DESENSITIZATION AND THE EXPERIMENTAL REDUCTION OF THREAT.

TESTED A SYSTEMATIC DESENSITIZATION PROCEDURE AND 2 OF ITS COMPONENTS FOR ABILITY TO REDUCE STRESS RESPONSES OF 58 MEN AND 51 WOMEN IN A LABORATORY THREAT SITUATION. SS RECEIVED 1 OF 4 TYPES OF TRAINING PROCEDURES BEFORE EXPOSURE TO A STRESSFUL FILM: AN ANALOGUE OF THERAPEUTIC DESENSITIZATION, RELAXATION, COGNITIVE REHEARSAL, OR NO TRAINING CONTROL. STRESS RESPONSE DURING THE SHOWING OF A DRAMATIC FILM ON INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENTS WAS MEASURED BY CONCURRENT SELF-REPORT, HEART RATE, AND SKIN CONDUCTANCE MEASURES. RESULTS SHOWED THAT THE SEPARATE COMPONENTS OF DESENSITIZATION, RELAXATION AND COGNITIVE REHEARSAL, WERE AS EFFECTIVE ALONE AS WHEN COMBINED IN THE COMPLETE DESENSITIZATION PROGRAM. ON SEVERAL MEASURES, COGNITIVE REHEARSAL APPEARED TO BE THE MOST EFFECTIVE THREAT REDUCER. (26 REF.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Component allocation to balance workload in printed circuit card assembly systems

Component allocation in printed circuit card assembly systems is a special case of the classical mixed-model assembly line balancing problem and involves assigning component types to machines to achieve specific production objectives. In this paper the component allocation problem is considered for the scenario where there are two or more placement machines (possibly nonidentical) and the objective is to balance, for every card type, a combination of the card assembly time and the machine setup time. A mathematical formulation of the problem is developed for a class of placement machines. Two alternative solution approaches are presented: a list-processing-based heuristic for a simple version of the problem, and a linear-programming-based branch-and-bound procedure for the general component allocation problem. Industrial case study results are presented for each approach that indicate expected throughput improvements of up to 8-10% over the company's current procedure, with much less direct effort required by the process engineer.