Self-service reservation in the fieldforce

On-line service reservation is becoming increasingly popular in the service industry. As services become more complex, requiring co-ordination among individual actions, the planning for making service appointments is normally conducted manually by the operators, often resulting in slow responses to customers. To tackle this problem, we have developed a real-time service reservation portal that takes an order from a user and works out appointment options, based on the availability of enterprise resources, for the user to book on-line. The portal is capable of dealing with complex workflow appointing, supporting interactive fine-tuning in individual appointments, respecting customer preferences and work policies, monitoring progress of workflow, informing the customer of status changes in job scheduling, dispatching and execution, as well as handling exceptions automatically. We have integrated the portal, code-named FieldReserve, with other components in the BT fieldforce optimisation suite (FOS) that covers functions of resource planning, scheduling and execution for the fieldforce to demonstrate the feasibility and potential benefits of this technology. Benefits demonstrated are to provide customers with instant response of service reservation, to provide volume control on reservation, to break away from one-size-fits-all lead times for service fulfilment, to provide customers with equal access to service provision, and to bring transparency of service progress to customers. Currently, we are actively engaging with businesses and have obtained strong support to downstream the key values of this technology in commercial contexts.     

Machining of reproducible flaws corresponding to fatigue cracks for fracture mechanics tests of components and welded joints

In connection with the analysis and the development of failure concepts in fracture mechanics for quasistatic loaded components and elastic-plastic behaviour of the material, tests are also carried out with welded and/or complex shaped specimens or structures. Thereby the difficulty arises of generating reproducible flaws in the form of fatigue precracks in definite positions in the components, respectively in the welded joint. It is reported exemplarily about experiments on different CT25 and CCT specimens and on a pressure vessel which contained a fatigue pre-crack, a 0.2 mm saw cut or notches with notch root radius ≤ ≥ 0.1 mm as flaws. The comparison of the results with regard to J-integral at initiation of stable crack, J_i, and J_R curves shows that under certain conditions the 0.2 mm saw cut (notch root radius ≤ ≤ 0.02 mm) is a useful alternative, if reproducible generation of a fatigue pre-crack will not be successful or too expensive. The tests were carried out on StE 460 and on a welded joint of this steel at 25 ± 2°C.     

Investigation of the stability of tablets prepared from sucrose and citric acid anhydride utilizing response surface methodology

Inversion of sucrose is a stability problem particularly of candies with acidic taste that contain sucrose and small amounts of organic acids such as citric acid, since the free d-fructose produced by hydrolysis is hygroscopic. The following possibilities were investigated for preventing the hydrolysis of sucrose in tablets containing sucrose and citric acid: Adding various amounts of tri-sodium citrate to the formulation to neutralize the citric acid, (Hot) melt coating of citric acid and tri-sodium citrate with a vegetable fat at different coating ratios, variation of the ratio of coated citric acid and tri-sodium citrate in formulations, and compressing the formulations with different compression forces. After tablet processing and storage of tablets, the concentration of d-fructose was determined on the basis of enzymatic reactions. A response surface central composite design was used. The above-mentioned variations were chosen as independent variables and the amount of d-fructose was chosen as response variable. The lowest rates of inversion could be achieved by increasing the content of tri-sodium citrate and the ratio of coating material and decreasing the ratio of coated citric acid and tri-sodium citrate in the tablet formulations. The compression force had no significant effect on the inversion of sucrose.     

Induced free liquid surface oscillations in a visco-elastic liquid column due to angular temperature fluctuations

The response due to time-fluctuating temperature distribution applied at the free surface of a viscoelastic cylindrical liquid column with no axial dependency has been determined analytically. The amplitude of the radial- and angular velocity as well as the free liquid surface elevation has been presented as a function of the “reduced” forcing frequency of the oscillatory temperature and has numerically been evaluated for an angular temperature field proportional to sin 2φ. It was found, that visco-elasticity as described by the Maxwell model has quite some influence upon the liquid behavior. It shows for larger relaxation times besides the enlarged resonance peak additional peaks below and above resonance. This is particularly evident inside the liquid column, indicating a more pronounced elastic behavior of the liquid.