In South Africa there is a shortage of systems engineers which is being addressed by a systems engineering (SE) development program. The purpose of this research was to design a selection method that could be used to select candidate systems engineers with potential thus increasing the probability of successful development of SE competencies. Based on literature and practical considerations, the following research question was formulated: Can a candidate’s SE competence potential can be predicted from personality preferences, cognition, and values (the SE Profile)? Design science research was used as the research methodology. The 15 Factor Questionnaire Plus was used to assess personality, the Cognitive Process Profile for cognition, and the Value Orientations to assess values. The 21 SE competencies were assessed using the INCOSE Systems Engineering Competencies framework. Specific values (high or low) on a combination of psychological measures are useful for predicting high competence and these vary between SE competencies. Thus psychological measures for SE as a whole cannot be identified as has been done in the literature. The number of engineers with high SE competence is inversely proportional to the number of SE competencies. Cognition measures seem more useful in identifying risk, but do not strongly predict SE competence for the given sample. From this research, no evidence was found that values have been considered previously in the SE selection literature, but values are useful for predicting high competence on at least 11 SE competencies. Because the various SE competencies require different profiles, there are few “super systems engineers”. SE competence required for the project can be achieved through a team rather than a single systems engineer. Assessment can be used as a tool for SE development by detecting anomalies and selecting candidates which have the potential for faster successful development. / Thesis (PhD (Development and Management Engineering))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

In South Africa there is a shortage of systems engineers which is being addressed by a systems engineering (SE) development program. The purpose of this research was to design a selection method that could be used to select candidate systems engineers with potential thus increasing the probability of successful development of SE competencies. Based on literature and practical considerations, the following research question was formulated: Can a candidate’s SE competence potential can be predicted from personality preferences, cognition, and values (the SE Profile)? Design science research was used as the research methodology. The 15 Factor Questionnaire Plus was used to assess personality, the Cognitive Process Profile for cognition, and the Value Orientations to assess values. The 21 SE competencies were assessed using the INCOSE Systems Engineering Competencies framework. Specific values (high or low) on a combination of psychological measures are useful for predicting high competence and these vary between SE competencies. Thus psychological measures for SE as a whole cannot be identified as has been done in the literature. The number of engineers with high SE competence is inversely proportional to the number of SE competencies. Cognition measures seem more useful in identifying risk, but do not strongly predict SE competence for the given sample. From this research, no evidence was found that values have been considered previously in the SE selection literature, but values are useful for predicting high competence on at least 11 SE competencies. Because the various SE competencies require different profiles, there are few “super systems engineers”. SE competence required for the project can be achieved through a team rather than a single systems engineer. Assessment can be used as a tool for SE development by detecting anomalies and selecting candidates which have the potential for faster successful development. / Thesis (PhD (Development and Management Engineering))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

No description available.

This paper presents a two-stage model of optimization as a quick method to choose the best potential links for implementing urban travel demand management (UTDM) strategy like road pricing. The model is optimized by minimizing the hidden cost of congestion based on user equilibrium (MHCCUE). It forecasts the exact amount of flows and tolls for links in user equilibrium condition to determine the hidden cost for each link to optimize the link selection based on the network congestion priority. The results show that not only the amount of total cost is decreased, but also the number of selected links for pricing is reduced as compared with the previous toll minimization methods. Moreover, as this model just uses the traffic assignment data for calculation, it could be considered as a quick and optimum solution for choosing the potential links.

Bakgrund: Personalplanering är ett strategiskt arbete som bland annat handlar om att förstå vilken personal och kompetens som finns i organisationen. Organisationer lägger idag fokus på att göra det sociala livet reviderbart, vilket kan vara en anledning till att kvantitativa urvalsmetoder används i rekryteringsprocessen. I samband med detta belyses kritik mot en kvalitativ metod då subjektivitet vid insamlande av information inte anses önskvärt. Trovärdigheten samt validiteten i arbetspsykologiska tester, vilket är en rationell urvalsmetod, ifrågasätts då synen på kvantifiering av kandidatens egenskaper är delad. Det är därför av intresse att öka förståelsen för användandet av arbetspsykologiska tester och dess funktion i praktiken, hur andra faktorer påverkar validiteten samt betydelsen av en kontextuell förståelse. Syfte: Att få en större förståelse över hur den rationella urvalsmetoden arbetspsykologiska tester används som ett verktyg i rekryteringsprocessen. Genom att anlägga ett perspektiv som belyser komplexiteten i både beslut och människan avser uppsatsen även att ifrågasätta hur metoden fungerar i det praktiska rekryteringsarbetet. Metod: I denna kvalitativa undersökning har åtta semistrukturerade intervjuer med testledare genomförts för att få en djupare insikt i hur testerna fungerar i det praktiska arbetet. Utöver detta presenteras tre dimensioner av arbetspsykologisk testning som sätter ramarna för uppsatsen upplägg. Slutsats: Funktionen av testerna är beroende av dess avsedda syfte och tillvägagångssätt gällande när och hur testerna används. Begåvningstester kan vara en effektiv och rättvis metod för att sträva efter objektivitet i första urvalet där tydliga minimikrav finns. Personlighetstester kan vara ett hjälpmedel för att förstå hur kandidatens förutsättningar ser ut snarare än att få en större förståelse för hur kandidaten är. / Background: Personnel planning is a strategic function that involves, among other things, comprehension about that staff and skills that exist in the organization. Organizations today focus on making the social life revisable, which could be a reason for using quantitative selection methods in recruitment. In relation to this, there is some criticism about using a qualitative method since subjectivity in gathering information is not considered desirable. The credibility and validity in work related psychological testing, which is a rational selection method, are questioned since the view of quantification of the candidate's attributes is divided. Therefore, it is of interest to increase the understanding of the function and practical use of work related psychological testing, the significance of contextual understanding as well as how other factors affect its validity. Purpose: To gain a greater understanding of how the rational selection method, work related psychological testing, is used as a tool in the recruitment process. By constructing a perspective that highlights the complexity of both decision making and personality, this essay also aims to examine the function of the method in the practical recruitment work. Method: In this qualitative study, eight semi-structured interviews with test leaders have been conducted to gain a deeper insight into the function of testing in the practical work. In addition to this, a model of three dimensions of work related psychological testing are presented and set the framework for the structure of the essay. Conclusion: The function of the tests is dependent on its purpose and approach considering when and how the test is used. Mental ability testing is an effective and fair method to strive for objectivity in the first selection where minimum requirements exist. Personality tests can be a tool to understand the candidate's conditions rather than creating a complete image of the candidate’s traits.

Big data of type spatial is growing exponentially with the highest rate due to extensive growth in usage of sensors, IoT and mobile devices’ spatial data generation, therefore maintaining, processing and using such data efficiently, effectively with high performance has become one of the top priorities for Database management system providers, hence spatial database features and datatypes have become serious criteria in evaluating database management systems that are supposed to work as the back-end for spatial applications and services. With exponential growth of data and introducing of new types of data, “Big Data” has become strongly focused area that has gained the attention of different sectors e.g. academia, industries and governments to other organizations and studies. The rising trend in high resolution and large-scale geographical information systems have resulted in more companies providing location-based applications and services, therefore finding a proper database management system solution that can support spatial big data features, with multi-model big data support that is reliable and affordable has become a business need for many companies. Concerning the fact that choosing proper solution for any software project can be crucial due to the total cost and desired functionalities that any product could possibly bring into the solution. Migration is also a very complicated and costly procedure that many companies should avoid, which justifies the criticality of choosing the right solution based on the specific needs of any organization. Companies providing spatial applications and services are growing with the common concern of providing successful solutions and robust services. One of the most significant elements that ensures services’ and hence the providers’ reputation and positive depiction is services’ high availability. The possible future work for the thesis could be to develop the framework into a decision support solution for IT businesses with emphasize on spatial features. Another possibility for the future works would be to evaluate the framework by testing the evaluation framework on many other different DBMSs.

The purpose of this work is to evaluate how a docking station can be more future proof, environmentally friendly and satisfy the customers’ needs more. The docking station in focus of this project is owned by LVI, and used with one of their cameras MagniLink S. When comparing the results of the new docking station and the current docking station, the new docking station is more future proof, environmentally friendly and satisfies the customers’ needs more. In the end it is established that following steps should be followed during the development of a docking station: -          Make sure that the cables are reliably fastened into the docking station and that the connectors can handle the docking force. -          Design to use more material with lower environmental impact and ensure that the material fulfils the product requirements and objectives. Use as small amount of material as possible. -          Prioritize the customers’ expressed and unexpressed needs as one of the highest priorities during the development process.

For any given reason, every year many countries spend a lot of money purchasing at least one weapon. Due to the secret character of the military, the decision process for specific weapon procurement is shrouded. Moreover, there are several funds loss cases due to mistakes in weapon contractions. Weapon procurement requires very large amounts of money which comes from tax payers. Therefore, an effort to reduce a possible monetary loss is needed. A decision process based on an analytic model can present a better chance to decision makers for better weapon decisions. In general, weapon procurement decision is a multi criteria environment. Decision making in such environments is defined as Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM). MCDM is broadly classified into two areas: Multi-Attribute Decision Making (MADM) and Multi-Objective Decision Making (MODM). MADM methods are used for selecting an alternative from a small explicit list of alternatives. MODM methods are used for designing problems involving an infinite number of alternatives implicitly defined by mathematical constraints. This research is intended to be used by the South Korean Navy when there is a need to select one weapon type among several candidate types. Therefore, MADM methods are used in this research.Many researches for developing an analytical model for better decision-making have been done. However, there is no research for a generalized weapon procurement decision model that is easy to implement. For this reason, whenever there is a need for weapon procurement decision, the Navy has to spend a lot of effort in determining the best weapon. These efforts can be reduced with a generalized model that is proposed in this research for naval weapon procurement. MADM methods determine alternatives ranking orders and the highest ranked alternative is the best one. Various MADM methods are used in computing the alternatives ranking scores.

Proteases are crucial to many biological processes and have become an important field of biomedical and biotechnological research. Engineering of proteases towards therapeutic applications has been limited due to the lack of high-throughput methods for characterization and selection. We have developed a novel high-throughput method for quantitative assessment of proteolytic activity in the cytoplasm of Escherichia coli bacterial cells. The method is based on coexpression of a protease of interest and a reporter complex consisting of an aggregation-prone protein fused to a fluorescent reporter. Cleavage of a substrate sequence situated between the two reporter complex proteins results in increased whole-cell fluorescence proportional to proteolytic activity, which can be monitored using flow cytometry. We have demonstrated that the method can distinguish efficiencies with which Tobacco Etch Virus (TEV) protease processes different substrates. We believe that this is the first method in the field of protease engineering that enables simultaneous measurement of proteolytic activity and protease expression levels and can therefore be applied for substrate profiling, as well as screening and selection of libraries of engineered proteases.

<p dir="ltr">Multistage adaptive testing (MST) has become one of the most popular test designs for large-scale testing. However, it has some weaknesses such as a larger estimation bias compared to computerized adaptive testing (CAT). On-the-fly multistage adaptive testing (OMST) can balance the advantages and limitations of CAT and MST. Several CAT item selection methods that incorporate response time have been proposed. However, incorporating response time into OMST to select items was rarely studied. The study plans to explore the possibility of applying OMST with response time to the Programme for International Student Assessment to solve the issue of large estimation bias and improve test efficiency.</p>