Under the changing economic environment, enterprises often focus on the creation of value for existing customers when formulating a business strategy but ignore the point that the ones implementing ...the strategy are the organization's members. This paper in connection with the value system of organizational objectives puts forward the method based on integrating the Delphi Method and Importance-Performance Analysis. In this study, an 18-week experimental design was used, so as to compare the results adopting this value system with those that do not adopt the system. The findings show that organizational members' expectations are significantly improved when adopting the value system, from originally unimportant and unsatisfied to quite important and satisfied. It will be beneficial to the strategy design and alignment.
Histogram-based fuzzy filter for image restoration Wang, Jung-Hua; Liu, Wen-Jeng; Lin, Lian-Da
IEEE transactions on systems, man and cybernetics. Part B, Cybernetics,
04/2002, Letnik:
32, Številka:
2
Journal Article
In this paper, we present a novel approach to the restoration of noise-corrupted image, which is particularly effective at removing highly impulsive noise while preserving image details. This is ...accomplished through a fuzzy smoothing filter constructed from a set of fuzzy membership functions for which the initial parameters are derived in accordance with input histogram. A principle of conservation in histogram potential is incorporated with input statistics to adjust the initial parameters so as to minimize the discrepancy between a reference intensity and the output of defuzzification process. Similar to median filters (MF), the proposed filter has the benefits that it is simple and it assumes no a priori knowledge of specific input image, yet it shows superior performance over conventional filters (including MF) for the full range of impulsive noise probability. Unlike in many neuro-fuzzy or fuzzy-neuro filters where random strategy is employed to choose initial membership functions for subsequent lengthy training, the proposed filter can achieve satisfactory performance without any training.
In this thesis, I visualised landscapes of urban Wi-Fi (wireless connection) networks as a hybrid of art and anthropology. The process involved 'how the subjects are defined in Wi-Fi networks,' 'how ...the data is collected in cities' and 'how the conversion between Wi-Fi networks and artistic landscapes takes place.' The subject of my project is Wi-Fi access points, which allow users to connect to and access the internet. I viewed Wi-Fi users as cyborgs (cybernetic organisms) because they entered cyberspace with their Wi-Fi-equipped computers or phones. Access points and the users' devices as myths are necessary elements used in immersing themselves in different worlds. Claude Levi-Strauss considered myths as bricolage in organising heterogeneous events to create structures; that is, people can explain the occurrence of events in daily life with structures. Wi-Fi users' wireless equipment represents an internet-enabled structure to help users go online. In other words, Wi-Fi users' identities are tied to their particular structures - Wi-Fi equipment and the devices used to access it. In addition, the mixture of flesh and machine contributes to defining human users as cyborgs. I transformed the access points of the cyborgs' houses using metaphor and the house concept inspired by Levi-Strauss's house society theory. Houses, as places where people live, form basic economic/political units. Both invisible titles and visible, physical buildings forge the identities of the houses' occupants. In my works, access points have similar features, so I used houses as the source metaphor. With common attributes and functions, the house metaphor creates a connection between different objects (houses and access points) on the same level. All Wi-Fi access points have a unique 12-character identifier code composed of numbers (from 0 to 9) and letters (from a to f). As I walked through different cities along specific collection routes as a native Wi-Fi cyborg, I collected the Wi-Fi access points' identifier codes. Time was a unique element that added to my works, in that the sequence of time-related variables (including signal strength, new Wi-Fi APs, and abandoned APs) could be experienced only once. Following data collection, the identifier codes were converted to colour grids and arranged along the collection route to depict Wi-Fi landscapes. Although the mapping was carried out by computers, the collection routes formed the personal features of landscapes, as in Impressionist paintings. The use of colour grids/squares was widespread in modernist artworks, such as those by Josef Albers and Donald Judd. These artists pursued a notion of pure art by creating isolated colour compositions with simple geometrical shapes in their works. As relates to Lucy Lippard's terms 'dematerialization' and 'deemphasis on material aspects,' some postmodemist artists, such as Liam Gillick, applied modernist art language in specific contexts, rather than isolating their works as closed systems. Art for postmodemists was the process and context of the creation as opposed to the objects represented. The colour grids in my work are interwoven creations that juxtapose the hybridity of modernism and postmodemism. The colours relate to social contexts because they come from access points along the streets of different cities; moreover, the colours interact with each other to create a relationship first proposed by Albers. My works aim to reflect that our current situation, as it relates to technology, is juxtaposed by different hybrids, including modemism/postmodernism and humanismlposthumanism. Wi-Fi landscapes in this thesis did Dot contain all access points because Wi-Fi devices are still growing in cities. In other words, one can only present the complete features of contemporary societies via their incomplete and heterogeneous composition.
This paper presents a two-stage approach that is effective for performing fast clustering. First, a competitive neural network (CNN) that can harmonize mean squared error and information entropy ...criteria is employed to exploit the substructure in the input data by identifying the local density centers. A Gravitation neural network (GNN) then takes the locations of these centers as initial weight vectors and undergoes an unsupervised update process to group the centers into clusters. Each node (called gravi-node) in the GNN is associated with a finite attraction radius and would be attracted to a nearby centroid simultaneously during the update process, creating the Gravitation-like behavior without incurring complicated computations. This update process iterates until convergence and the converged centroid corresponds to a cluster. Compared to other clustering methods, the proposed clustering scheme is free of initialization problem and does not need to pre-specify the number of clusters. The two-stage approach is computationally efficient and has great flexibility in implementation. A fully parallel hardware implementation is very possible.
This paper introduces an alternative approach known as capitalized cost method mentioned by Knox, Zima and Brown (1993) for a firm to evaluate investment projects. We employ this method to select ...mutually exclusive projects with unequal lives and operating costs. The capitalized cost of an asset is the total present values of its full net costs that an asset spends over its life. We show the total present value of equivalent annual costs (EAC) equals the capitalized cost of an asset that could be replaced for infinite periods. The capitalized cost method is simpler and easier than the EAC method, and seems to be preferable for selecting projects with unequal economic lives. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
An intelligent automated robotic assembly system consists of several subsystems capable of providing dynamic interactions with the environment in order to accomplish a task properly. These subsystems ...perform various functions like data gathering, decision making, and task execution. Although a great deal of work has been done on individual subsystems, more attention must be given to the way how these subsystems are integrated so as to achieve the high efficiency of automated production. We propose a cooperative multi-agent model of a shop floor control system architecture of robotic assembly automation and extend this model to all automated production system. Based on this model, we develop a control kernel named TOFAK (task oriented flexible automation kernel) to support users to easily implement any shop floor control system. The by-product is to allow system designers to easily expand an existing system or to integrate several automation systems which are all controlled by TOFAK.
Nonlinear control for flexible manipulators Jung Hua Yang; Fu Cheng Liu; Li Chen Fu
Proceedings of the 1994 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation,
1994
Conference Proceeding
Odprti dostop
This work focuses on the control of flexible manipulators. Due to the complicated dynamics of a flexible manipulator, which does not satisfy the so-called "matching condition" many control strategies ...which succeed in conventional rigid robot control cannot be directly used in flexible robot control problems. In this work, a generalized computed torque control scheme has been proposed to solve this kind of control problem. Furthermore, to cope with the model uncertainty, an adaptive control scheme has also been proposed. Simulation and experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller.< >
Formosa Petrochemical Corp (FPCC) reduced the mass flow rate to regeneration and increased the absorption and regeneration capacity at its amine treating regeneration system after replacing ...diethanolamine (DEA) with methyldiethanolamine (MDEA)/DEA blends on line. The required MDEA/DEA blending formulation was at a ratio 1.647, which was based upon the CO2 specification of the downstream residue catalytic cracking unit. Utilizing the highly efficient MDEA/DEA blends reduced the amine circulation rate and mass flow rate to regeneration by around 18%. This decrease resulted in steam consumption being reduced by 24% and the gas processing capacity being increased by 12% by improving the efficiency and introducing new expansion absorbers on line. Details of the study are presented.
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