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Monitoring Performance (monitoring + performance)
Selected AbstractsA PANEL PERFORMANCE PROCEDURE IMPLEMENTED IN RJOURNAL OF SENSORY STUDIES, Issue 3 2005EVA DERNDORFER ABSTRACT Monitoring performance is essential for the efficient use of a sensory panel both during training and while carrying out product assessments. We present a concise procedure to monitor panel performance based on classical statistical methods. The program includes tests for the ability to discriminate between products, repeatability of assessments, scale use, agreement between panelists and a principal component analysis map of panelist means across attributes. The algorithm is implemented in R , a state-of-the-art, freely available statistical software package. The program output is summarized in graphs and tables. This easily applicable panel performance procedure is aimed at improving sensory practice, especially in areas where the use of highly complex systems is not feasible. [source] Pragmatic indicators for remote Aboriginal maternal and infant health care: why it matters and where to startAUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH, Issue 2010Malinda Steenkamp Abstract Objective: There are challenges in delivering maternal and infant health (MIH) care to remote Northern Territory (NT) communities. These include fragmented care with birthing in regional hospitals resulting in cultural and geographical dislocation for Aboriginal women. Many NT initiatives are aimed at improving care. Indicators for evaluating these for remote Aboriginal mothers and infants need to be clearer. We reviewed existing indicators to inform a set of pragmatic indicators for reporting improvement in remote MIH care. Methods: Scientific databases and grey literature (organisational websites and Google Scholar) were searched using the terms ,Aboriginal/maternal/infant/remote health/monitoring performance'. Key stakeholders identified omitted indicators sets. Relevant sets were reviewed and organised by indicator type, stage of patient journey, topic and theme. Results: Forty-two indicators sets were found. Seven focused on Aboriginal health, 23 on reproductive/maternal health, eight on child/infant health and four on other aspects, e.g. remote health. We identified more than 1,000 individual indicators. Of these, 656 were relevant for our purpose and were subsequently organised into 300 topics and 16 themes for antenatal, birth and postpartum, and infant care by indicator type. Conclusion: There are many measures for monitoring health care delivery to mothers and infants. Few are framed around remote MIH services, despite poorer health outcomes of remote mothers and infants and the specific challenges with providing care in this setting. Establishing relevant indicators is vital to support relevant data collection and the development of appropriate policy for remote Aboriginal maternal and infant care. [source] Case studies of tobacco dependence treatment in Brazil, England, India, South Africa and UruguayADDICTION, Issue 10 2010Martin Raw ABSTRACT Aims The aims of this study are to describe the tobacco dependence treatment systems in five countries at different stages of development of their systems, and from different income levels and regions of the world, and to draw some lessons from their experiences that might be useful to other countries. Methods and data sourses Data were drawn from an earlier survey of treatment services led by M.R. and A.M., from Party reports to the Secretariat of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, and from correspondents in the five countries. These data were entered onto a standard template by the authors, discussed with the correspondents to ensure they were accurate and to help us interpret them, and then the templates were used as a basis to write prose descriptions of the countries' treatment systems, with additional summary data presented in tables. Results Two of the middle-income countries have based their treatment on specialist support and both consequently have very low population coverage for treatment. Two countries have integrated broad-reach approaches, such as brief advice with intensive specialist support; these countries are focusing currently upon monitoring performance and guaranteeing quality. Cost is a significant barrier to improving treatment coverage and highlights the importance of using existing infrastucture as much as possible. Conclusions Perhaps not surprisingly the greatest challenges appear to be faced by large, lower-income countries that have prioritized more intensive but low-reach approaches to treatment, rather than developing basic infrastructure, including brief advice in primary care and quitlines. [source] Enhanced process monitoring for wastewater treatment systemsENVIRONMETRICS, Issue 6 2008Chang Kyoo Yoo Abstract Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) remain notorious for poor data quality and sensor reliability problems due to the hostile environment, missing data problems and more. Many sensors in WWTP are prone to malfunctions in harsh environments. If a WWTP contains any redundancy between sensors, monitoring methods with sensor reconstruction such as the proposed one can yield a better monitoring efficiency than without a reconstruction scheme. An enhanced robust process monitoring method combined with a sensor reconstruction scheme to tackle the sensor failure problems is proposed for biological wastewater treatment systems. The proposed method is applied to a single reactor for high activity ammonia removal over nitrite (SHARON) process. It shows robust monitoring performance in the presence of sensor faults and produces few false alarms. Moreover, it enables us to keep the monitoring system running in the case of sensor failures. This guaranteed continuity of the monitoring scheme is a necessary development in view of real-time applications in full-scale WWTPs. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Statistical process monitoring based on dissimilarity of process dataAICHE JOURNAL, Issue 6 2002Manabu Kano Multivariate statistical process control (MSPC) has been widely used for monitoring chemical processes with highly correlated variables. In this work, a novel statistical process monitoring method is proposed based on the idea that a change of operating condition can be detected by monitoring a distribution of process data, which reflects the corresponding operating conditions. To quantitatively evaluate the difference between two data sets, a dissimilarity index is introduced. The monitoring performance of the proposed method, referred to as DISSIM, and that of the conventional MSPC method are compared with their applications to simulated data collected from a simple 2 × 2 process and the Tennessee Eastman process. The results clearly show that the monitoring performance of DISSIM, especially dynamic DISSIM, is considerably better than that of the conventional MSPC method when a time-window size is appropriately selected. [source] EVIDENCE ON THE COMPENSATION OF PORTFOLIO MANAGERSTHE JOURNAL OF FINANCIAL RESEARCH, Issue 3 2006Heber Farnsworth Abstract We surveyed 396 portfolio managers about the structure of their compensation. Overall, more compensation packages are subjective/discretionary than objective/formula based. Firm success factors such as firm profitability have more effect on bonuses than do client success factors such as investment performance. Differences in the structure of compensation across firms, clients, job types, and manager characteristics reflect likely differences in the underlying contracting environments, especially differences in the difficulty of monitoring performance and exerting control. [source] | |||||||||||||