This paper discusses how simulation was used to evaluate and characterize the scheduling issues in a semiconductor fab and the subsequent implementation of an integrated scheduling solution. The scheduling system was integrated with the fab MES and a number of other data sources including an integrated machine standards database, preventative maintenance scheduling and a Kanban stage calculatio...

Software Process Improvement (SPI) is the modification of current software process methods in many software development organizations. It is the key of the continuous process improvement. In this paper, we introduce Software Process Improvement (SPI) and Quality Function Deployment (QFD); the SPI framework based on CMMI contains two portions: 1) SPI framework for CMMI staged model based on QFD ...

The feasibility of treating municipal wastewater by a combined ozone-activated sludge continuous flow system was studied. Lab-scale experiments of both single activated sludge and combined ozone-activated sludge processes were carried out to determine the kinetic coefficients of the biological stage. The results obtained indicated a clear improvement in the kinetic parameters of the aerobic oxi...

The study began with the problem posed by an organisation for a group of researchers in the UK. There was a need to carry out an in-depth study to evaluate the continuous improvement programmes in the context of Lean Construction, and the following question emerged: How to evaluate the continuous improvement programme? This paper aims to understand how the literature on continuous improvement, ...

This paper proposes an integrated modelling framework for the analysis of manufacturing systems that can increase the capacity of modelling tools for rapidly creating a structured database with multiple detail levels and thus obtain key performance indicators (KPIs) that highlight possible areas for improvement. The method combines five important concepts: hierarchical structure, quantitative/ ...

This paper describes an incremental approach to parsing transcribed spontaneous speech containing disfluencies with a Hierarchical Hidden Markov Model (HHMM). This model makes use of the right-corner transform, which has been shown to increase non-incremental parsing accuracy on transcribed spontaneous speech (Miller and Schuler, 2008), using trees transformed in this manner to train the HHMM p...