The impact of new product development acceleration approaches on speed and profitability: lessons for pioneers and fast followers

This work investigates the impact of nine new product development (NPD) acceleration approaches (supplier involvement, lead user involvement, speeding up activities and tasks, reduction of parts and components, training and rewarding of employees, implementation of support systems and techniques, stimulating interfunctional cooperation, emphasis on the customer, and simplification of organizational structure) on development speed and new product profitability. Our findings from 233 manufacturing firms show that lead user involvement and training/rewarding of employees increase both development speed and profitability. Supplier involvement, speeding up activities and tasks, and a simplification of the organizational structure also enhance development speed, while an emphasis on the customer has an additional positive impact on new product profitability. Both new product speed and profitability increase firm financial performance. Our results further show that pioneers and fast followers should not select the same NPD acceleration approaches as the speed and profitability impact of the majority of the acceleration approaches depends on the new product strategy of the firm. These results are important as they provide guidance for pioneers and fast followers regarding which NPD acceleration approaches to select in order to enhance speed and profitability and, hence, firm financial performance.     

The effect of ceria co-doping on chemical stability and fracture toughness of Y-TZP

The fracture toughness and ageing resistance of yttria, ceria-stabilized tetragonal zirconia polycrystals (Y, Ce-TZP) were evaluated as a function of grain size and ceria content. Very fine grained, fully dense materials could be produced by sinter forging at relatively low temperatures (1150–1200 °C). The ageing resistance in hot water (185 °C) of 2 mol% Y₂O₃-stabilized TZP is strongly enhanced by alloying with ceria. The ceria content necessary to avoid degradation completely, decreases with grain size. The toughness of fully dense Y, Ce-TZP is 7–9 MPa m^1/2 for grain sizes down to 0.2 m. No or very little transformation took place during fracturing and no clear variation with grain size was observed for the toughness at grain sizes up to 0.8 m. Reversible transformation and crack deflection may explain the observed toughness values.     

Farm-scale bio-power-to-methane: Comparative analyses of economic and environmental feasibility

Power-to-gas technologies are considered to be part of the future energy system, but their viability and applicability need to be assessed. Therefore, models for the viability of farm-scale bio-power-to-methane supply chains to produce green gas were analysed in terms of levelised cost of energy, energy efficiency and saving of greenhouse gas emission. In bio-power-to-methane, hydrogen from electrolysis driven by surplus renewable electricity and carbon dioxide from biogas are converted to methane by microbes in an ex situ trickle-bed reactor. Such bio-methanation could replace the current upgrading of biogas to green gas with membrane technology. Four scenarios were compared: a reference scenario without bio-methanation (A), bio-methanation (B), bio-methanation combined with membrane upgrading (C) and the latter with use of renewable energy only (all-green; D). The reference scenario (A) has the lowest costs for green gas production, but the bio-methanation scenarios (B-D) have higher energy efficiencies and environmental benefits. The higher costs of the bio-methanation scenarios are largely due to electrolysis, whereas the environmental benefits are due to the use of renewable electricity. Only the all-green scenario (D) meets the 2026 EU goal of 80% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, but it would require a CO₂ price of 200 € t⁻¹ to achieve the levelised cost of energy of 65 €ct Nm⁻³ of the reference scenario. Inclusion of the intermittency of renewable energy in the scenarios substantially increases the costs. Further greening of the bio-methanation supply chain and how intermittency is best taken into account need further investigation.     

Modelling non-stationary noise with spectral factorisation in automatic speech recognition

Speech recognition systems intended for everyday use must be able to cope with a large variety of noise types and levels, including highly non-stationary multi-source mixtures. This study applies spectral factorisation algorithms and long temporal context for separating speech and noise from mixed signals. To adapt the system to varying environments, noise models are acquired from the context, or learnt from the mixture itself without prior information. We also propose methods for reducing the size of the bases used for speech and noise modelling by 20–40 times for better practical applicability. We evaluate the performance of the methods both as a standalone classifier and as a signal-enhancing front-end for external recognisers. For the CHiME noisy speech corpus containing non-stationary multi-source household noises at signal-to-noise ratios ranging from +9 to ?6 dB, we report average keyword recognition rates up to 87.8% using a single-stream sparse classification algorithm.     

Effects of irradiation and/or heat treatment on the phytoalexin accumulation in potato tubers

Summary Phytoalexin accumulation elicited byPhytophthora megasperma was studied in irradiated (0.1, 0.75, 1.5 kGy), heat treated (50 °C, 5 min) and combined (heat and irradiation) treated potato tubers (cultivar Bintje). Rishitin, lubimin and small amounts of phytuberol were found. The phytoalexin concentration was higher in the irradiated tubers than in the unirradiated ones. The heat treatment did not have an unambiguous effect on the phytoalexin production. On the samples containing highest phytoalexin level intensive growth ofP. megasperma could be observed; in the bioassay an increased amount of phytoalexins showed a stronger fungistatic effect onCladosporium cucumerinum. These results indicate that the phytoalexin accumulation is not clearly related to the mechanism of resistance against fungi.

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Der Einfluß von Bestrahlung und/oder thermischer Behandlung auf die Anhäufung von Phytoalexinen in Kartoffeln

Zusammenfassung Die Anhäufung von durchPhytophthora megasperma hervorgerufenen Phytoalexinen wurde in Kartoffelknollen (Sorte Bintje) nach Bestrahlung (0,1, 0,75, 1,5 kGy) oder nach thermischer Behandlung (50 °C, 5 min) bzw. nach kombinierter Behandlung (thermische Behandlung + Bestrahlung) untersucht. Rishitin, Lubimin und Spuren von Phytuberol wurden nachgewiesen. Die Konzentration der Phytoalexine war in den bestrahlten Knollen höher als in den unbestrahlten. Die thermische Behandlung hatte keinen eindeutigen Effekt auf die Bildung von Phytoalexinen. Auf Proben, welche den höchsten Phytoalexingehalt aufwiesen, konnte ein intensives Wachstum vonP. megasperma beobachtet werden. In der parallell durchgeführten Biomethode wurde festgestellt, daß der höhere Phytoalexingehalt aufCladosporium cucumerinum einen stärkeren fungiciden Effekt hat. Den Ergebnissen nach ist der Zusammenhang zwischen der Phytoalexinbildung und der Widerstandsfähigkeit gegen Schimmelpilze nicht eindeutig.

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The experiment was carried out under the International Facility for Food Irradiation Technology project at the Research Institute ITAL and at the Pilot Plant for Food Irradiation, Wageningen, The Netherlands, during a International Atomic Energy Agency fellowship