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Safety and Health Budget
Published in Charles D. Reese, Occupational Safety and Health, 2017
Whether developing an element or task budget, a variable budget, or a percent-of-allocation-by-departments budget, it is important to identify operating costs and potential benefits such as direct benefits (reduced labor cost, lower rate of accidents, reduced insurance cost, or productivity gains). Indirect benefits should also be considered in the light of quality improvements—reduced scrap; less rework; reduced product liability, exposure, or product recall expenses; improved corporate image; or increased market share. At times, indirect benefits have improved employee morale, which reduces absenteeism and increases turnover, teamwork, and ownership. The potential reduction in the numbers of compliance penalties can be a benefit.
Operational Excellence
Published in James William Martin, Operational Excellence, 2021
The strategies and tactics that an organization uses to compete globally have radically changed. At one time, organizational size and available capital would ensure market share and allowed organizations to adapt slowly to changing market conditions. In these older bureaucratic systems, even if newly developed technologies were deployed by competitors, organizations often had enough time to reverse-engineer the new systems, independently develop similar versions, or buy out the competitive organization to remain dominant. Consumer preferences were also relatively stable and geographically isolated to regions. This allowed organizations to easily manage customer value expectations and meet needs. The customer experience was very simple and stable in these relatively static environments, so operational strategies could also remain static. But as globalization and technological advances evolved, customer expectations also evolved. They expected lower cost, high quality, and fast response times. Consider the home appliance industry. In response to competitive pressures, this industry rapidly moved from being a slow innovator to adopting leading-edge approaches to product and services design as well as supporting processes such as logistics, customer service, invoicing, and others. Most industries have reduced product and service development time and cost while offering more differentiated products and higher quality. Market dominance used to be determined by the ability of large organizations to set industry standards and deploy capital intensive barriers that prevented new entrants. Today, smaller organizations may dominate niche markets by neutralizing larger and historically more entrenched organizations. This is because of better customer knowledge, technology for scale, and the creation of flexible operations, including virtual operations.
Investigation of microwave reduction of low-grade banded iron ores
Published in Mineral Processing and Extractive Metallurgy, 2021
Veeranjaneyulu Rayapudi, Nikhil Dhawan
The experiments were conducted for 10 min with 6–12 wt% charcoal to investigate conditions for ferrite formation. For all the ores, for most of the 10 min, a continuous sharp blue colour flame was observed due to rapid burning of the ore-charcoal mixture. The quantitative analysis of iron values present in the magnetic concentrate was determined by standard titration procedure, whereas phase analysis was carried out using XRD. The change in the magnetic characteristic of the sample was studied using a vibratory sample magnetometer. It is worthwhile to mention that ferrite balls were handpicked and separated using a powerful T-magnet. The reduced product and separated ferrite balls were polished using standard metallurgical procedures to identify the structure using optical microscopy (Leica, 5000M model). The grade, yield and iron recovery of the magnetic concentrate were calculated using Eqs. (6) and (7).where ‘Fegrade magnetic’ is the wt% Fe in the magnetic fraction and ‘Weight’ is the respective weight in the fraction.
Insights into the microbiomes for medium-chain carboxylic acids production from biowastes through chain elongation
Published in Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology, 2022
Xingdong Shi, Lan Wu, Wei Wei, Bing-Jie Ni
Some additives such as biochar (Liu et al., 2017, 2020b), zero-valent iron (ZVI) (Wang et al., 2020b) and nanoscale ZVI (nZVI) (Fu et al., 2020, 2021) could improve the caproate production rate by 2–5 times in recent studies. Researchers also observed the promoted substrate (waste activated sludge) degradation and shortened lag phase in MCCA production reactor (Liu et al., 2017; Wang et al., 2020b). This enhanced CE process and aforementioned related advantages are attributed to stimulated electron transfer efficiency, the formation of cell network structure, promoted ethanol utilization, reduced product inhibition and strengthened microorganism community structure. On the one hand, ZVI and nZVI could create an appropriate environment for chain elongators due to its buffer capacity and reducibility. Research indicated that nZVI could prevent pH in CE reactor to fall below 5.4 thereby protecting microorganisms from product toxicity of acid (Fu et al., 2020, 2021). On the other hand, the microbial community structure would also be altered to better conduct CE process after dosing the additives. ZVI would promote the number of microorganisms which is responsible for hydrolysis and acidification to produce SCCAs (Wang et al., 2020b) (Figure S1). This means the MCCA producer would then have more sources to conduct CE pathways. Introducing an in-line extraction system to separate MCCAs in real-time is another effective method to alleviate the inhibition of MCCA products (see more in Sec. 6) (Desbois & Smith, 2010). However, for some environments where it is inconvenient to use in-line extraction devices, these additives are an alternative method to reduce the accumulation of MCCAs. In addition, small biochar particle (<5 μm) could supply the attachment surface for predominant strains to form cell network structure (Liu et al., 2020b). This cell network structure strengthened the cooperation of various functional bacteria, and the electrical conductivity of biochar enhanced the electron transfer toward longer carbon-chain products.