Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product.

Polyphasic taxonomy, a consensus approach to bacterial systematics.

Brucellosis remains a major zoonosis worldwide Although many countries have eradicated Brucella abortus from cattle, in some areas Brucella melitensis has emerged as a cause of infection in this species as well as in sheep and goats Despite vaccination campaigns with the Rev 1 strain, B melitensis remains the principal cause of human brucellosis Brucella suis is also emerging as an agent of infection in cattle, thus extending its opportunities to infect humans The recent isolation of distinctive strains of Brucella from marine mammals has extended its ecologic range Molecular genetic studies have demonstrated phylogenetic affiliation to Agrobacterium, Phyllobacterium, Ochrobactrum, and Rhizobium Polymerase chain reaction and gene probe development may provide more effective typing methods Pathogenicity is related to production of lipopolysaccharides containing a poly N-formyl perosamine O chain, CuZn superoxide dismutase, erythrlose phosphate dehydrogenase, stress-induced proteins related to intracellular survival, and adenine and guanine monophosphate inhibitors of phagocyte functions Protective immunity is conferred by antibody to lipopolysaccharide and T-cell-mediated macrophage activation triggered by protein antigens Diagnosis still centers on isolation of the organism and serologic test results, especially enzyme immunoassay, which is replacing other methods Polymerase chain reaction is also under evaluation Therapy is based on tetracyclines with or without rifampicin, aminoglycosides, or quinolones No satisfactory vaccines against human brucellosis are available, although attenuated purE mutants appear promising

/pdf/brucellosis-an-overview-14k0fkto7f.pdf

Brucellosis: an overview.

Project scheduling under uncertainty: survey and research potentials

http://web.nchu.edu.tw/pweb/users/arborfish/lesson/8682.pdf

A survey of variants and extensions of the resource-constrained project scheduling problem

The main goal of project control is to identify project opportunities or problems during project execution, such that corrective actions can be taken to bring the project in danger back on track when necessary. In this study, we define different scenarios to allocate the limited budget used for the cost of activity execution, delays, and corrective actions, according to the timing and amount of the budget release. A large computational experiment is conducted on real-life project data to evaluate the performance of each scenario. The results show that both the timing and amount of the budget release have an effect on project performance.

/pdf/a-simulation-study-on-the-impact-of-activity-crashing-on-the-576sgt1xxc.pdf

A Simulation Study on the Impact of Activity Crashing on the Project Duration and Cost under Different Budget Release Scenarios

The scheduling of activities over time has gained increasing attention with the development of the Critical Path Method (CPM) and the Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT), as discussed in the previous chapters. Since then, a large amount of solution procedures for a wide range of problem types have been proposed in the literature. In the previous chapters, it was implicitly assumed that the schedule objective is time, i.e. the construction of a precedence feasible schedule aiming at minimizing the total project duration. In a practical project setting, there often are many other scheduling objectives (a detailed description of different scheduling objectives is the topic of Chaps. 7 and 8) and consequently, many of the traditional time minimizing PERT/CPM procedures are not able to solve real life problems. This chapter describes a capacity expansion project at a water production center (WPC) of the Vlaamse Maatschappij voor Watervoorziening (VMW) in Belgium and serves as an illustration of the use of scheduling algorithms and principles in a practical project environment without the presence of limited resources. The project aims at expanding the production capacity of pure water. It will be shown that scheduling the project with certain techniques will improve the financial status of the project. A modified version of the project description has been used for the project scheduling game of Chap. 3.

The VMW Project

The resource–constrained project scheduling problem with discounted cash flows (RCPSPDC) is an extension of the well–known resource–constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP). Both problems are subject to precedence and renewable resource constraints, but whereas the RCPSP aims to minimize the project duration, the RCPSPDC maximizes the project NPV based on a net cash in– or outflow (ci,net) associated with each activity. Conceptually, the RCPSPDC can be formulated as follows:

https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/7195701/file/7195711.pdf

Capital constraints and net present value optimization in project scheduling

ProTrack (acronym for Project Tracking) is a project scheduling and tracking software tool developed by OR-AS to offer a straightforward yet effective alternative to the numerous project scheduling and tracking software tools. The software has been built based on the results of the research studies discussed in Vanhoucke (2010a) and the many discussions with practitioners using software tools for dynamic scheduling. The project scheduling, risk analysis and project control approach is based on the current best practices from literature. ProTrack has been developed based on many research projects on the three dimensions of dynamic scheduling. Moreover, ProTrack also contains three additional engines based on state-of-the-art research in dynamic scheduling: a project generation engine, a simulation engine and a time forecasting engine. Each of these engines will be discussed in the current chapter.

Dynamic Scheduling with ProTrack

In project scheduling assumptions are made with respect to the availability of resources. In case resources are scarce and/or costly, the scheduling of resources becomes increasingly important. Despite the fact that projects are typically very labour intensive, little attention in the literature is given to the underlying personnel scheduling problem. In the project staffing problem under study we integrate the personnel scheduling problem and the project planning problem. This encompasses that we have to decide on the project schedule that leads to the optimal staffing plan by simultaneously determining the starting times of the activities, the project duration and the best mix of resources in terms of cost. In order to come up with a staffing plan, a baseline schedule is composed for the regular and temporary crew members that takes into account all the scheduling policies and practices. In this paper we give insight in the parameters of the integrated staffing problem with personnel calendar constraints. More precisely, we investigate the conditions (i.e. problem characteristics and parameter settings) under which a personnel schedule can be constructed in a cyclical or non-cyclical way. In this way, the project planner will learn about the impact of specific problem characteristics and policies on the integrated project staffing outcome.

Mario Vanhoucke

Papers

A Simulation Study on the Impact of Activity Crashing on the Project Duration and Cost under Different Budget Release Scenarios

The VMW Project

Capital constraints and net present value optimization in project scheduling

Dynamic Scheduling with ProTrack

The impact of cyclic versus non-cyclic scheduling on the project staffing cost