Integrating customer's preferences in the QFD planning process using a combined benchmarking and imprecise goal programming model

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a customer-oriented design tool for developing new or improved products to achieve higher customer satisfaction by integrating various functions of an organization. The engineering characteristics (ECs) affecting the product performances are designed to match the customer attributes (CAs). However, from the viewpoint of the QFD team, product design processes are performed in imprecise environments, and more than one factor must be taken into account in determining the target levels of ECs, especially the limited resources and increased market competition. This paper presents an imprecise goal programming (GP) approach to determine the optimum target levels of ECs in QFD for maximizing customer satisfaction under resource limitation and considerations of market competition. Based on benchmarking data of CAs, the concept of satisfaction functions is utilized to formulate explicitly the customer's preferences and to integrate the competitive analysis of target market into the modelling and solution process. In addition, the relationships linking CAs and ECs and the ECs to each other are integrated by functional relationships. The proposed approach will be illustrated through a car door design example.     

Using jump-diffusion modeling for valuing real options in infrastructure projects

In infrastructure financed projects, in order to attract private investors, host governments often provide some guarantees. This paper develops a value model of minimum revenue guarantee with multiple-exercise real options under the impact of the emergency incident. The model is applied to infrastructure financed projects using the minimum revenue guarantee under simulation. The simulation results indicate that, before quantifying the value of the minimum revenue guarantee, it is necessary to forecast the jump degree and intensity of the emergency incident, as well as prevent and control risks arising from such emergencies. Otherwise, underestimation of the guarantee value will occur and the government will have to bear huge debt in this condition. We also analyze the dependence of the guaranteed value on the minimum guaranteed revenue level, initial revenue and number of exercise rights. For various conditions, the diagrams of the guaranteed value are also presented.     

Problem of reconstructing input signals under communication constraints

For a linear controllable system, the problem of reconstruction of all input signals, which are compatible with the measured signal, is considered. It is assumed that information can be transmitted in a processing center only via digital communication channel at discrete time instants, and the word length is limited. In this connection, there are encoding and decoding devices in the communication channel. For simplicity, the communication channel is assumed to be noiseless and delay-free. Defining relationships are obtained for the set of compatible input signals, as well as relationships between reconstruction precision, length of transmitted word and transmission frequency.     

Control of complex ecological-economic systems

The paper is devoted to developing methods for control of ecological-economic systems consisting of three hierarchically subordinate subjects of control. In describing the dynamics of a system state, equations in partial derivatives that are solved numerically according to a semi-implicit scheme of the finite-difference method are used. To achieve its main goal (maintenance of an ecological subsystem in stable state), the subject of control of the upper level applies different control methods. Methods of hierarchical control (motivation, enforcement, and persuasion) that differ in the direction of action (on the objective function or domain of admissible controls) are proposed; examples of their use are represented and a comparative analysis of the obtained results is made.     

Aerodynamic optimization via multi-objective micro-genetic algorithm with range adaptation,knowledge-based reinitialization,crowding and ε-dominance

In this study, an optimization of the airfoil of a sailplane is carried out by a recently developed multi-objective genetic algorithm based on microevolution, containing crowding, range adaptation, knowledge-based reinitialization and ε-dominance. Its efficiency was tested on a set of test problems. The results are encouraging, suggesting that very small populations can be used effectively to solve real-world multi-objective optimization problems in many cases of interest.     

Mobile multi-view object image search

High user interaction capability of mobile devices can help improve the accuracy of mobile visual search systems. At query time, it is possible to capture multiple views of an object from different viewing angles and at different scales with the mobile device camera to obtain richer information about the object compared to a single view and hence return more accurate results. Motivated by this, we propose a new multi-view visual query model on multi-view object image databases for mobile visual search. Multi-view images of objects acquired by the mobile clients are processed and local features are sent to a server, which combines the query image representations with early/late fusion methods and returns the query results. We performed a comprehensive analysis of early and late fusion approaches using various similarity functions, on an existing single view and a new multi-view object image database. The experimental results show that multi-view search provides significantly better retrieval accuracy compared to traditional single view search.     

Adaptive course generation through learning styles representation

This paper presents an approach to automatic course generation and student modeling. The method has been developed during the European funded projects Diogene and Intraserv, focused on the construction of an adaptive e-learning platform. The aim of the platform is the automatic generation and personalization of courses, taking into account pedagogical knowledge on the didactic domain as well as statistic information on both the student’s knowledge degree and learning preferences. Pedagogical information is described by means of an innovative methodology suitable for effective and efficient course generation and personalization. Moreover, statistic information can be collected and exploited by the system in order to better describe the student’s preferences and learning performances. Learning material is chosen by the system matching the student’s learning preferences with the learning material type, following a pedagogical approach suggested by Felder and Silverman. The paper discusses how automatic learning material personalization makes it possible to facilitate distance learning access to both able-bodied and disabled people. Results from the Diogene and Intraserv evaluation are reported and discussed.     

A technique for measuring charges of relativistic nuclei in a nuclear emulsion on the PAVICOM automated facility

A technique for measuring the charges of relativistic nuclei in thick emulsion layers irradiated in a longitudinal direction is described. This technique has been implemented on the PAVICOM completely automated facility at the Lebedev Physical Institute. The calibration curves for relativistic nuclei with Z > 3 are presented. The advantages of this technique are demonstrated using charge measurements of ²⁸Si nuclear fragments as an example.     

Synthesis of carbon nanotubes by current annealing graphite paper

A new method for manufacturing multiwall carbon nanotubes by the current annealing in vacuum of the graphite paper saturated with Ni, Co, and Fe catalysts is designed. By using a scanning tunnel microscope, structural characteristics of the modified graphite paper are studied. Y- and V-shaped nanotubes are found.     

On the regularity of perfect 2-colorings of the Johnson graph

We study perfect colorings of the Johnson graph in two colors. We give sufficient conditions for a perfect coloring of the Johnson graph to be k-regular and present examples of perfect colorings. The proof of the theorem is in many respects similar to the proof of the result by Etzion and Schwartz [1] on k-regularity of perfect codes.