The implementation of technical practices and human factors of the toyota production system in different industries

The Toyota Production System (TPS) can result in huge benefits for companies and has been widely implemented around the world. Nevertheless, most adopters emphasize only the technical practices of the TPS, but neglect the critical role of human factors in the implementation of the TPS. Therefore, this study aims at developing an integrated TPS model that fully integrates the technical elements and human elements of the TPS with Total Quality Management (TQM) practices. An empirical study was conducted to confirm the causal relationships among these constructs. In the empirical study, questionnaires were mailed and e‐mailed to 620 companies that had implemented the TPS, and 151 of the completed questionnaires were valid. These 151 respondents were divided into eight categories. The results revealed that the implementation level of each construct was significantly different in each industry. The automobile and motorcycle industries have put a great deal of effort into the application of Humanity, Human Resource Management (HRM), and TQM practices and obtained good results. Other industries, however, ignored the implementation of HRM practices. The results also revealed that the early adopters enjoyed significant benefits from the implementation of the TPS, which led high‐tech companies to start adopting TPS practices and become lean enterprises. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Thermodynamic properties of iron doped beta″-alumina by e.m.f. measurements with beta-alumina electrolytes

Thermodynamic studies of the non-stoichiometric iron doped beta-alumina (ID) phase were carried out by electrochemical measurements coupled with coulometric titration using the cell Na_liq/Li-alumina/ID. Hot pressing and glass sealing techniques were developed and employed to obtain a suitable and stable Li-alumina/ID interface. The equilibrium e.m.f. of the cell was determined as a function of sodium concentration over the temperature range 444 to 523 K. The range of sodium concentrations over which the ID phase is stable was also determined. The relative partial molar thermodynamic quantities of sodium, , , and in ID alumina as a function of sodium concentration were obtained from cell e.m.f. data.     

Cardiac Oxidative Signaling and Physiological Hypertrophy in the Na/K-ATPase α1s/sα2s/s Mouse Model of High Affinity for Cardiotonic Steroids

The Na/K-ATPase is the specific receptor for cardiotonic steroids (CTS) such as ouabain and digoxin. At pharmacological concentrations used in the treatment of cardiac conditions, CTS inhibit the ion-pumping function of Na/K-ATPase. At much lower concentrations, in the range of those reported for endogenous CTS in the blood, they stimulate hypertrophic growth of cultured cardiac myocytes through initiation of a Na/K-ATPase-mediated and reactive oxygen species (ROS)-dependent signaling. To examine a possible effect of endogenous concentrations of CTS on cardiac structure and function in vivo, we compared mice expressing the naturally resistant Na/K-ATPase α1 and age-matched mice genetically engineered to express a mutated Na/K-ATPase α1 with high affinity for CTS. In this model, total cardiac Na/K-ATPase activity, α1, α2, and β1 protein content remained unchanged, and the cardiac Na/K-ATPase dose–response curve to ouabain shifted to the left as expected. In males aged 3–6 months, increased α1 sensitivity to CTS resulted in a significant increase in cardiac carbonylated protein content, suggesting that ROS production was elevated. A moderate but significant increase of about 15% of the heart-weight-to-tibia-length ratio accompanied by an increase in the myocyte cross-sectional area was detected. Echocardiographic analyses did not reveal any change in cardiac function, and there was no fibrosis or re-expression of the fetal gene program. RNA sequencing analysis indicated that pathways related to energy metabolism were upregulated, while those related to extracellular matrix organization were downregulated. Consistent with a functional role of the latter, an angiotensin-II challenge that triggered fibrosis in the α1^r/rα2^s/s mouse failed to do so in the α1^s/sα2^s/s. Taken together, these results are indicative of a link between circulating CTS, Na/K-ATPase α1, ROS, and physiological cardiac hypertrophy in mice under baseline laboratory conditions.     

In Vitro Characterization of Neutralizing Hen Antibodies to Coxsackievirus A16

Coxsackievirus A16 (CA16) is one of the major causative agents of hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD). Children aged <5 years are the most affected by CA16 HFMD globally. Although clinical symptoms of CA16 infections are usually mild, severe complications, such as aseptic meningitis or even death, have been recorded. Currently, no vaccine or antiviral therapy for CA16 infection exists. Single-chain variable fragment (scFv) antibodies significantly inhibit viral infection and could be a potential treatment for controlling the infection. In this study, scFv phage display libraries were constructed from splenocytes of a laying hen immunized with CA16-infected lysate. The pComb3X vector containing the scFv genes was introduced into ER2738 Escherichia coli and rescued by helper phages to express scFv molecules. After screening with five cycles of bio-panning, an effective scFv antibody showing favorable binding activity to proteins in CA16-infected lysate on ELISA plates was selected. Importantly, the selected scFv clone showed a neutralizing capability against the CA16 virus and cross-reacted with viral proteins in EV71-infected lysate. Intriguingly, polyclonal IgY antibody not only showed binding specificity against proteins in CA16-infected lysate but also showed significant neutralization activities. Nevertheless, IgY-binding protein did not cross-react with proteins in EV71-infected lysate. These results suggest that the IgY- and scFv-binding protein antibodies provide protection against CA16 viral infection in in vitro assays and may be potential candidates for treating CA16 infection in vulnerable young children.     

Thermal analysis of polymer–water interactions and their relation to gas hydrate inhibition

Gas hydrates formed in oil production pipelines are crystalline solids where hydrocarbon gas molecules such as methane, propane, and their mixtures are trapped in a cagelike structure by hydrogen‐bonded water molecules to form undesirable plugs. Methanol and glycol are currently used to prevent these plugs via thermodynamic inhibition. Small amounts of water‐soluble polymers may provide an alternate approach for preventing gas hydrates. In this study, we expand the fundamental understanding of water–polymer systems with differential scanning calorimetry. Nonfreezable bound water was used to quantify polymer–water interactions and relate them to the chemical structure for a series of polymers, including acrylamides, cyclic lactams, and n‐vinyl amides. For good interactions, the water structure needs to be stabilized through hydrophobic interactions. An increased hydrophobicity of the pendant group also appears to favor polymer performance as a gas hydrate inhibitor. Good inhibitors, such as poly(diethyl acrylamide) and poly(N‐vinyl caprolactam), also show higher heat capacities, which indicate higher hydrophobicity, than poor performers such as polyzwitterions, in which hydrophilicity dominated. The phase behavior and thermodynamic properties of dilute polymer solutions were also evaluated through measurements of the heat of demixing and lower critical solution temperature. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 103: 2642–2653, 2007     

Plasma graft polymerization of acrylamide onto crosslinked HTPB based PU membrane for pervaporation

Pervaporation of water-ethanol mixtures through plasma graft polymerization of acrylamide onto crosslinked hydroxyl terminated poly-butadiene (HTPB) based PU membranes, plasma graft polymerization of acrylamide onto crosslinked PU membrane (AAm-p-CPU), were investigated. The grafting was dependent on the discharge power and pretreatment period. The effects of crosslinking, plasma treatment conditions, feed compositions, and feed temperature on the performance of these membranes were studied. The physical properties of crosslinked membrane were better than those of the uncrosslinked membrane. In addition, compared with crosslinked PU membranes (CPU), the plasma modified crosslinked PU membranes effectively improve the pervaporation separation performances.     

Thermal Shock Failure in Thick Epoxy Coatings

In this paper we describe an apparatus for reproducibly measuring thermal shock resistance of thick polymer layers bonded to metals. The thermal shock behavior is discussed in terms of epoxy samples bonded to an aluminum substrate. It was found that both high resin toughness and low resin thermal expansion coefficient improved thermal shock resistance of thick coatings, but only a sample containing 60wt. % glass beads did not develop a failure crack. Effects of sample thickness, temperature gradient, and resin composition on thermal shock behavior are discussed.     

Exploiting Batch Processing on Streaming Architectures to Solve 2D Elliptic Finite Element Problems: A Hybridized Discontinuous Galerkin (HDG) Case Study

Numerical methods for elliptic partial differential equations (PDEs) within both continuous and hybridized discontinuous Galerkin (HDG) frameworks share the same general structure: local (elemental) matrix generation followed by a global linear system assembly and solve. The lack of inter-element communication and easily parallelizable nature of the local matrix generation stage coupled with the parallelization techniques developed for the linear system solvers make a numerical scheme for elliptic PDEs a good candidate for implementation on streaming architectures such as modern graphical processing units (GPUs). We propose an algorithmic pipeline for mapping an elliptic finite element method to the GPU and perform a case study for a particular method within the HDG framework. This study provides comparison between CPU and GPU implementations of the method as well as highlights certain performance-crucial implementation details. The choice of the HDG method for the case study was dictated by the computationally-heavy local matrix generation stage as well as the reduced trace-based communication pattern, which together make the method amenable to the fine-grained parallelism of GPUs. We demonstrate that the HDG method is well-suited for GPU implementation, obtaining total speedups on the order of 30–35 times over a serial CPU implementation for moderately sized problems.     

Simulation of Climate Change Effects on Hydropower Operations in Mountain Headwater Lakes,New Zealand

Future climate change is expected to have wide ranging impacts on the hydrology of mountain rivers because of changes in the magnitudes and timing of rain and snow, as well as the significant spatial variability of topography and other catchment characteristics. In New Zealand, hydropower generation in mountain basins is the primary source of electricity and renewable energy resource in the country. The goal of this study was to simulate and evaluate the potential effects of climate change on hydropower operations in three mountain headwater lakes (lakes Pukaki, Tekapo, and Ohau) in the Upper Waitaki Basin of the central South Island. The TopNet hydrological model was used to estimate catchment runoff and lake inflows based on the 1990s (baseline), 2040s, and 2090s periods. Average temperature and precipitation results from an ensemble of 12 Global Circulation Models based on the IPCC 4th Assessment Report A1B emissions scenario were used as input to TopNet. Linked hydropower lake water balance models were developed and used to simulate hydropower operations including discharge, hydroelectric power generation, and spill based on TopNet future inflow predictions, projected electricity demand, and lake storage and outflow characteristics. Our results indicate that annual lake inflows increase under future climate scenarios, but that there are seasonal effects with increasing flows in winter and early spring, and summer flows decreasing somewhat as a result of increasing temperatures and greater winter rain with less snow. Although overall hydropower generation can increase with the increasing flows and projected electricity demand, the seasonal changes result in demand being met in winter and spring with potential shortfalls in summer and autumn. Maximum annual generation can be achieved for some generating stations, but generation will decrease at other stations and more spill will likely be required through the 2090s because of the seasonal changes. Therefore flood and drought risk could also increase for downstream areas. Results also indicate that by the 2090s electricity demand could exceed generation capacity for these headwater lakes. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Catalytic removal of SO2, NO and HCl from incineration flue gas over activated carbon-supported metal oxides

Activated carbon-supported copper, iron, or vanadium oxide catalysts were exposed to incineration flue gas to investigate the simultaneous catalytic oxidation of sulfur dioxide/hydrogen chloride and selective catalytic reduction of nitrogen oxide by carbon monoxide. The results show that AC-supported catalysts exhibit higher activities for SO₂ and HCl oxidation than traditional γ-Al₂O₃-supported catalysts and the iron and vanadium catalysts act as catalysts instead of sorbents, and can decompose sulfate with evolution of SO₃ and then regenerate for more SO₂ adsorption to take place. The AC-supported catalysts also display a high activity for NO reduction with CO generated from a flue gas incineration process and the presence of SO₂ in the incineration flue gas can significantly promote catalytic activity. Using CO as the reducing agent for NO reduction is more effective than using NH₃, because NH₃ may be partially oxidized in the presence of excess O₂ (12 vol%. in the incineration flue gas used) to form N₂, which can decrease the overall extent of NO reduction.