Academic literature on the topic 'Europe – Manufactures – Employees'

This article describes how U.S. manufacturing was stricken when companies embraced outsourcing beginning in the 1990s as a strategy for taking advantage of lower labor costs in developing countries. The U.S. textile and apparel industries lost 76.5% of its workforce, or 1.2 million jobs, between 1990 and 2012. The catalyst which has renewed the interest in manufacturing textiles and apparel in the United States is the narrowing gap between the U.S. and Asian labor costs. The sector changed in response to technology and the global market, and both the number and type of employees demanded turned as well. The advanced technology currently drives the domestic textile industry. Despite a positive outlook on growth, it is unlikely that textile manufacturing will create the large number of jobs that it did in the past. Furthermore, it is only viable because of the technological improvements to its factories. The current production is designed to employ fewer workers in order be more productive and less dependent on labor costs. Nevertheless, the high demand for specialized and unique textiles in the U.S. and Europe will likely continue to drive improved manufacturing technology and performance. China's transition from a manufacturing economy to a service economy will increase its manufacturing operational costs, while probably growing demand for the sorts of specialized textiles on which American textile manufacturers tend to focus. If such manufacturers can increase their market shares in China and other Asian countries, while maintaining such markets in the U.S. and Europe, the American textile manufacturing industry will likely grow at a moderately high rate.

This study investigates the effect of COVID-19 lockdowns and non-lockdown phases on managers and employees in the Czech Republic in the year 2020. The Czech Republic came through the first COVID-19 wave in spring 2020 with low case numbers, but became one of the countries with the highest case incidences in the second autumn wave in Europe. The study focused on examining the differences of perceptions on digital readiness of the company, working style, and mental health variables of working personnel in lockdown and non-lockdown phases. Data was obtained by an online survey conducted monthly from March-2020 to December-2020 with the same questions each month. Collected data consisted of respondents’ basic information on the actual situation, on perceptions on company and technology and on perceptions of the own mental state in the given month, retrieved from a pool of employees and managers from the Czech Republic machine and equipment manufacturers’ industry. Statistical analysis was conducted with the Kruskal-Wallis test for ordinal variables to check for significant differences in perceptions during 2020. Results show that managers in general and telecommuting-experienced workers in particular are better able to adapt to forced home office, while telecommuting-inexperienced employees struggle to adapt positively even with increasing company support and with an increasing digital team communication.

China is the world’s largest user of industrial robots. In 2016, sales of industrial robots in China reached 87,000 units, accounting for around 30 percent of the global market. To put this number in perspective, robot sales in all of Europe and the Americas in 2016 reached 97,300 units (according to data from the International Federation of Robotics). Between 2005 and 2016, the operational stock of industrial robots in China increased at an annual average rate of 38 percent. In this paper, we describe the adoption of robots by China’s manufacturers using both aggregate industry-level and firm-level data, and we provide possible explanations from both the supply and demand sides for why robot use has risen so quickly in China. A key contribution of this paper is that we have collected some of the world’s first data on firms’ robot adoption behaviors with our China Employer-Employee Survey (CEES), which contains the first firm-level data that is representative of the entire Chinese manufacturing sector.

ABSTRACT In 2000, the Consumer Goods Forum established the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) to increase the safety of the world's food supply and to harmonize food safety regulations worldwide. In 2013, a university research team in conjunction with Diversey Consulting (Sealed Air), the Consumer Goods Forum, and officers of GFSI solicited input from more than 15,000 GFSI-certified food producers worldwide to determine whether GFSI certification had lived up to these expectations. A total of 828 usable questionnaires were analyzed, representing about 2,300 food manufacturing facilities and food suppliers in 21 countries, mainly across Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and North America. Nearly 90% of these certified suppliers perceived GFSI as being beneficial for addressing their food safety concerns, and respondents were eight times more likely to repeat the certification process knowing what it entailed. Nearly three-quarters (74%) of these food manufacturers would choose to go through the certification process again even if certification were not required by one of their current retail customers. Important drivers for becoming GFSI certified included continuing to do business with an existing customer, starting to do business with new customer, reducing the number of third-party food safety audits, and continuing improvement of their food safety program. Although 50% or fewer respondents stated that they saw actual increases in sales, customers, suppliers, or employees, significantly more companies agreed than disagreed that there was an increase in these key performance indicators in the year following GFSI certification. A majority of respondents (81%) agreed that there was a substantial investment in staff time since certification, and 50% agreed there was a significant capital investment. This survey is the largest and most representative of global food manufacturers conducted to date.

Over the past three decades, economic transformations in Eastern Europe and Russia have substantially affected the use of management technologies. More and more businesses prioritize sustaining growth and development in the long run instead of maximizing profits in the short term. The shift in the business paradigm requires the implementation of new management tools along with the improvement of management accounting. Through the example of seven Russian boiler manufacturers, this study examines the main reasons for the transition to process-based management. The study identifies patterns of using management accounting tools in process-based management by employing the literature analysis, conducting an expert survey, and studying the accounting documents of selected companies. The authors analyze features of management accounting tools at different stages of implementation of the process-based management system, in enterprises with different life cycles and different sizes. A total of 53 employees were surveyed, which included senior managers, accountants, and middle-level managers. It is found that the main reason for the transition to process-based management is a shift in the focus of managers’ attention from cutting costs to creating value. By adding new features of business process classification, developing new classification groups, and proposing the optimal structure of the core, auxiliary, and controlling business processes, this study contributes to the optimization of management accounting when organizational change requires implementing process-based management.

Abstract The NOMAD project was a survey to examine the noise-related content of instructions supplied with machinery offered for purchase in Europe. The project collected more than 1 500 instructions from machines covering 40 broad machine-families and from 800 different manufacturing companies. These instructions were analyzed to determine compliance with the requirements of the Machinery Directive, and assess the quality of information. The general state of compliance of machinery instructions with the noise-related requirements of the Machinery Directive was found to be very poor: 80% of instructions did not meet legal requirements. Some required numerical values relating to noise emissions were often missing. Where values were given, they were often not traceable to machine operating conditions or measurement methods, and not credible either against stated conditions/methods or as warnings of likely risk in real use. As a consequence, it is considered highly likely that, in making a machinery procurement decision, employers are prevented from taking noise emissions into account, and understanding what is necessary to manage the risks from noise relating to equipment that is procured. Recommendations are made for actions aimed at bringing about a global improvement to the current situation. Targeted actions are now proposed by “ADCO Machinery Group” aimed at raising awareness of the legal requirements, responsibilities and actions required among the various groups who have parts to play in the system - machine manufacturers, machine users, occupational safety and health professionals, and standards-makers. Recommendations are also made aimed at providing, or improving, tools and resources for all these actors.

Modern medicine is evolving at a tremendous speed. On a daily basis, we learn about new treatments, drugs, medical devices, and diagnoses. Both established technology companies and start-ups focus on health-related products and services in competition with traditional healthcare businesses. Telemedicine and electronic health records have the potential to improve the effectiveness of treatments significantly. Progress in the medical field depends above all on data, specifically health information. Physicians, researchers, and developers need health information to help patients by improving diagnoses, customizing treatments and finding new cures. Yet law and policymakers are currently more focused on the fact that health information can also be used to harm individuals. Even after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic (which occurred after the manuscript for this article was largely finalized), the California Attorney General Becera made a point of announcing that he will not delay enforcement of the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”), which his office estimated imposes a $55 billion cost (approximately 1.8% of California Gross State Product) for initial compliance, not including costs of ongoing compliance, responses to data subject requests, and litigation. Risks resulting from health information processing are very real. Contact tracing and quarantines in response to SARS, MERS, and COVID-19 outbreaks curb civil liberties with similar effects to law enforcement investigations, arrests, and imprisonment. Even outside the unusual circumstances of a global pandemic, employers or insurance companies may disfavor individuals with pre-existing health conditions in connections with job offers and promotions as well as coverage and eligibility decisions. Some diseases carry a negative stigma in social circumstances. To reduce the risks of such harms and protect individual dignity, governments around the world regulate the collection, use, and sharing of health information with ever-stricter laws. European countries have generally prohibited the processing of personal data, subject to limited exceptions, for which companies have to identify and then document or apply. The General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) that took effect in 2018 confirms and amplifies a rigid regulatory regime that was first introduced in the German State Hessen in 1970 and demands that organizations minimize the amount of data they collect, use, share, and retain. Healthcare and healthtech organizations have struggled to comply with this regime and have found EU data protection laws fundamentally hostile to data-driven progress in medicine. The United States, on the other hand, has traditionally relied on sector- and harm-specific laws to protect privacy, including data privacy and security rules under the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (“HIPAA”) and numerous state laws including the Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (“CMIA”) in California, which specifically address the collection and use of health information. So long as organizations observe the specific restrictions and prohibitions in sector-specific privacy laws, they may collect, use, and share health information. As a default rule in the United States, businesses are generally permitted to process personal information, including health information. Yet, recently, extremely broad and complex privacy laws have been proposed or enacted in some states, including the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”), which have a potential to render compliance with data privacy laws impractical for most businesses, including those in the healthcare and healthtech sectors. Meanwhile, the People’s Republic of China is encouraging and incentivizing data-driven research and development by Chinese companies, including in the healthcare sector. Data-related legislation is focused on cybersecurity and securing access to data for Chinese government agencies and much less on individual privacy interests. In Europe and the United States, the political pendulum has swung too far in the direction of ever more rigid data regulation and privacy laws, at the expense of potential benefits through medical progress. This is literally unhealthy. Governments, businesses, and other organizations need to collect, use and share more personal health information, not less. The potential benefits of health data processing far outweigh privacy risks, which can be better tackled by harm-specific laws. If discrimination by employers and insurance companies is a concern, then lawmakers and law enforcement agencies need to focus on anti-discrimination rules for employers and insurance companies - not prohibit or restrict the processing of personal data, which does not per se harm anyone. The notion of only allowing data processing under specific conditions leads to a significant hindrance of medical progress by slowing down treatments, referrals, research, and development. It also prevents the use of medical data as a tool for averting dangers for the public good. Data “anonymization” and requirements for specific consent based on overly detailed privacy notices do not protect patient privacy effectively and unnecessarily complicate the processing of health data for medical purposes. Property rights to personal data offer no solutions. Even if individuals - not companies creating databases - were granted property rights to their own data originally, this would not ultimately benefit individuals. Given that transfer and exclusion rights are at the core of property regimes, data property rights would threaten information freedom and privacy alike: after an individual sells her data, the buyer and new owner could exercise his data property rights to enjoin her and her friends and family from continued use of her personal data. Physicians, researchers, and developers would not benefit either; they would have to deal with property rights in addition to privacy and medical confidentiality requirements. Instead of overregulating data processing or creating new property rights in data, lawmakers should require and incentivize organizations to earn and maintain the trust of patients and other data subjects and penalize organizations that use data in specifically prohibited ways to harm individuals. Electronic health records, improved notice and consent mechanisms, and clear legal frameworks will promote medical progress, reduce risks of human error, lower costs, and make data processing and sharing more reliable. We need fewer laws like the GDPR or the CCPA that discourage organizations from collecting, using, retaining, and sharing personal information. Physicians, researchers, developers, drug companies, medical device manufacturers and governments urgently need better and increased access to personal health information. The future of medicine offers enormous opportunities. It depends on trust and healthy data protection. Some degree of data regulation is necessary, but the dose makes the poison. Laws that require or intend to promote the minimization of data collection, use, and sharing may end up killing more patients than hospital germs. In this article, I promote a view that is decidedly different from that supported by the vast majority of privacy scholars, politicians, the media, and the broader zeitgeist in Europe and the United States. I am arguing for a healthier balance between data access and data protection needs in the interest of patients’ health and privacy. I strive to identify ways to protect health data privacy without excessively hindering healthcare and medical progress. After an introduction (I), I examine current approaches to data protection regulation, privacy law, and the protection of patient confidentiality (II), risks associated with the processing of health data (III), needs to protect patient confidence (IV), risks for healthcare and medical progress (V), and possible solutions (VI). I conclude with an outlook and call for healthier approaches to data protection (VII).

Bangladesh’s apparel industry has become the country’s economic foundation. The textile and apparel employees especially over four million people. In this major industrial sector, it is critical to encourage sustainability. When the apparel market and corporations focus on environmentally friendly products, Bangladesh’s textile and apparel sectors remain far behind, putting the country at risk of losing market share. It is right of passage to implement techniques and a long-term strategy to sustainability. Bangladeshi apparel industries are currently facing significant issues in terms of labor conditions. In garment manufacturers, fires are a common occurrence. Thousands of workers have perished because of these dangers. Due to Bangladesh’s fire and safety difficulties, several foreign purchasers have already opted not to do business with the country again. Furthermore, workers receive the world’s lowest pay, which leaves them dissatisfied and frequently results in conflicts and violence during protests poor wages. This study is conveyed based on theoretical, analytical, and statistical aspects. The goal of this study is to represent the overall picture of sustainability in the apparel industry in Bangladesh. This study illustrates on using a life cycle approach to assessing manufactured products for environmental indicators to attain sustainability, fast fashion, government policy of sustainability, new method and material of garments and compare with the lifestyle of Europe against Bangladesh. This paper investigated Bangladesh’s garment industry’s working environment, fire, and safety hazards, and made suggestions for important environmental and sustainability activities. This study is helpful to all the people because sustainability is the main concern in a day.

The article examines the effectiveness of tax administration of small and medium-sized businesses in Ukraine. Small and medium-sized businesses in Ukraine, as well as around the world, play an important role in the country's economy. State support for existing small businesses and incentives to create new businesses makes it possible to increase revenues from taxes and fees to the budgets of various levels, create new jobs without spending public funds, promote new products and services, help citizens express themselves. etc. In Ukraine, in such entities, more than 80% of all employees work and they produce about 65% of the total cost of manufactured products in the country. These shares have tended to grow steadily in recent years. To support such businesses, the government has created a simplified taxation system and simplified financial reporting. Based on the study, it was found that the main constraints in the development of small and medium enterprises in the country are cumbersome regulatory support for taxation of small and medium businesses, complex reporting forms and imperfect system of tax administration. Ukraine is one of the last places in Europe in terms of the time a taxpayer has to spend calculating tax liabilities, paying taxes and fees, and filling out reporting forms. It was established that the main task of the state tax service, instead of advising taxpayers and controlling their payment of tax liabilities, was to fill the budgets of various levels and cover the existing deficit. This led to opposition among businesses and the transfer of part of their activities "in the shadows". To solve this problem, it is proposed to simplify reporting forms for small and medium-sized businesses, improve and strengthen the advisory and explanatory activities of the tax service and eliminate the obligation to impose penalties on inspections of regulatory authorities, regardless of the actual results of the inspection. Improving the tax administration of such businesses will make it easier for the national economy to end the global economic crisis caused by the pandemic and to speed up the recovery and growth of domestic production and consumption.

Perfume is a Japanese “techno-pop” idol trio formed in 2000 consisting of three women–Ayano Omoto, Yuka Kashino, and Ayaka Nishiwaki. Since 2007, when one of their songs was selected for a recycling awareness campaign by Japan's national public broadcaster, Perfume has been a consistent fixture in the Japanese pop music charts. They have been involved in the full gamut of typical idol activities, from television and radio shows to commercials for clothing brands, candy, and drinks. Their success reflects Japanese pop culture's long-standing obsession with pop idols, who once breaking into the mainstream, become ubiquitous cross-media presences. Perfume’s fame in Japan is due in large part to their masterful performance of traditional female idol roles, through which they assume the kaleidoscopic positions of daughter, sister, platonic friend, and heterosexual romantic partner depending on the standpoint of the beholder. In the lyrical content of their songs, they play the various parts of the cute but shy girl who loves from a distance, the strong compatriot that pushes the listener to keep striving for their dreams, and the kindred spirit with whom the listener can face life's ordinary challenges. Like other successful idols, their extensive lines of Perfume-branded merchandise and product endorsements make the exercise of consumer spending power by their fans a vehicle for them to approach the ideals and experiences that Perfume embodies. Yet, Perfume's videos, music, and stage performances are also replete with subversive images of machines, virtual cities and landscapes, and computer generated apparitions. In their works, the traditional idol as an object of consumer desire co-exists with images of the fragmentation of identity, distrust in the world and the senses, and the desire to escape from illusion, all presented in terms of encounters with technology. In what their fans call the "Near Future Trilogy", a set of three singles released soon after their major label debut (2005-06), lyrics refer to the artificiality and transience of virtual worlds ("Nothing I see or touch has any reality" from "Electro-World," or "I want to escape. I want to destroy this city created by immaculate computation" from "Computer City"). In their later work, explicit lyrical references to virtual worlds and machines largely disappear, but they are replaced with images and bodily performances of Perfume with robotic machinery and electronic information. Perfume is an idol group augmented by technology. In this paper, I explore the significance of these images of technological augmentation of the human body in the work of Perfume. I suggest that the ways these bodily encounters of the human body and technology are articulated in their work reflect broader social and economic anxieties and hopes in Japan. I focus in the first section of this paper on describing some of the recurring technological motifs in their works. Next, I show how their recent work is an experiment with the emergent possibilities of human-technology relationships for imagining Japan's future development. Not only in their visual and performance style, but in their modes of engagement with their fans through new media, I suggest that Perfume itself is attempting to seek out new forms of value creation, which hold the promise of pushing Japan out of the extended economic and social stagnation of its 1990s post-bubble "Lost Decade,” particularly by articulating how they connect with the world. The idol's technologically augmented body becomes both icon and experiment for rethinking Japan and staking out a new global position for it. Though I have referred above to Perfume as its three members, I also use the term to signify the broader group of managers and collaborating artists that surrounds them. Perfume is a creation of corporate media companies and the output of development institutions designed to train multi-talented entertainers from a young age. In addition to the three women who form the public face of Perfume, main figures include music producer Yasutaka Nakata, producer and choreographer MIKIKO, and more recently, the new media artist Daito Manabe and his company, Rhizomatiks. Though Perfume very rarely appear on stage or in their videos with any other identifiable human performers, every production is an effort involving dozens of professional staff. In this respect, Perfume is a very conventional pop idol unit. The attraction of these idols for their fans is not primarily their originality, creativity, or musicality, but their professionalism and image as striving servants (Yano 336). Idols are beloved because they "are well-polished, are trained to sing and act, maintain the mask of stardom, and are extremely skillful at entertaining the audience" (Iwabuchi 561). Moreover, their charisma is based on a relationship of omoiyari or mutual empathy and service. As Christine Yano has argued for Japanese Enka music, the singer must maintain the image of service to his or her fans and reach out to them as if engaged in a personal relationship with each (337). Fans reciprocate by caring for the singer, and making his or her needs their own, not the least of which are financial. The omoiyari relationship of mutual empathy and care is essential to the singer’s charismatic appeal (Yano 347). Thus it does not matter to their fans that Perfume do not play their own instruments or write their own songs. These are jobs for other professionals. However, mirroring the role of the employee in the Japanese company-as-family (see Kondo), their devotion to their jobs as entertainers, and their care and respect for their fans must be evident at all times. The tarnishing of this image, for instance through revelations of underage smoking or drinking, can be fatal, and has resulted in banishment from the media spotlight for some former stars. A large part of Japanese stars' conventional appeal is based on their appearance as devoted workers, consummate professionals, and partners in mutual empathy. As charismatic figures that exchange cultural ideals for fans’ disposable income, it is not surprising that many authors have tied the emergence of the pop idol to the height of Japan's economic prosperity in the 1970s and 1980s, when the social contract between labor and corporations that provided both lifelong employment and social identity had yet to be seriously threatened. Aoyagi suggests (82) that the idol system is tied to post-war consumerism and the increased importance of young adults, particularly women, as consumers. As this correlation between the health of idols and the economy might imply, there is a strong popular connection between concerns of social fission and discontent and economic stagnation. Koichi Iwabuchi writes that Japanese media accounts in the 1990s connected the health of the idol system to the "vigor of society" (555). As Iwabuchi describes, some Japanese fans have looked for their idols abroad in places such as Hong Kong, with a sense of nostalgia for a kind of stardom that has waned in Japan and because of "a deep sense of disillusionment and discontent with Japanese society" (Iwabuchi 561) following the collapse of Japan's bubble economy in the early 1990s. In reaction to the same conditions, some Japanese idols have attempted to exploit this nostalgia. During a brief period of fin-de-siècle optimism that coincided with neoliberal structural reforms under the government of Junichiro Koizumi, Morning Musume, the most popular female idol group at the time, had a hit single entitled "Love Machine" that ended the 1990s in Japan. The song's lyrics tie together dreams of life-long employment, romantic love, stable traditional families, and national resurgence, linking Japan's prosperity in the world at large to its internal social, emotional, and economic health. The song’s chorus declares, "The world will be envious of Japan's future!", although that future still has yet to materialize. In its place has appeared the "near-future" imaginary of Perfume. As mentioned above, the lyrics of some of their early songs referenced illusory virtual worlds that need to be destroyed or transcended. In their later works, these themes are continued in images of the bodies of the three performers augmented by technology in various ways, depicting the performers themselves as robots. Images of the three performers as robots are first introduced in the music video for their single "Secret Secret" (2007). At the outset of the video, three mannequins resembling Perfume are frozen on a futuristic TV soundstage being dressed by masked attendants who march off screen in lock step. The camera fades in and out, and the mannequins are replaced with the human members frozen in the same poses. Other attendants raise pieces of chocolate-covered ice cream (the music video also served as an advertisement for the ice cream) to the performers' mouths, which when consumed, activate them, launching them into a dance consisting of stilted, mechanical steps, and orthogonal arm positions. Later, one of the performers falls on stairs and appears to malfunction, becoming frozen in place until she receives another piece of ice cream. They are later more explicitly made into robots in the video for "Spring of Life" (2012), in which each of the three members are shown with sections of skin lifted back to reveal shiny, metallic parts inside. Throughout this video, their backs are connected to coiled cables hanging from the ceiling, which serve as a further visual sign of their robotic characters. In the same video, they are also shown in states of distress, each sitting on the floor with parts exposed, limbs rigid and performing repetitive motions, as though their control systems have failed. In their live shows, themes of augmentation are much more apparent. At a 2010 performance at the Tokyo Dome, which was awarded the jury selection prize in the 15th Japan Media Arts Festival by the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs, the centerpiece was a special performance entitled "Perfume no Okite" or "The Laws of Perfume." Like "Secret Secret," the performance begins with the emergence of three mannequins posed at the center of the stadium. During the introductory sequence, the members rise out of a different stage to the side. They begin to dance, synchronized to massively magnified, computer generated projections of themselves. The projections fluctuate between photorealistic representations of each member and ghostly CG figures consisting of oscillating lines and shimmering particles that perform the same movements. At the midpoint, the members each face their own images, and state their names and dates of birth before uttering a series of commands: "The right hand and right leg are together. The height of the hands must be precise. Check the motion of the fingers. The movement of the legs must be smooth. The palms of the hands must be here." With each command, the members move their own bodies mechanically, mirrored by the CG figures. After more dancing with their avatars, the performance ends with Perfume slowly lowered down on the platform at the center of the stage, frozen in the same poses and positions as the mannequins, which have now disappeared. These performances cleverly use images of robotic machinery in order to subvert Perfume's idol personas. The robotic augmentations are portrayed as vectors for control by some unseen external party, and each of the members must have their life injected into them through cables, ice cream, or external command, before they can begin to dance and sing as pop idols. Pop idols have always been manufactured products, but through such technological imagery Perfume make their own artificiality explicit, revealing to the audience that it is not the performers they love, but the emergent and contingently human forms of a social, technological, and commercial system that they desire. In this way, these images subvert the performers' charisma and idol fans' own feelings of adoration, revealing the premise of the idol system to have been manufactured to manipulate consumer affect and desire. If, as Iwabuchi suggests, some fans of idols are attracted to their stars by a sense of nostalgia for an age of economic prosperity, then Perfume's robotic augmentations offer a reflexive critique of this industrial form. In "The Laws of Perfume", the commands that comport their bodies may be stated in their own voices, yet they issue not from the members themselves, but their magnified and processed avatars. It is Perfume the commercial entity speaking. The malfunctioning bodies of Perfume depicted in "Secret Secret" and "Spring of Life" do not detract from their charisma as idols as an incident of public drunkenness might, because the represented breakdowns in their performances are linked not to the moral purity or professionalism of the humans, but to failures of the technological and economic systems that have supported them. If idols of a past age were defined by their seamless and idealized personas as entertainers and employees, then it is fitting that in an age of much greater economic and social uncertainty that they should acknowledge the cracks in the social and commercial mechanisms from which their carefully designed personas emerge. In these videos and performances, the visual trope of technological body augmentation serves as a means for representing both the dependence of the idol persona on consumer capitalism, and the fracturing of that system. However, they do not provide an answer to the question of what might lie beyond the fracturing. The only suggestions provided are the disappearance of that world, as in the end of "Computer City," or in the reproduction of the same structure, as when the members of Perfume become mannequins in "The Laws of Perfume" and "Secret Secret." Interestingly, it was with Perfume's management's decision to switch record labels and market Perfume to an international audience that Perfume became newly augmented, and a suggestion of an answer became visible. Perfume began their international push in 2012 with the release of a compilation album, "Love the World," and live shows and new media works in Asia and Europe. The album made their music available for purchase outside of Japan for the first time. Its cover depicts three posed figures computer rendered as clouds of colored dots produced from 3D scans of the members. The same scans were used to create 3D-printed plastic figures, whose fabrication process is shown in the Japanese television ad for the album. The robotic images of bodily augmentation have been replaced by a more powerful form of augmentation–digital information. The website which accompanied their international debut received the Grand Prix of the 17th Japan Media Arts Prize. Developed by Daito Manabe and Rhizomatiks, visitors to the Perfume Global website were greeted by a video of three figures composed of pulsating clouds of triangles, dancing to a heavy, glitch-laden electronic track produced by Nakata. Behind them, dozens of tweets about Perfume collected in real-time scroll across the background. Controls to the side let visitors change not only the volume of the music, but also the angle of their perspective, and the number and responsiveness of the pulsating polygons. The citation for the site's prize refers to the innovative participatory features of the website. Motion capture data from Perfume, music, and programming examples used to render the digital performance were made available for free to visitors, who were encouraged to create their own versions. This resulted in hundreds of fan-produced videos showing various figures, from animals and cartoon characters to swooshing multi-colored lines, dancing the same routine. Several of these were selected to be featured on the website, and were later integrated into the stage performance of the piece during Perfume's Asia tour. A later project extended this idea in a different direction, letting website visitors paint animations on computer representations of the members, and use a simple programming language to control the images. Many of these user creations were integrated into Perfume's 2013 performance at the Cannes Lions International Festival as advertising. Their Cannes performance begins with rapidly shifting computer graphics projected onto their costumes as they speak in unison, as though they are visitors from another realm: "We are Perfume. We have come. Japan is far to the east. To encounter the world, the three of us and everyone stand before you: to connect you with Japan, and to communicate with you, the world." The user-contributed designs were projected on to the members' costumes as they danced. This new mode of augmentation–through information rather than machinery–shows Perfume to be more than a representation of Japan's socio-economic transitions, but a live experiment in effecting these transitions. In their international performances, their bodies are synthesized in real-time from the performers' motions and the informatic layer generated from tweets and user-generated creations. This creates the conditions for fans to inscribe their own marks on to Perfume, transforming the emotional engagement between fan and idol into a technological linkage through which the idols’ bodies can be modified. Perfume’s augmented bodies are not just seen and desired, but made by their fans. The value added by this new mode of connection is imagined as the critical difference needed to transform Perfume from a local Japanese idol group into an entity capable of moving around the world, embodying the promise of a new global position for Japan enabled through information. In Perfume, augmentation suggests a possible answer to Japan’s economic stagnation and social fragmentation. It points past a longing for the past towards new values produced in encounters with the world beyond Japan. Augmentations newly connect Perfume and Japan with the world economically and culturally. At the same time, a vision of Japan emerges, more mobile, flexible, and connected perhaps, yet one that attempts to keep Japan a distinct entity in the world. Bodily augmentations, in media representations and as technological practices, do more than figuratively and materially link silicon and metal with flesh. They mark the interface of the body and technology as a site of transnational connection, where borders between the nation and what lies outside are made References Aoyagi, Hiroshi. Islands of Eight Million Smiles: Idol Performance and Symbolic Production in Contemporary Japan. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005. Iwabuchi, Koichi. "Nostalgia for a (Different) Asian Modernity: Media Consumption of "Asia" in Japan." positions: east asia cultures critique 10.3 (2002): 547-573. Kondo, Dorinne K. Crafting Selves: Power, Gender and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Morning Musume. “Morning Musume ‘Love Machine’ (MV).” 15 Oct. 2010. 4 Dec. 2013 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A7j6eryPV4›. Perfume. “[HD] Perfume Performance Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.” 20 June 2013. 11 Nov. 2013 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI0x5vA7fLo›. ———. “[SPOT] Perfume Global Compilation “LOVE THE WORLD.”” 11 Sep. 2012. 11 Nov. 2013 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28SUmWDztxI›. ———. “Computer City.” 18 June 2013. 10 Oct. 2013 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOXGKTrsRNg›. ———. “Electro World.” 18 June 2013. 10 Oct. 2013 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zh0ouiYIZc›. ———. “Perfume no Okite.” 8 May 2011. 10 Oct. 2013 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EjOistJABM›. ———. “Perfume Official Global Website.” 2012. 11 Nov. 2013 ‹http://perfume-global.com/project.html›. ———. “Secret Secret.” 18 Jan. 2012. 10 Oct. 2013 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=birLzegOHyU›. ———. “Spring of Life.” 18 June 2013. 10 Oct. 2013 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PtvnaEo9-0›. Yano, Christine. "Charisma's Realm: Fandom in Japan." Ethnology 36.4 (1997): 335-49.

Background: The European Union’s (EU) food and drink industry has faced declining competitiveness over the past two decades. Methodologies associated with the quality improvement has been recognized as a possible solution to increase competitiveness of the industry. However, there are uncertainties among researchers and practitioners of how to implement these quality improvement methodologies and researchers of today requests further understanding in why some firms perform better than others when applying the same practices. Objectives: The purpose of this thesis is to investigate if the concept of ‘individual readiness for organizational change’ can be used as a measurement to better understand why some firms perform better than others when applying the same quality improvement initiations within the EU food and drink industry. Methods: The researcher of this thesis uses secondary data from existing literature on quality improvement imitations, according to Luning and Marcelis (2009) definition of quality improvement as a part of the food quality management system (FQMS), to justify the need for ‘individual readiness for organizational change’ measurements, defined by Holt et al. (2007), and uses primary data from the conduction of a single-case study, of an Swedish fruit and vegetable operating organization that were about to embark a Lean manufacturing piecemeal approach implementation, to validate the need for assuring individual readiness for change before any food and drink industry invests in quality improvement implementations. Results: The findings of the primary data collection are accordant with existing literature where individual employees were found to display lower levels of ‘individual readiness for organizational change’ perceived the organization to have lack of proper communication or were more resistant towards the implementation. Employees whose daily activities were more orientated around other FQMS practices such as quality assurance and quality control, displayed lower levels of individual readiness than employees whose activities are less associated with these systems. Furthermore, trust in management was identified as a key determinant of the employees’ individual readiness for the Lean manufacturing implementation. Conclusions: The findings of this thesis indicate that the usage the concept of ‘individual readiness for change’ as a measurement before a quality improvement implementation within the EU food and drink industry could increase researches’ and practitioners’ understanding why some firms perform better than others when applying the same practices.

Defence date: 8 October 1987
Examining board: Prof. Vincent Wright, Nuffield College ; Prof. Yves Morvan, University of Rennes ; Prof. Julien Savary, University of Toulouse ; Prof. Stephen Young, Strathclyde University
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017

Professional Doctorate - Doctor of Business Administration (DBA)
Workplace Health and Safety (WHS) is an integral part of employment industries. Employers are responsible for providing a safe and working environment for their staff, where hazards are clearly outlined and procedures are put in place to minimise the risk of harm or death. In recent decades, the Bangladesh Ready Made Garment Industry (RMG) has seen some tragic accidents in their factories leading to hundreds of fatalities. These accidents have drawn global attention to the industry. The RMG industry is highly competitive on a global scale and it is crucial to the Bangladesh economy. However, as is obvious from the magnitude of the accidents that have unfolded in the industry, there is a lot to be said for the current WHS standards. In my research, I have attempted to assess the current 'Work Health and Safety' issues and employees’ safety preferences irrespective to the gender to suggest a reasonably practicable way to deal with them. These issues can be found in any public or private ventures. This issue is further linked to the individual or organisation that is conducting the business. Private entrepreneurs own the majority of garments factories. Their top-level business performance has contributed to the image of country to the outside world, especially in clothing export. The operators need to ensure control over safe manufacturing operations, proper management of plant and substances, monitor and record health and safety issues, offer adequate facilities (i.e. washrooms, shower place, toilets, lockers, dining areas, first aid), arrange training, ensure participation in the consultation and arrange extra supervision if required. At the same time, both temporary and full time employees need assurance and commitment from management for the planned and continuous improvement in health and safety approaches. All workers should be entitled to have protection from any workplace risks, actively use the personal protective equipment (PPE), be proactive and become actively involved in reporting hazards, and have more engagement and participation in workplace training and communication to improve health and safety. While WHS risks can never be eliminated, hazards can be controlled and precautions can be put in place to reduce the risks associated with working in RMG factories. In my proposed framework, I have asked many questions related to the current health and safety program in terms of planning, implementing and reviewing to assess the common practice. I have also attempted to explore the current capacity building context from the employee awareness, workplace culture and training needs analysis. This conceptual framework from the above two perspectives provides a positive contribution to WHS improvement in the garments sector. The sample comprised 315 RMG employees and supervisors from Bangladesh. Respondents were interviewed using a questionnaire with closed-ended questions. Descriptive research was adopted in one part to determine the gender-based responses under each category. Simple random sampling is used as the sampling technique. At the same time, SPSS ANOVA test, Pearson Correlation test were used to select the significant correlation within each heading. Owing to force completion, data was free from missing value. At the same time, for the treatment for outliers, we tried to ensure that the relationships were not attributable to one or a few outliers, the scatter plots and box plot were used to examine presence of any outliers and to check for normality. For the examination for normality, normal Q-Q Plots have been used. Preliminary analysis revealed that data was normally distributed. All the constructs form a normal distribution, mostly negatively skewed and cases fall more or less in a straight line. Cronbach's Alpha was used to test reliability of the statistics. All those analyses were used to identify hazards as a source of damage, harm or adverse health effects on something or someone under certain conditions at work. The entire work environment runs on meeting the foreign buyers’ fashion cycle times. It is almost impossible to check the WHS in the floor area, where hundreds, if not thousands of workers are in action. During this research, I found employees to be careful in their workplace. Female employees were far more attentive than males due to their family dependency issues. Both male and female employees brought up the importance of training. However, employers were in a dilemma on training design and training cost arrangements with their foreign buyers. International pressure coming from the International Labour Organisation (ILO), accord and diverse lobbyist groups on meeting compliance at one side, and the continuous push from the buyers to rein in costs misaligned the drive to improve training safety and raising safety costs. Thus, the study’s findings showed that WHS issues and non-compliance are widespread and extra attention is necessary to control risks and prevent further tragedies like those of Rana Plaza and Tazreen Fashions. Furthermore, such issues cannot be disregarded in Bangladesh, owing to the massive dependency of the country on garment export earnings.

Having obtained a crucial royal protection that allowed them to compete freely with their Parisian rivals, the Erard brothers concentrated on enlarging their workshop in order to meet the growing demand for their pianos—not only in Paris, but throughout France. The firm hired numerous skilled workers from German-speaking Europe, enticing them by offering a good salary and a stable contract. The success of the Erard firm depended on recruiting, training, and supervising their numerous employees, and stocking their workshops with great quantities of specialised raw materials for instrument manufacture. The Erards developed relationships with musical instrument dealers, musicians, and music teachers as an important way to extend their instrument-building empire across Europe.

The automobile industry simultaneously entices and challenges developing countries. It is a leading employer, a major trader, and a crucial integrator of manufacturing technologies. Would-be entrants into the industry face formidable challenges, however: high entry barriers, demanding quality requirements, and (for components producers) assemblers’ expectations that component producers will be able to co-locate with their plants. Only 15 of the world’s largest auto components manufacturers come from outside Europe, Japan, or North America. Changes in technology and regional and global trade regimes have consolidated the industry and reduced the availability of policy instruments. Nonetheless, opportunities exist for developing economies, not least because of the potential for integration into regional and global supply chains. Most of the growth in demand for autos is concentrated in the developing world. Less developed countries on the periphery of major markets have substantially increased their share of global output over the last two decades.

American pottery manufacturers of refined earthenwares and porcelain faced a number of challenges in attempting to develop their operations during the late 1700s and early 1800s. The American pottery industry was dispersed geographically and struggled to compete against those greater economies of scale enjoyed by British manufacturers. From 1850 onward, American producers expanded significantly, evolving rapidly from artisan production to increasingly mechanized factories, particularly in locations such as Trenton, New Jersey, and East Liverpool, Ohio. Yet, decades before the start of that trend, the Landrums of Edgefield, South Carolina, initiated ambitious innovations in their potteries in the backcountry. The innovation and development of alkaline-glazed stoneware pottery in America was introduced by these potteries in the nineteenth century. They employed enslaved African American laborers and later free African Americans. Documentary evidence indicates that many enslaved Africans were brought to this area of pottery production throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, providing newly arrived cultural influences from societies targeted by the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Edgefield potteries present fascinating research questions of understanding technological innovations and investigating the impacts of African American, European-American, and Asian manufacturing traditions and knowledge on a rural enterprise and its cultural landscape.

GISMA GmbH was founded in 1983 and is today a medium-sized company with 42 employees. With a real net output of 90%, GISMA in Neumu¨nster develops, designs and produces 3,500 different connectors. The high-quality electrical and fibre-optical connectors are used world-wide in the offshore industry, marine technologies and in submarine technologies. With a market share of approx. 30% GISMA is nowadays one of the leading connector manufacturers in European marine technology. 350,000 Euro is invested annually in research and development.

Many current manufacturers provide not only tangible products to their customers, but also services which are accompanying their products. Moreover, manufacturers add smart services to their service offerings. Applying the change toward smart services is not easy, especially in SMEs where many of businesses struggle with lack of money, insufficient digital technologies or unskilled employees. The aim of the study mentioned in this paper explores current situation in SMEs and their attitudes related to collaboration with other subjects on their markets. To address the research objective, a qualitative multi-case study was conducted among seven Czech electrotechnical SMEs, which have already started with smart service development. The findings can indicate two approaches of collaboration based mostly on the owners’ enthusiasm for smart services, management’s age and the length of running their business. The study is unique in highlighting the problems of smart services in SMEs in the Czech Republic, where the industrial sector is still dominant in comparison to other European countries.

Code verification is the process of ensuring, to the degree possible, that there are no algorithm deficiencies and coding mistakes (bugs) in a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code. In order to perform code verification, the Method of Manufactured Solutions (MMS) is a rigorous technique that can be used in the absence of exact solution to the problem. This work addresses major aspects of performing code verification for multiphase flow codes using the open-source, multiphase flow code MFIX which employs a staggered-grid and a modified SIMPLE-based algorithm. Code verification is performed on 2D and 3D, uniform and stretched meshes for incompressible, steady and unsteady, single-phase and two-phase flows using the two-fluid model of MFIX. Currently, the algebraic gas-solid exchange terms are neglected as these can be tested via unit-testing. The no-slip wall, free-slip wall, and pressure outflow boundary conditions are verified for 2D and 3D flows. A newly-developed curl-based manufactured solution for 3D divergence free flows is introduced. Temporal order of accuracy during unsteady calculations is also assessed. Techniques are introduced to generate manufactured solutions that satisfy the divergence-free constraint during the verification of the incompressible governing equations. Manufactured solutions with constraints due to boundary conditions as well as due to divergence-free flow are derived in order to verify the boundary conditions. Use of staggered grid and SIMPLE-based algorithm for numerical computations in MFIX requires specific issues to be addressed while performing MMS-based code verification. Lessons learned during this code verification exercise are discussed.

Abstract The aviation sector is projected to grow rapidly over the next two decades and beyond. These projections coupled with ever more stringent environmental legislation call for action within the commercial aviation sector to radically reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. It is perceived that by 2050 current state-of the-art direct-drive turbofans will have evolved into geared turbofans and geared open rotor engines for short haul missions. These changes in engine configuration may be attributed to calls from the Advisory Council for Aviation Research and innovation in Europe to dramatically reduce CO2 generation and greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The geared open rotor architecture is predicted to significantly reduce fuel burn relative to a typical short-range year-2000 aircraft mission, and greatly reduce CO2 emissions per passenger kilometer. Although relative fuel-burn benefits have been estimated in various studies, the economic feasibility of developing the geared open rotor (GOR) engine configuration for potential manufacturers and operators has not been reported. Therefore, this paper describes methodologies employed to estimate the relative fuel burn benefit of a short-range year 2050 GOR engine-aircraft configuration. In addition, it details the financial feasibility of year-2050 short-range engine and aircraft concepts, for manufacturers and operators alike. An overview of the technical specifications of a potential ‘GOR2050’ engine configuration is provided. This paper further describes methods employed to predict the unit cost of a year-2050 engine and aircraft concept that might be offered by the manufacturers, as well as a revenue model for manufacturers in the 2050-timeframe. In order to capture the supplier–customer relationship between the OEMs and their customers, direct operating cost (DOC) and representative revenue models have been constructed for the operators. This paper also analyses the effects that potential future fuel price and taxation policies regarding emissions could have on the operational profitability of such an aircraft and engine combination. Based on a representative set of model inputs, an illustrative test-case for a year-2050 short-haul aircraft and engine combination predicts, with a 50% confidence level, that the minimum number of twin-engine aircraft sales needed to ensure the financial feasibility of the program would be 630 units. Furthermore, with a 50% confidence level, a potential operator could expect an internal rate of return over 7%. The impact of different fuel prices and taxation scenarios are quantified in terms of internal rate of return forecasts.

The use of polymer composites allows effectively minimizing the weight, improving aesthetics, promoting handling, and also increasing the vessels mechanical, impact, and corrosion behavior [1]. Since filament winding technique appeared in late 1950s as very suitable production process to manufacture rotationally advanced structures [2–7], such as rocket engine cases, an extensive work has been carried out on the development of new processing possibilities. The improvements occurred until the 1980s as consequence of the computer evolution, give finally birth to the modern polar and multi-axle CNC-controlled filament winding machines that are easily integrated in CAD/CAM environments and allow process almost all exotic shapes with very high accurate fiber placement, speed, and quality control [8]. In this work, continuous glass/polypropylene (GF/PP) commingled fiber tapes were employed to produce wrapped pressure gas vessels for domestic applications by using filament winding. The vessel structural-wall was built using a hybrid solution consisting in a very thin steel liner over wrapped by the filament wounded GF/PP commingled fiber tape layers. FEM analysis was used to evaluate if the composite gas pressure vessel based on the hybrid solution (steel liner plus glass fiber reinforced thermoplastic) is capable to withstand the following pressure requirements: the metallic liner, alone, a minimum burst pressure of 4MPa and whole hybrid composite vessel minima internal test and burst pressures of 3MPa and 6.75 MPa, respectively. Finally, gas pressure vessel prototypes manufactured in industrial conditions were submitted to burst pressure and electrostatic tests to prove that they accomplish all European standard strength requirements. The electrostatic tests were made to evaluate the risk of dangerous electrostatic discharges occurring in the worst service conditions described in the Annex C of the EN 13463-1 standard [9]. Two types of electrostatic discharge risks were evaluated: i) possibility of the brush discharge occur from the external non-conductive surface of the composite cylinders due to the accumulation of electrical charges generated in service by rubbing or contact of the cylinder with a high voltage power supply, and ii) possibility of the brush discharge occur through the gas cylinder metallic conductive filling valve due to the accumulation of electrical charges on the internal steel liner as result from the normal service cylinder shaking.

Abstract Whereas the market-share for propeller-driven aircraft is expected to rise to 30–40% of Europe’s regional aviation segment, a significant reduction in perceived noise levels remains a critical challenge for the success of further turboprop deployment. Within the framework of the Clean Sky 2 initiative, the Regional Aircraft platform focuses on the integration of technologies and methodologies, and their validation through full scale demonstrators, in order to allow for breakthrough technologies and competitive regional aircraft products. This paper discusses the challenges for a low-noise propeller design, inherently multidisciplinary, and presents the design methodology employed from concept to wind tunnel model. Critical in the design process of disruptive and innovative concepts is the blade deformation from the manufactured (cold) shape to the running (hot) shape that must be adequately considered. An efficient online surrogate-based optimisation (SBO) approach has been followed where the machine learning models are locally enriched to improve their accuracy in the zones of interest of the design space. Throughout the optimisation feedback was integrated by dynamically strengthening and/or enforcing new constraints, resulting in a propeller design that satisfies all design requirements and achieves a significant near-field noise reduction of 6.4 dB compared to the baseline geometry. After performing a detailed structural assessment, the titanium propeller model has been manufactured and prepared for low-speed and high-speed wind tunnel testing. Preliminary results from the ongoing tests confirm the low-noise propeller’s potential.

Enhanced Visualization of Customized Manufacturing Data Olga Kurasova Mykolas Romeris University Ateities str. 20 LT-08303 Vilnius, Lithuaniaolga.kurasova@mif.vu.lt Virginijus Marcinkevičius Mykolas Romeris University Ateities str. 20 LT-08303 Vilnius, Lithuaniavirginijus.marcinkevicius@mif.vu.lt Birutė MikulskienėMykolas Romeris University Ateities str. 20 LT-08303 Vilnius, Lithuaniabirute.mikulskiene@mruni.eu ABSTRACTRecently, customized manufacturing is gaining much momentum. Consumers do not want mass-produced products but are looking for unique and exclusive ones. It is especially evident in the furniture industry. As it is necessary to set an individual price for each individually manufactured product, companies face the need to quickly estimate a preliminary cost and price as soon as an order is received. The task of estimating costs as precise and timely as possible has become critical in customized manufacturing. The cost estimation problem can be solved as a prediction problem using various machine learning (ML) techniques. In order to obtain more accurate price prediction, it is necessary to delve deeper into the data. Data visualization methods are excellent for this purpose. Moreover, it is necessary to consider that the managers who set the price of the product are not ML experts. Thus, data visualization methods should be integrated into the decision support system. On the one hand, these methods should be simple, easily understandable and interpretable. On the other hand, the methods should include more sophisticated approaches that allowed reveal hidden data structure. Here, dimensionality-reduction methods can be employed. In this paper, we propose a data visualization process that can be useful for data analysis in customized furniture manufacturing to get to know the data better, allowing us to develop enhanced price prediction models.

Abstract In the 1950’s and 1960’s, economic expansion in Europe and North America led to significant growth in transmission pipeline capacity. Thus, many pipelines in operation today were constructed prior to 1980 and result in an aging pipeline infrastructure. An important mechanical integrity threat affecting oil and gas pipelines is the potential for fast fracture of longitudinal seam welds. A major factor affecting fast fracture resistance involves the welding practices used prior to 1980. The most common method was low-frequency electric resistance welding (LF-ERW). Imperfections were more prevalent using LF-ERW compared with modern high-frequency electric resistance welding (HF-ERW), employed for the last 40 years. Another important factor is the steel quality produced during this era. High tramp element levels, particularly sulfur, led to lower and more variable fracture toughness than steels produced after about 1980. To effectively manage the risk of fast fracture a strong statistical understanding of quasi-static fracture toughness in pipeline steels is important but has been lacking. To advance integrity management of existing pipeline systems, the fracture toughness of vintage pipeline materials has been characterized by conducting 550 fracture toughness tests, collecting data from literature sources (25) [1] [2], and test results supplied from a secondary pipeline operator (45), for a total dataset of 620. The testing program included a wide range of manufacturers and fabrication years based on sampling over 30 individual pipelines. The results suggest that it is possible to treat pre-1980 pipeline steels/welds as a single cohort. This is valuable since toughness data for individual pipelines are often insufficient or not available. The test data was analyzed to provide input for either a deterministic or probabilistic analysis. Consideration for the constraint effects of specimen geometry was also investigated to address the transferability of test results to an axially oriented flaw in a thin walled 0.2–0.4in (5–10 mm) pipeline. Constraint was characterized by using J-Q and J-A2 theory in a 3D FE simulation. Finally, analysis of the weld microstructure provided fundamental insight into the operative fracture mechanisms responsible for their toughness properties.

Recent developments in the aeronautic domain focus on the optimization of the lubrication oil system for civil aircraft gas turbine engines, in order to reduce air and oil consumptions. Specifically, over the last few decades, as brush seals have shown tremendous leakage performance in sealing secondary flows compared to classic labyrinth seal, an increasingly popular idea is to extend their utilization to bearing chambers applications. In the frame of the European FP7 E-Break project, the Aero-Thermo-Mechanics department of ULB collaborates with French aircraft engine manufacturer SNECMA in order to investigate experimentally the brush seal behaviour in an environment simulating the bearing chamber working conditions. The aim is first to deepen the brush seal behaviour knowledge by identifying the most influential geometric parameters acting on the leakage performance on both sides of the seal (oil and air), and on its wear, and by evaluating the friction torque and the dissipated heat. The paper will first highlight the effect of the brush seals geometric parameters on the air consumption and the torque friction. Results highlight a trade-off to be made between these two performance levels. Also, relations have been developed to predict the performance of a carbon brush seal with non-canted bristles. The bristle free length and the axial density must carefully be chosen first to dictate the brush seal porosity. The distance between the backing plate and the front plate acts as a secondary parameter to adjust the bristle pack stiffness, and it is proposed to mount such a carbon brush seal with a reduced interference to limit the effect of the brush seal wear on the air consumption. Finally, the carbon brush seals performance was compared with the latest ones, with promising results being shown to expect carbon brush seals to be employed at a higher scale in bearing chambers in the future.

The main questions which will be addressed in this paper are; which ballast water treatment system (BWTS) should be fitted to a fleet of small general cargo ships that are trading in Northern Europe, including the Baltic Sea, and how will the implementation of the Ballast Water Management Convention (BWMC, herewith “the Convention”) will affect the engine room crew? There is a large capital cost in the purchasing and fitting of such a system, and as the vessels in question have some special requirements, such as operating in very cold weather and having small engine rooms, the correct system must be chosen. As the small engine room crew, consisting of a chief engineer and an oiler, must be able to operate, maintain and repair the system, the chosen system will impact on their working life while onboard these vessels. To answer the research questions, all the chief engineers employed by the Company and a number of shore superintendents from other shipping companies, involved in the management of small general cargo ships were surveyed using questionnaires. Their responses were then analysed and conclusions drawn from this analysis. The criteria required to choose a ballast water treatment system was narrowed down during the research, and then used to find the most suitable system for the company vessels. A small number of systems currently in production from well-known manufacturers were evaluated during this process. Following evaluation of the systems using the responses from the respondents, the most suitable system for the company vessels was identified and chosen. The need for training was also identified to successfully operate and maintain the system, and to reduce any additional stress that may be experienced by the crew due to the BWMC. The research also contains a review of the BWMC, and a comparison with measures brought in by the United States Coast Guard (USCG), which include the transfer of harmful aquatic organisms and pathogens, (HAOP) by merchant vessels from area to area by other methods that are ignored by the BWMC. It also considers the long-term health effects on the crew and marine ecosystem from treated ballast water using some types of treatment systems. The report of the survey provides scope for a more informed decision making process when choosing a BWTS for a small general cargo vessel. However, in addition, the process can be applied to any type of vessel as many of the issues encountered will be the same regardless of size and trading pattern.

The main recommendations of the panel report can be summarised under five key headings:  Building the Scottish Bronze Age: Narratives should be developed to account for the regional and chronological trends and diversity within Scotland at this time. A chronology Bronze Age Scotland: ScARF Panel Report iv based upon Scottish as well as external evidence, combining absolute dating (and the statistical modelling thereof) with re-examined typologies based on a variety of sources – material cultural, funerary, settlement, and environmental evidence – is required to construct a robust and up to date framework for advancing research.  Bronze Age people: How society was structured and demographic questions need to be imaginatively addressed including the degree of mobility (both short and long-distance communication), hierarchy, and the nature of the ‘family’ and the ‘individual’. A range of data and methodologies need to be employed in answering these questions, including harnessing experimental archaeology systematically to inform archaeologists of the practicalities of daily life, work and craft practices.  Environmental evidence and climate impact: The opportunity to study the effects of climatic and environmental change on past society is an important feature of this period, as both palaeoenvironmental and archaeological data can be of suitable chronological and spatial resolution to be compared. Palaeoenvironmental work should be more effectively integrated within Bronze Age research, and inter-disciplinary approaches promoted at all stages of research and project design. This should be a two-way process, with environmental science contributing to interpretation of prehistoric societies, and in turn, the value of archaeological data to broader palaeoenvironmental debates emphasised. Through effective collaboration questions such as the nature of settlement and land-use and how people coped with environmental and climate change can be addressed.  Artefacts in Context: The Scottish Chalcolithic and Bronze Age provide good evidence for resource exploitation and the use, manufacture and development of technology, with particularly rich evidence for manufacture. Research into these topics requires the application of innovative approaches in combination. This could include biographical approaches to artefacts or places, ethnographic perspectives, and scientific analysis of artefact composition. In order to achieve this there is a need for data collation, robust and sustainable databases and a review of the categories of data.  Wider Worlds: Research into the Scottish Bronze Age has a considerable amount to offer other European pasts, with a rich archaeological data set that includes intact settlement deposits, burials and metalwork of every stage of development that has been the subject of a long history of study. Research should operate over different scales of analysis, tracing connections and developments from the local and regional, to the international context. In this way, Scottish Bronze Age studies can contribute to broader questions relating both to the Bronze Age and to human society in general.