planning offers the possibility of engaging stakeholders who may otherwise be ignored, providing the opportunity to create a more inclusive development. It is also clear that an inclusionary goal must be part of a wider strategy, or is otherwise likely to be ignored.</p>

<p>Byggbranschen brottas idag med en hel del fel och brister i byggprocessen. Exempel på problem är bl.a. höga byggkostnader, kvalitetsbrister samt att det förekommer slarv och okunskap. Produktiviteten i byggbranschen har inte utvecklats lika mycket som i tillverkningsindustrin som använder sin ledningsfilosofi Lean Production.</p><p>Syftet med detta examensarbete är att få insikt i vilka vanliga fel och brister som förekommer i byggbranschen, samt att kunna ge förslag till förbättringar i enlighet med lean-tänkande. När man talar om Lean i byggsammanhang benämns det Lean Construction. Lean Construction har sin teoretiska bakgrund i verkstadsindustrins Lean Production och Lean Thinking.</p><p>Lean Production är en industriell produktionsmetod vars syfte är att öka produktionseffektiviteten och har sin bakgrund i japanska bilindustrin. Lean Thinking är en vidareutveckling av Lean Production och är ett begrepp som används för att omfatta fler branscher utöver tillverkningsindustrin. Att arbeta enligt Lean innebär att hela tiden arbeta med ständiga förbättringar samt att identifiera och eliminera allt slöseri. Slöseri kan ses som en aktivitet som inte skapar något värde för kunden men som ändå förbrukar resurser.</p><p>När man tillämpar Lean i sin organisation så analyserar man hur en effektivisering kan ske utifrån sin egen produktionsprocess. Några av grundelementen inom Lean är Kaizen som betyder ständiga förbättringar samt Just In Time.</p><p>Det har utförts vissa studier kring slöseri i byggbranschen, delar av dessa presenteras i denna rapport. Det som kartlagts som slöseri är bl.a. omarbete, materialspill, överproduktion och väntan hos personal. Det är utifrån dessa kartlagda slöserier som vi har utformat enkäterna i vår undersökningsstudie.</p><p>Studien visar inte på några större skillnader mellan platschefer/arbetsledare och yrkesarbetare vad det gäller deras uppfattning om vilka fel och brister som är vanligt förekommande. Båda yrkeskategorierna är överens om att slöseri kan minskas, t ex genom effektivare materialhantering på byggarbetsplatserna och bättre kommunikation och planering på alla plan.</p> / <p>The Construction industry struggles with quality deviances and defects in the building process. Various kinds of problem are for example expensive costs for production, defects in quality and negligence and ignorance in the industry in general. The development of productivity in building process has not progressed at the same rate as companies within manufacturing industry who are using the Lean Production philosophy.</p><p>The purpose whit this degree project is to bring knowledge about what kind of deviances and defects that exist in the industry, and to recommend suggestions for improvements in accordance with Lean Thinking. When you speak about Lean in the construction business it is called Lean Construction. Lean Construction has its theoretical background in the engineering industries Lean Production and Lean Thinking.</p><p>Lean Production is an industrial production method which purpose is to increase the effectiveness of production. It originates from the car-industry in Japan. The concept of Lean Thinking is a further development of Lean Production and it includes all industries, not just the manufacturing industry. To work according to Lean means that you all the time tries to achieve constant improvements and to identify and eliminate all kinds of waste in time and materials. Waste can be seen as an activity that do not create any added value for the customer but still however consume resources.</p><p>While implementing and using Lean in your business corporation you have to analyze how a potentiate can be achieved outgoing from the existing production process. Some main elements within Lean are Kaizen, which means constant improvements, and Just In Time.</p><p>There have been many studies about waste in production in the construction industry. Some are introduced in this report. Activities that have been identified as waste are among others reworking, waste of material, overproduction and misplanning causing waiting times among employees. Based on these ascertained wastages we have formulated the questionnaire study.</p><p>The study does not show large differences between local managers/team leaders and construction workers when it comes to their opinion about what kinds of deviances and defects they find as frequent. The both professions agree that waste can be reduced, by the way of for example efficacious material handling on the building sites and better communication and planning on several levels.</p><p>Keywords: Building process, Lean Construction, Wasting, Kaizen and Just In Time</p>

<p>Our work focuses on an analysis of the processes for full and partial annealing of aluminium coils. Due to inefficient production management these processes show high inventory levels, long lead times and decreased delivery performance. </p><p>We have also found inadequacies in the ways costs for these processes are distributed. We have established a new process mapping by initially investigating the strategic dimensions of the company and the processes for annealing, in order to later on establish performance measures congruent with the business objectives. Furthermore we have conducted extensive calculations and analyses to facilitate the successful implementation of a Just-in-time production philosophy, including necessary process improvements and redesigns to be made. Our proposed changes will lead to shorter lead times and low levels of WIP, which are important success factors of a JIT-based production philosophy. </p><p>To do this we have developed a capacity analysis tool with which it is also possible to analyse other processing scenarios or the effect of load changes and/or product mix variations. This tool can also serve as a benchmark for capacity analysis of other processes. </p><p>Finally, we have been able to establish more accurate costs per machine hour for full and partial annealing to be implemented in the managerial system. We believe that the processes for annealing are not the only ones suffering from poor cost control, why we would suggest that Sapa Heat Transfer investigates the cost distribution in more processes, and also develops and follows better guidelines for cost control.</p>

<p>The international environment today has been undergoing unprecedented change and many companies are seeking new ways to stand out from the competition by sustaining their competitive advantage. Internationalization and firms’ consolidation increase competition in the dynamic marketplace .Companies are no longer staying competitive simply through focusing on product quality and pricing as customers are becoming more high-demanding related to customer service offer. This issue directs the companies’ main focus today to address the customer needs in the ever-changing environment.In order to be the winners in the marketplace, timing and superior customer service are becoming the keys to attain competitive advantage for a company. Time-based competition is an important issue that many companies are facing currently as customers are becoming more time-sensitive and time-oriented in terms of better services, reliability and delivery. To keep up with the changes in demand from customers, it is important to satisfy customers’ objectives and needs in order to provide superior customer service, thus, establish good relationship with them. In the ever-changing and dynamic business environment company needs to adapt and exploit the changes in order to meet the new challenges in the marketplace. It is crucial for the company to respond to changing needs of existing customers and seeking to serve new customers externally. The ways to renew the customers’ services and how they are delivered are critical capabilities for many companies to acquire nowadays. This leads to increasing interaction between marketing and logistics where logistics is considered a platform for supporting new strategic moves on the market.This master thesis originates from a need to research the links between customer service improvement and Just-in-time distribution in order to sustain competitive advantage. We propose to extend the Just-In-Time concept to incorporate a customer perspective, which results in changes the warehousing, ordering and delivering routines. Subsequently, this creates timing ability as well as coordination of information and material flows through timely decisions, which are difficult for competitors to emulate. Based on our analysis and conclusion, companies are recommended to shift from the traditional production-oriented to market-oriented focuses through incorporation of customers' perspective into the value chain. To deploy this, companies should start from the customer end and understand customers' needs and establish mutual beneficial relationships with customers. Long-lasting business relationships ultimately determine the success of the company. Furthermore, we conclude that successful learning to change the routines requires time for the transformation of traditional delivery practice to perform direct deliveries activities. They are based on the common understanding of the tasks and rules as well as common codes of internal coordination processes.</p>

<p>Så länge som människor strövat omkring på jorden har det bytts och handlats med varor och tjänster. Det är i människans natur att göra affärer.</p><p>Logistik och inköp har därför naturligt blivit stycken i den mänskliga handelshistorien, samhället men främst företag påverkas och påverkar denna nutidshistorias utveckling. Då konkurrens har blivit ett stort inslag för att lyckas i ett företag så har företag försökt hitta nya metoder för att hävda sig på den globaliseringen marknaden. De verktygen kan skilja sig från företag till företag beroende av vilka lösningar företag vill lösa men exempel på det kan vara Supply Chain Management som kommer att behandlas i denna uppsats. De andra teorier som kommer beröras är fusion, Just-in-Time och inköp. Dessa kommer att utifrån ämnet att appliceras på studieobjektet så att skillnader framkommer.</p><p>Fallstudien som uppsatsen baseras på färgkedjan Colorama AB, där intervjun skedde med butiksägaren och ledamoten i styrelsen, Patrik Graff. För att även få en extern synvinkel på temat som denna uppsats behandlar har även en intervju med en seniorkonsult på managementföretaget Establish gjorts. Detta för att kunna se dessa två vinklar mor teorin och därefter kunna dra en slutsats.</p><p>Syftet var att undersöka om Colorama efter sammanslagningen börjat styra sina leverantörer mer än innan men även se om de har ändrat i sitt logistiska tänkande då kedjan blev mycket större än den var innan sammanslagningen.</p><p>När teorin jämförs med empirin framkommer ett klart samband att studieobjektet ligger närmare det klassiska synsättet när det gäller inköp av varor och relationer gentemot leverantörer.</p><p>Colorama är i utvecklingsfasen då de endast funnits sedan i början av 2007 och mycket kan hända men det som har analyserats utav intervjun är att de kommer allt längre från sina leverantörer.</p> / <p>As long as humans have roamed the Earth, goods and services have been traded. It is in our nature to do business. Logistics and purchase have thanks to those facts become a part of the human trading history, its society but rather companies that have to changes to keep up with the changes of this era. But it’s also those companies and societies that alter this history era due to their business decisions and decisions to adept theories. Due to competitions companies have to come across new methods to struggle better on their globalized market. The method that are needed are different in all companies, one tool that can be adapted is Supply Chain Management. Other theories that will be mentioned in this essay are Just-In-Time, fusion and purchase. These theories will work as a map how to rule a modern company in aspects of logistics and purchase, our map will be applied on Colorama AB to see the differences between a reality and theory. To get a better grip of how reality looks like beside our case study, an interview was done with a senior consult of a management company that work with logistics. The main purpose of this essay was to examine if Colorama, after the fusion, have started to organize their deliverers more and if they had change their logistic thinking due to the new company size. The examination showed that Coloramas point of view were quite different from theory contains and Establish point of view, Colorama would rather be classified as a user of the classic theories rather than the ones mention above. Colorama are still a young company in their development phase and much will happened over time, but analyses shows that they drifting apart from their supplier.</p>

Our work focuses on an analysis of the processes for full and partial annealing of aluminium coils. Due to inefficient production management these processes show high inventory levels, long lead times and decreased delivery performance. We have also found inadequacies in the ways costs for these processes are distributed. We have established a new process mapping by initially investigating the strategic dimensions of the company and the processes for annealing, in order to later on establish performance measures congruent with the business objectives. Furthermore we have conducted extensive calculations and analyses to facilitate the successful implementation of a Just-in-time production philosophy, including necessary process improvements and redesigns to be made. Our proposed changes will lead to shorter lead times and low levels of WIP, which are important success factors of a JIT-based production philosophy. To do this we have developed a capacity analysis tool with which it is also possible to analyse other processing scenarios or the effect of load changes and/or product mix variations. This tool can also serve as a benchmark for capacity analysis of other processes. Finally, we have been able to establish more accurate costs per machine hour for full and partial annealing to be implemented in the managerial system. We believe that the processes for annealing are not the only ones suffering from poor cost control, why we would suggest that Sapa Heat Transfer investigates the cost distribution in more processes, and also develops and follows better guidelines for cost control.