The management of farms and large agricultural holdings is becoming increasingly similar to the management of business companies, as circumstances in the market and in Europe have forced farmers into an entrepreneurial way of thinking. Traditionally a more conservative social group, farmers have had to implement methods of cost savings and offer products with a higher added value. Similarly to business enterprises, farmers and agricultural consultants must also follow new production technology. These changes in thinking also influence rural development. Farm diversification is becoming more and more important, especially in mountain regions. However, because they have no currently available method that would allow them to identify a suitable opportunity for future development, farmers are left to trial-and-error methods. The opportunity search method presented in this article, originally implemented in the industrial sector, can also be applied to farms. Searching for opportunities requires an interdisciplinary approach involving cooperation between farmers, agricultural consultants, and economists. In four steps, it is possible to identify a number of opportunities that can be used on a farm. In step one, the farm and trends are analyzed, while in the second step, opportunities are searched for by means of social, economic, technological, and legislative factors. In step three, unsuitable opportunities are eliminated, and in step four, the selected opportunities are closely analyzed and assessed. The method was tested on a farm where the objective was to solve the problem of traditional stock breeding that was yielding very poor economic results. The application of the method resulted in a more suitable type of breeding that is already taking place on the farm, and as well as other opportunities (farm diversification). This successful implementation of the opportunity search method, which had previously been successfully implemented in industry, is an indication that knowledge and methodology transfer from industry environment to farming is possible. As a link between science, new technologies, and the farm owner, agricultural consultants play an important role. The application is one in a row of steps we do to validate the search for opportunities method, which has been developed in the LECAD lab.
COBISS.SI-ID: 11815451
On the example of the production of turned parts, the article has shown a solution for batch scheduling. There are different target functions and combined weighted function in the optimisation process. In order to optimise the efficiency of manufacturing processes, the production planning and scheduling are integrated into one more efficient system. A specific application was developed for optimisation process. Product data is taken from production information system (ERP) in the next step production scheduling is done in real time. The genetic algorithm has been shown as effective method for production scheduling. Practical and theoretical experiences can be applied to a wide range of scheduling problems. The algorithm could be adapted with minor modification to other types of serial productions.
COBISS.SI-ID: 11746331
A plasma-sheath transition analysis requires a reliable mathematical expression for the plasma potential profile ?(x) near the sheath edge xs in the limit ? ? ?D/l = 0 (where ?D is the Debye length and l is a proper characteristic length of the discharge). Such expressions have been explicitly calculated for the fluid model and the singular (cold ion source) kinetic model, where exact analytic solutions for plasma equation (? = 0) are known, but not for the regular (warm ion source) kinetic model, where no analytic solution of the plasma equation has ever been obtained. For the latter case, Riemann [J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 24, 493 (1991)] only predicted a general formula assuming relatively high ion-source temperatures, i.e., much higher than the plasma-sheath potential drop. Riemanns formula, however, according to him, never was confirmed in explicit solutions of particular models (e.g., that of Bissell and Johnson [Phys. Fluids 30, 779 (1987)] and Scheuer and Emmert [Phys. Fluids 31, 3645 (1988)]) since the accuracy of the classical solutions is not sufficient to analyze the sheath vicinity [Riemann, in Proceedings of the 62nd Annual Gaseous Electronic Conference, APSMeeting Abstracts, Vol. 54 (APS, 2009)]. Therefore, for many years, there has been a need for explicit calculation that might confirm the Riemann's general formula regarding the potential profile at the sheath edge in the cases of regular very warm ion sources. Fortunately, now we are able to achieve a very high accuracy of results [see, e.g., Kos et al., Phys. Plasmas 16, 093503 (2009)]. We perform this task by using both the analytic and the numerical method with explicit Maxwellian and water-bag ion source velocity distributions. We find the potential profile near the plasma-sheath edge in the whole range of ion source temperatures of general interest to plasma physics, from zero to practical infinity. While within limits of very low and relatively high ion source temperatures, the potential is proportional to the space coordinate powered by rational numbers ? = 1/2 and ? = 2/3, with medium ion source temperatures. We found ? between these values being a non-rational number strongly dependent on the ion source temperature. The range of the non-rational power-law turns out to be a very narrow one, at the expense of the extension of ? = 2/3 region towards unexpedicly low ion source temperature.
COBISS.SI-ID: 11846939