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The development of social competence is a fundamental aspect of children’s adjustment and functioning (Hussong et al. 2005). Children with severe social impairments are at risk for academic and mental health difficulties, and they often require a higher degree of family support beyond childhood compared with nondisabled populations (Green et al., 2000; Tanguay, 2001). Little is known about how severe social competency deficits in children influence the family environment and how the family environment typical of this population influences the school adjustment of these children. The purpose of the study was to 1) examine differences in mothers’ perceptions of family climate among children with social competency disorders (SCD), children with Verbal Learning Disabilities (VLD), and typically developing children (TYP); 2) determine whether social competency moderated the effect of the Systems Maintenance domain of the family environment on a teacher rated school outcome. Participants were 60 children, ages 8 to 14, and their mothers selected from the University of Texas at Austin Assessment of Social Competency in Children with Developmental Disorders Research Project. Data were received from a family climate questionnaire completed by mothers, a behavioral questionnaire completed by teachers, and a social competence measure administered to children. Results found that mothers of children with VLD and SCD viewed their families similarly to mothers of typically developing children and that mothers rated their families within the normal range across almost all aspects of the family environment. The single exception to this was that mothers of children with VLD perceived their family climates to be more openly expressive than mothers of children in the SCD and TYP groups, and that mothers of children in the TYP group perceived their family as more organized compared with the clinical groups. The hypothesis that social competence moderated the effect of the Systems Maintenance domain of the family environment on child study skills was not supported by the data. Lack of differences across groups with respect to almost all aspects of the family climate suggests that mothers in the clinical groups perceived strengths and assets in the family climate similarly to mothers of typically developing children. / text

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With the rise in interest in the field of grid and cloud computing, it is becoming increasingly necessary for the grid to be easily maintainable. This maintenance of the grid and grid services can be made easier by using an automated system to monitor and repair the grid as necessary. We propose a novel system to perform automated monitoring and repair of grid systems. To the best of our knowledge, no such systems exist. The results show that certain faults can be easily detected and repaired. / TeX / Adobe Acrobat 9.51 Paper Capture Plug-in

Production Line Systems (PLS) are ubiquitous in today’s manufacturing industry. The need for enhanced efficiencies and higher throughput in such systems has increased their complexity and size that has made performance analysis challenging for practitioners. This thesis introduces a novel approach based on Product Service System (PSS) design and analysis which simplifies Production Line System study and identifies opportunities for performance improvement that can be quantified based on the hardware and maintenance system performance. The approach involves modelling and simulation techniques based on reliability engineering principles and systems thinking. In order to apply the principles of PSS approach to PLS, it is essential to draw a comparison between PLS and PSS, so as to take account of the differences while applying the new approach; a literature review has been carried out on PSS Design and Analysis, that identified the state of the art modelling and simulation techniques in PSS. Additionally, a separate literature review on maintenance system and production line was carried out. This enabled the PSS methodology to be applied to PLS by incorporating the differences. A systems thinking approach has been employed to create the static simulation model of the integrated production line system by means of schematic representations. Key improvement areas, identified from the static simulation model have been modelled dynamically to incorporate the stochastic behaviour of the system. All the dynamic models are developed using a Discrete Event Simulation platform. These models were supported by Monte Carlo Simulation, queuing principles, probabilistical and statistical methods pertinent to reliability engineering. The novel integrated simulation model consists of a production line model and a maintenance system model. The production line model simulates two types of failures in addition to the outages in the system: breakdowns and short stops. The maintenance system model simulates the maintenance actions in the production line by considering the resources availability, repair time, and resources travelling time amongst others. In addition, the maintenance model is capable of optimizing the preventive maintenance interval for maintainable failures for cost, availability and criticality while taking into account the maintenance effectiveness value from the failure data. The simulation model is validated using an industrial case study which consists of a large production line for beer. Sensitivity studies on the simulation model enabled the case study company to focus on strategies for throughput improvement by improving the reliability and maintainability, optimal resources allocation and maintenance interval optimization in targeted areas in the large and complex system. The model developed is generic and can easily be applied to analyse other industrial production line systems. It can also be used as a design tool for new production lines.

This study investigates the team aspects of a process improvement project situated in an Internet banking system maintenance and modification phase. To investigate how team processes could be improved in this context, four interventional change techniques were introduced and implemented during an action research study in which the researcher was included as one of the team members and participated during group meetings and discussions. Internet banking is an important Internet-delivered service which is expected to provide benefits for both commercial banks and bank customers. Internet banking allows bank customers to have the freedom to perform their financial activities at their convenience. Developing, maintaining, and improving Internet banking systems requires large amounts of investment to maintain high levels of Internet banking service quality, and the maintenance and modification phase of the overall lifecycle cost is a considerable part of this investment. Therefore, in order to ensure high levels of usability, reliability, and quality for these Internet banking services, commercial banks need to make significant investments in the maintenance and modification phases of their Internet banking systems' lifecycle. The four interventional change techniques used in this study were: departmental participation, equal participation, holistic scenario, and management support. The four techniques were found to be influential in developing process improvements in the maintenance and modification phase of Internet banking systems. These techniques generated several significant improvements which directly affected the way team members managed their work. The significant contributions of these interventional change techniques were: the creation of cross-functional multilevel teams, development of effective departmental participation and communication techniques, extended scope and knowledge by the team members of Internet banking systems, an increase in team learning and understanding, techniques to change problem structure, and an end to end problem-solving approach. ii These contributions also directly improved the performance of the Internet banking systems maintenance team, and there was a significant improvement in the outcomes of the Internet banking systems maintenance and modification phase.

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Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-27T16:57:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Leila Souto de Assis.pdf: 1415291 bytes, checksum: 8da0dacd552d6ce3abdda6f94853ff39 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-10-17 / This thesis handles the use of Mathematics in the workplace, more specifically about the existence of relationship between Mathematics problem solving strategies and the software maintenance process in the computer developers‟ workplace. The adopted methodology was Grounded Theory (GT), under Glaser, Strauss, Corbin and Charmaz‟ perspectives. It has been used, as the data collecting technique, semi-structured interviews as well as GRUMPS tool to record all developers‟ interactions during their daily duty. We analyzed the current practices of thirty four developers observed and interviewed during the exercise of their profession in their corporate environment. The exploratory research indicated characteristics of mathematical thought during the developers‟ professional problem solving process. As an outcome, we concluded that problem solving strategies in Mathematics, connected to the reality of this type of specialists may potentially contribute to the computational systems maintenance process. This would happen because, in Computer Science, the comprehension of pre-existing programs, and the attention to not insert new issues based on the changes performed, are crucial skills to ensure the success of this type of professional in the market place / Esta tese trata do uso da Matemática nas práticas profissionais, mais especificamente da existência de aproximação entre as estratégias de resolução de problemas em Matemática e o processo de manutenção de sofwares no ambiente de trabalho de programadores de computador. A metodologia adotada foi a Grounded Theory (GT), na visão de Glaser, Strauss, Corbin e Charmaz. Foi utilizado, como técnica de coleta de dados, entrevistas semi-estruturadas bem como o aplicativo GRUMPS para registro das interações dos programadores durante a execução cotidiana de seu trabalho. Foram analisadas as práticas de trinta e quatro programadores observados e entrevistados durante o exercício de sua profissão em seu ambiente corporativo. A pesquisa exploratória indicou características do pensamento matemático na resolução de problemas do cotidiano dos profissionais participantes deste estudo. Como resultado, concluímos que as estratégias de resolução de problemas na Matemática, aproximadas à realidade destes especialistas podem potencialmente contribuir para o processo de manutenção de sistemas computacionais. Isto porque na Computação a compreensão dos programas pré-existentes, e o cuidado em não se inserir novos problemas em função de alterações realizadas, são características fundamentais para garantir o sucesso desse tipo de perfil profissional no mercado de trabalho

Der vorliegende 38. Band der Reihe 'Leipziger Beiträge zur Informatik' fasst die Ergebnisse der Fachtagung 'Betriebsführung und Instandhaltung regenerativer Energieanlagen (BIREA)' am 24. und 25. September 2012 in Leipzig zusammen. Die Fachtagung adressierte aktuelle Herausforderungen der Energiewirtschaft im Allgemeinen und der Branche der Erneuerbaren Energien im Speziellen. Der Anteil erneuerbarer Energien am Bruttostromverbrauch wird sich von derzeit ca. 17 % im Jahre 2020 auf 35% verdoppeln und langfristig bis auf 80% steigen. Mit der wachsenden Bedeutung steigen auch die Anforderungen an die regenerative Energiebranche. Dabei stehen im Vordergrund: a) die Versorgungssicherheit und Netzstabilität, b) sinkende Einspeisevergütungen, c) die Betriebsoptimierung regenerativer Energieanlagen, d) die effiziente Instandhaltung regenerativer Energieanlagen, e) die Vernetzung von Energieerzeugern und -verbrauchern zu virtuellen Kraftwerken, f) Verfügbarkeitsgarantien für Energieanlagen sowie Strom- und Ausfallprognosen. Die Fachtagung fokussierte folgende Themen des Betriebs und der Instandhaltung regenerativer Energieanlagen: a) neuartige Dienstleistungen (z. B. Wirkungsgradanalyse, Ertragsprognosen, Ausfallprognosen), b) Standardisierungsprozesse (z. B. RDS-PP, IEC 61850 / IEC 61400-25), c) die IKT-unterstützte Optimierung (z. B. Lebenslaufakte, Betriebsführung, Instandhaltungsplanung).