bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Recruitment and retention of estates and facilities staff in the NHS
Authors: May Daryl , Askham Phil 
Published: July 2005

PurposeAgenda for Change is set to be the biggest reform of pay since the National Health Service (NHS) began in 1948. As well as introducing a standardised pay structure; it also aims to improve recruitment, retention and staff morale. Staff groups identified as having recruitment and retention problems include estates/works officers, qualified maintenance crafts persons and qualified maintenance technicians. The object of this research was to investigate recruitment and retention problems for estates and facilities staff currently experienced by Trusts.Design/methodology/approachFocus groups were used as the primary method of data collection in an attempt to tap into the existing expertise of staff working at strategic and operational supervisory positions in a wide range of Trusts.FindingsAlthough our findings suggest that the main recruitment and retention issues fall into four main themes: social, financial, environmental and political; recruitment and retention of estates and facilities management staff is a complex problem involving a wide range of issues and these can vary from location to location. Furthermore this should also be seen as a series of issues that varies across employment groups including: domestic/housekeeping, trades, managers/officers and facilities directors, which need to be distinguished.Practical implicationsThere is a continuing need to raise the profile of estates and facilities management staff in the NHS to those levels enjoyed by Human Resource (HR) and Financial Management. Furthermore perceptions surrounding both recruitment and retention issues and the nature of work within estates and facilities management staff in the NHS can lead to a negative and self‐perpetuating “cycle of failure” where there is an assumption of loss of control. However, there are some initiatives being undertaken that suggest it is possible to concentrate on internal matters such as more appropriate and flexible recruitment processes, improved support services for staff and greater flexibility within the job and that these can generate “cycles of success”.Originality/valueThe paper looks in‐depth at the current recruitment and retention problems for NHS estates and facilities staff. The paper would be of use to NHS estates and facilities managers who are currently investigating workforce issues, particularly surrounding recruitment and retention of staff.
Economic production quantity and process quality: a multivariate approach
Authors: Chan Weng M. , Ibrahim Raafat N. , Lochert Paul B. 
Published: July 2005

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to study the interaction of economics of production with process quality, when multiple key quality characteristics are present. Specifically, the paper aims to analyse the possibility of investing in a production process to reduce its variances and the impact on a multivariate quality loss function.Design/methodology/approachA bivariate inventory‐planning model is developed, in which the optimal investment for reducing process variances and the optimal lot size are jointly determined. A case study with industrial data is presented to illustrate the possible solution procedures and the potential advantages of the proposed model.FindingsIt is found that by using the previous approaches to analyse the interaction between the economics of production and process quality, a company will underestimate the cost of quality, especially the expected external failure cost (quality loss), and ultimately invest less into the prevention activities to improve the process.Originality/valueThe proposed model can help managers to compare different production processes and also guide the managers towards better choices for process improvement. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first to integrate the economic production quantity (EPQ) problem with the process quality consideration for products with multiple quality characteristics.
Magnetic force computation with hysteresis
Authors: Szabó Zs. , Füzi J. , Iványi A. 
Published: July 2005

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present a procedure, which determines the magnetic force acting between a soft magnetic cylinder and a coil taking the hysteresis phenomena into account.Design/methodology/approachThe magnetic force is computed replacing the ferromagnetic body with an equivalent magnetic moment distribution. Isotropic vector Preisach model with analytical expressed Everett function describes the magnetic properties of the ferromagnetic material. The magnetization distribution is calculated applying the integral equation method. The Preisach hysteresis model is included in the iteration process based on Picard‐Banach scheme.FindingsIn the case of integral equation method the unknown quantities are the magnetization and the magnetic field intensity. In this way the Preisach hysteresis model can be included in a convenient way in the iteration procedure. Knowing the magnetization distribution the magnetic force can be determined. The developed algorithms can be applied in tubular linear motor design.Originality/valueThe paper presents a new formulation of the Preisach hysteresis model. With the aim of the analytically expressed Everett function a stable and faster algorithm can be realized to determine the magnetic force in arrangements with ferromagnetic parts.
Regularization of inverse magnetostatic problems: possibilities and pitfalls
Authors: Formisano A. 
Published: July 2005

PurposeInverse problems are usually ill‐conditioned, requiring the adoption of regularization techniques to obtain reliable results. The choice of the regularization method and of the related parameters represents a critical issue that must be based on the knowledge of reliable additional information on the problem. In the paper some possibilities and pitfalls for the choice of regularization strategy are presented and compared.Design/methodology/approachElectromagnetic inverse problems (EIP) are usually formulated starting from a direct problem, based on a direct operator, providing the effects (e.g. fields, fluxes) generated by known sources acting through known systems. The direct operators involved in many real world electromagnetic phenomena, due to their compactness, lead to ill posed inverse problems. Inversion procedures pursue the solution regularity through the adoption of various regularization techniques. Improper use of regularizations may unduly constrain the approximated solution and, consequently, cause significant lack of accuracy. Mathematical tools for an effective choice of the regularization technique are not available for every application, and a number of issues are still open. The paper presents a common mathematical model for most of the regularization techniques, discussing their benefits and limitations.FindingsThe paper discusses limits, applicability conditions, and impact on the performance of reconstruction procedures, of some relevant characteristics of the inversion algorithms, with particular reference to robustness against noise and inaccuracies in the system parameters.Originality/valueSome criteria for an effective application of regularization are also discussed, showing in particular how proper choices, founded on a careful analysis of the direct problem, may reveal quite effective in improving the solution quality.
CoreLab: a component‐based integrated sizing environment
Authors: Fischer Vincent , Gerbaud Laurent 
Published: July 2005

PurposeThis paper presents CoreLab, a sizing environment for electrical devices, based on a new software component standard, ICAR, which offers the possibility of multifaceted components. CoreLab supports the different steps of the sizing procedure of an electrical device by using an optimisation algorithm. It is open, which means that modules can be added to perform new functionalities.Design/methodology/approachThe design of an electrical device has to comply with more and more constraints. In order to integrate and to manage all of these constraints during a design step, the paper proposes a sizing methodology based on an constrained optimisation by using analytical models of the device, and by encapsulating them into software components. Added to these services for the calculation of the sizing model, other services can be useful for the designer during the optimization phase, e.g. the geometry display of the device for each optimisation iteration. In this way, the approach proposes a new software component standard, Interfaces for Component Architecture (ICAR). It offers the possibility of multi‐facetted components. The paper also proposes an integrated environment to manage these software components, and their interactions: Core‐Lab. These components are then plugged to an optimisation component (algorithm), which manages the different constraints specified by the designer and finds the optimal sizing of the device.FindingsThe paper presents the ICAR standard and an environment to manage ICAR components: Core‐Lab: the creation of the components (from an analytical model or an existing computation); the projection from one component standard to another; and the composition of components to create a more complex one.Originality/valueThe use of software component approach is useful for the sizing of devices. The paper proposes a new standard to support the different aspects of the use of software components during the design of a device: ICAR. Complementary, an open integrated environment is proposed to use these components: CoreLab, but any environment being modified to accept ICAR standard can use ICAR component. So, components can be used in several environments, for example for calculation or optimisation. Components of different types can be gathered together to built a complete application for sizing, e.g. by connection of calculation components (for the sizing model), optimisation component and post‐processing components.
Hybrid method coupling AIS and zeroth order deterministic search
Authors: Canova A. , Freschi F. , Repetto M. 
Published: July 2005

PurposeThe paper presents an hybrid optimization technique which couples the artificial immune system (AIS) algorithm with a zeroth order deterministic method.Design/methodology/approachAIS has been developed to tackle multi‐modal optimization problems and it has shown a great ability to explore the objective function space. The algorithm is subdivided into two phases: an outer and an inner cycle. The outer cycle is devoted to the exploration of the space while the inner is a local exploration of the objective function. The new hybrid method proposes to replace the local search by a zeroth order deterministic search to speed up the overall convergence.FindingsResults on two multi‐modal analytical objective functions show an increase of speed of the new procedure with respect to the standard AIS. The method is also tested on the TEAM 22 numerical problem and some a posteriori techniques for the analysis of multimodal blind objective functions are discussed.Originality/valueThe new Multimodal optimization algorithm has allowed to explore thoroughly feasibility space giving rise to a partition of the whole space, the use of hybrid technique increases the performances of standard AIS increasing the convergence to the optimal points.
Identifying material properties of a dielectric motor
Authors: Di Barba P. , Mognaschi E.R. , Mognaschi M.E. , Savini A. 
Published: July 2005

PurposeThe purpose of the paper is to define a methodology for identifying the electric conductivity and permittivity of lossy dielectric materials employed in a class of small dielectric motors, knowing the motor torque. Reference is made to data measured on an existing prototype.Design/methodology/approachThe motor operates because of the interaction between a rotating electric field, generated by a three‐phase system of electrodes, and the charge density induced at the surface of the rotor, which lags with respect to the field. The stator and the rotor are hollow cylinders made of dielectric materials. A finite‐element model of the motor has been developed. For a given set of material properties, the time‐averaged value of starting torque acting on the rotor is evaluated by means of the Maxwell stress tensor.FindingsA family of curves of starting torque vs conductivity for different values of rotor permittivity are obtained. Each curve is well approximated by a Lorentz distribution.Originality/valueA field model of the motor was exploited to estimate the conductivity that gives rise to a prescribed value of the starting torque. The solution of the underlying inverse problem, which is ill‐posed, can give an helpful insight for maximizing the torque.
An improved technique for interface shape identification in magnetic fluid dynamics
Authors: Brauer Hartmut , Ziolkowski Marek , Kuilekov Milko 
Published: July 2005

PurposeThe interface between two conducting fluids in a magnetic fluid dynamics (MFD) problem was identified by means of external magnetic field measurements. Genetic algorithms (GA) were applied to solve the inverse problem.The principal component analysis (PCA) was used to speed up the process of interface reconstruction.Design/methodology/approachWith respect to the experimental results we have designed a general technique for mode identification and/or interface reconstruction. Two main procedures are available to solve the inverse problem, the full interface reconstruction and the principle component analysis (PCA) mode. In the case of full reconstruction, it can be decided whether an algorithm for fast identification of the dominant modes applying a FFT module should be performed or not. The full interface reconstruction applies stochastic optimization methods ((GA) or evolution strategies (ES)) for the estimation of the interface shape characteristics. The main goal of the PCA mode is to find the dominant mode of the interface shape and its amplitude. The PCA mode is realized by means of stochastic optimization methods (GA, ES) and a simple direct searching (DS) using the golden section technique.FindingsPCA with GA procedure enables the identification of the dominant mode of the interface shape between two conducting fluids with sufficient accuracy for simulated magnetic fields. Time of identification is strongly reduced due to a redefinition of the genotype representations in the PCA mode. Accuracy of reconstruction depends on the noise level, i.e. signal to noise ratio and a geometrical model used in the reconstruction phase. The correlation between the noise level and values of cost function for identified modes has been found if a proper geometry modelling is applied.Originality/valueThe paper describes a new, fast technique for solving an inverse field problem of a MFD problem where the interface between two conducting fluids has to be identified using a magnetic field tomography measuring system.
A circuital formulation for direct electrical resistive tomography problems
Authors: Ferraioli F. , Formisano A. , Martone R. 
Published: July 2005

PurposeElectrical resistive tomography (ERT) is a non‐destructive testing technique based upon the reconstruction of the electrical conductivity profile inside a body from measurement made on its boundary. In the literature about the inverse problems the ERT is considered still challenging being both non‐linear, ill‐posed and very limited in resolution. Purpose of the paper is to assess the performances of an approach exploiting the circuital behaviour of a particular class of problems, highlighting its advantages in terms of simplicity and reduction of the computer burden.Design/methodology/approachIn this paper, an electrical property of a particular class of problems is pointed out; the same property is used to formulate in terms of a circuital model the ERT problem. The proposed methodology consists basically of combining properly simplified data previously evaluated and collected. The overall procedure is presented with reference to an underground structure diagnostics problem.FindingsThe effectiveness of the proposed approach has been evaluated quantitatively by comparing the simplified procedure results with the ones obtained by performing fully 3D FEM analysis.Originality/valueThe consistently low errors obtained state the convenience of the method also taking into account that the reconstruction process consists merely in post‐processing previously collected data.
Shape and material optimization using gradient methods and the adjoint problem in time and frequency domain
Authors: Halleröd Tomas , Ericsson David , Bondeson Anders 
Published: July 2005

PurposeShape and material parameters have major influence on the performance of electromagnetic components. Optimization of these parameters is therefore vital in electromagnetic design. Reduction of the radar cross section (RCS) for aircraft and frequency selective surfaces are two well known examples. Shape and materials optimization is performed for different scatterers in 2D.Design/methodology/approachContinuum design sensitivities for microwave problems are applied for the gradient‐based optimization of scatterers' shape and material parameters. The goal function is chosen to be an average of the monostatic RCS for a sector of incident angles over a frequency band. Numerical tests are presented for 2D scatterers and, specifically, a perfectly electrically conducting scatterer and an absorber on the front edge of an airplane wing are considered. The results are compared with theoretical findings and results in the open literature.FindingsIt is demonstrated that a dense frequency sampling of the goal function over a wide frequency band relaxes the requirements on the angular resolution. The broad band requirements on the RCS also avoids corrugations without the resorting to regularization methods and penalty terms added to the goal function. The optimization algorithm refines, in a small number of iterations, the initial geometry of the scatterer to an optimized design with strongly reduced RCS.Originality/valueShape and material parameters have major influence on the performance of electromagnetic components. Optimization of these parameters for scatterers demonstrates that a densely evaluated goal function over a broad frequency band has the advantages of: lowering the requirements on angular resolution; avoiding corrugations; and regularizing the problem by the broad frequency band requirements which often are naturally included in the performance specification of electromagnetic devices.
Assessing the human element in service personality formation: personality congruency and the Five Factor Model
Authors: Harris Eric G. , Fleming David E. 
Published: July 2005

PurposeThis purpose of this paper is to explore the role of service personality in services marketing and service marketing communications. Central to the study is the influence of perceived customer‐service personality congruency on service outcomes. The causal ordering of perceived customer‐service personality congruency, service perceptions, and service outcomes, is considered. The study also explores the ability of the Five Factor Model traits to explain additional variance in perceived personality congruency beyond the Brand Personality Scale.Design/methodology/approachEmpirical data were gathered via survey administration from 200 customers and 132 employees of a major banking institution. Hierarchical regression analysis and t‐tests were performed to analyze the data.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings suggest that service personality assessments should include measures of the human personality and that perspectives from both employees and customers should be included in service personality assessment.Practical implicationsManagers gain much by considering the service personality construct and its influence on service perceptions. Employees directly influence customer perceptions of the firm, and managers should therefore be aware of the types of messages that employees send regarding the service. Human resource departments therefore play central roles in the management of service personality, and employee selection devices are especially important when considering which employees may best fit within the desired service personality.Originality/valueThe value of this paper lies in its ability to delineate more clearly the effects of perceived customer‐service personality congruency and the role that the Five Factor Model traits play in perceived service performance.
Loyalty programs and a sense of community
Authors: Rosenbaum Mark S. , Ostrom Amy L. , Kuntze Ronald 
Published: July 2005

PurposePrevious research has explored the impact of customer participation in organizational‐sponsored loyalty programs on customer loyalty; however, the findings are mixed. Other research, outside the loyalty program literature, reveals that customers who socially interact with other customers, via participation in brand communities, often exhibit an intense loyalty to the sponsoring brands. Proposes to investigate the following questions: “Can loyalty programs be differentiated based on whether or not members perceive a sense of community?”; and “Does a perception of a sense of community impact member loyalty to sponsoring organizations?”Design/methodology/approachQ‐technique factor analysis is utilized analyzing statements from loyalty program participants. Principal component factor and cluster analyses confirm a two‐tiered classification schema distinguishing loyalty programs based on perceptions of communal benefits. Differences between the two factors are explored. A survey developed from the Q‐sort analysis was then administered to 153 loyalty program participants, providing evidence that consumers are more loyal to communal programs.FindingsLoyalty programs can be distinguished based on the sense of community which members perceive. Furthermore, consumers are more loyal to communal programs than to programs that simply use financial incentives. Communal programs elicit stronger emotional connections and participants are significantly less predisposed to competitor switching.Originality/valueThis study integrates the theory of sense of community into the marketing literature, also offering researchers a nine‐item, unidimensional scale to measure the construct within the context of loyalty programs. Confusion in the literature regarding the efficacy of loyalty programs is diminished by showing a positive relationship between loyalty and a member's perceptions of community.