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Service and product support are increasingly critical elements in the achievement of customer satisfaction and winning new markets. The success of a product support strategy depends on how effectively these services are delivered. The focus of this paper is on performance enhancement through the use of service delivery strategies; critical factors in the marketing of product support and service‐related contracts that, in turn, foster customer satisfaction, based on industrial systems in a multinational environment. Considered in the framework are product design characteristics such as reliability, maintainability, customer's organizational culture and geographical location, for functional as well as conventional products. The paper advocates an increased focus on support to customers within the framework, introduces a modified service gap model and suggests an approach that reduces any gap between expected and required services. An evaluation of service delivery performance is emphasized.

In Sweden, the national railroad system is owned and operated by the state which means that political and social considerations have to be taken in to account; e.g. safety and environmental impact as well as public demands for safe, reliable and cost-effective means of transportation. The railroad is therefore strictly governed by regulations and government legislations; containing technical limitations and financial targets, many of these are in use as performance indicators. In order to get a broader and better control of goal fulfilment, the Swedish National Rail Administration (Banverket) has introduced the balanced scorecard concept during the last year. In order to meet stakeholders' requirement, Banverket have modified the standard balanced scorecard. This paper presents a case study identifying the use of performance indicators by Banverket. We discuss the different types and forms of indicators used by Banverket. An attempt is also made to analyze the impact of such indicators on the organisational goal and strategy through a link and effect model. We also examine who owns these indicators, who uses them and for what purposes and whether these indicators conform to the recommended standards and prevalent regulations. ; Godkänd; 2004; 20070520 (ysko)

The Chotanagpur-Santal Pargana (CSP), the 'Ruhr of India' has been the cradle of mineral exploitation and mineral based industries since the dawn of 20th century. The post-Independence era witnessed a rapid growth in heavy industries and subsequent urbanisation. To cater the energy need, coal based power stations were installed in Damodar valley. Such economic ventures were concentrated mainly in the Damodar and Subernarekha river valleys. These anthropogenic activities triggered a series of environmental degradation. Large scale deforestation led to wide spread soil erosion due to which loss of valuable topsoil and lowering of water table has taken place. The preference for open cast mining practice for more mineral exploitation especially coal, iron ore and bauxite has further aggravated the problem in this fragile eco-system. The discharge of large volume of untreated or semi-treated industrial effluents has literally turned the river Damodar into an "industrial effluent channel.' Besides being unethical and inhumane, these acts are a gross violation of environmental laws. Ironically, the major culprit industries are public sector undertakings. Even the highly polluted ambient air in the mining and associated industrial areas, especially in the Damodar valley has made the region a virtual gas chamber gradually pushing the local populace towards 'extinction'. The vast surface water resources are trapped or are in a process to be trapped leading to submergence of large agricultural and forest area and displacement of local inhabitants which are mostly tribals. Almost all such act of 'development' has led to delinking of tribals from their root as well as distortion of socio-cultural fabric.

Reliability centered maintenance (RCM) was initiated on 1960s in Boeing company to optimize the maintenance process of aircrafts. Since that date, this method has been applied in wide range of industries and has provided a completely positive results and recommendations for implementation in other industries. RCM is a systematic approach to quantitatively assess and optimize the performance of preventive maintenance tasks and to eliminate non-value adding maintenance actions. It provides considerable cost savings due to optimum maintenance effort, increased safety and productivity. This research considers the feasibility of applying the RCM methodology to fully-automated underground mining machineries as one of the vital requirement of early future modern mining. For this purpose, a literature review has been done to clarify the advantages, requirements, issues and challenges of RCM in other industries such as aviation, marine, nuclear, oil and gas, and process industries. It has been tried to analyze the RCM procedure in detailed and to have a look on the adoption issues and requirement for RCM implementation in fully-automated mining. Mainly, in this research, following RCM documents and standards were used for feasibility study: • Classic RCM in Aviation industry (SAE-JA1011, SAE-JA1012)• NASA RCM guidelines • USA's military standards MIL-STD-2173• International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) RCM documentUsing the above mentioned documents, an implementation issues and challenges in developing a RCM program for fully-automated underground mining machineries has been presented. The result of this study shows that RCM is applicable in maintenance planning for fully-automated underground mining machinery. Because, serious safety restrictions are associated with this kind of mining operation and RCM can properly help the engineers to analyze the safety consequences of any failure and make the best decision for maintenance tasks. However, practical application of RCM has some differences in mining context which in this project are discussed in detail. The investigations show the risk priority number is the suitable measure to select the RCM target component/system. Since, there is no operation in site, detective the some evident failures are become impossible in automated mining. Therefore, we have to consider the smartness level and capabilities of agent-based supervisors to get the real feeling of machinery health and operation condition. Internet of Thing platforms are also required in fully automated mine to develop the machine-to-machine communication and to reduce the risk of failures and failure propagation in fleet level. RCM could apply the outcomes of these advanced technologies to optimize the maintenance actions in automated mines. ; Godkänd; 2016; Bibliografisk uppgift: VINNOVA SIP-STRIM; 20160316 (hadhos)

Sverige och omvärlden står inför stora utmaningar med ett ständigt ökande transportbehov där dagens och framtidens hållbarhets- och klimatkrav ska uppfyllas. Med stora avstånd och relativt liten befolkning har Sverige en unik uppsättning transportbehov, och med en åldrande infrastruktur skärps utmaningarna ytterligare. Agendan vill staka ut den strategiska vägen för framtidens väg- och järnvägstransporter.Visionen är att möjliggöra ett robust, motståndskraftigt och pålitligt transportsystem som samtidigt är attraktivt, säkert hållbart och effektivt. Denna vision ska realiseras genom tre huvudsakliga delmål förbättrad ekonomisk, samhällelig och miljömässig effektivitet reducerade störningar – de närmaste fem åren ska två tredjedelar av de störningar som påverkar transportkvalitet och klimat vara borta utökad samverkan och samarbete mellan industri, politik och akademi ska skapa en systemsyn med kvalitet i transporter som mål. För att målbilden ska bli verklighet behöver insatser bedrivas inom fyra fokusområden styrning av transportsystemet innovation i transportsystemet godstransporter och passagerartrafik intelligent transportsystem. Inom fokusområdena ska särskild vikt läggas på ett antal kärnaktiviteter, bland annat: nätverkande mellan olika aktörer och organisationer idéfora för innovationsprojekt forskning noder av testmiljöer uppstartsstöd tillväxtsstöd för små och medelstora företag. Agendans insatsområden ska mötas genom nära samverkan mellan aktörerna i ett incitamentdrivet trippelhelix med ett holistiskt systemperspektiv. Aktörerna i samverkan omfattar infrastrukturförvaltare, trafikutövare, akademi och institut, design- och projekteringskonsulter, systemleverantörer, entreprenadföretag och underhållsföretag. ; Transport is fundamental to our economy and society. An efficient and sustainable transport system is essential for people and businesses, a truth today, an outmost necessity in the future. But, the Swedish transport system needs to be much more robust, resilient and reliable to make this become an everyday reality. RTS' vision is to enable a robust, resilient, and reliable transport system, which is attractive,safe, sustainable, and efficient. RTS' overall goals are: 1. Improved economic, societal, & environmental efficiency – A yearly potential well above one billion kronor (SEK) 2. Reduction of disruptions - By more than two thirds within five years after implementation of solutions developed within RTS's core activities 3. Enhanced collaboration & cooperation - The transport sector actors are working within an incentive-driven triple helix with holistic system perspective Based on the vision statement, RTS addresses a set of focus areas in order to achieve overall goals and expectations. These are: 1) Transport system governance; 2) Transportsystem innovation; 3) Freight transport and passengertravel; and 4) Intelligent transport system.To realise the RTS' vision, the agenda lists

Complex technical systems are normally repaired rather than replaced when they fail. It is often desirable to analyze the reliability characteristics of these systems based on data generated in a customer use environment, in order to assess the reliability, frequency of failure or other parameters which may be influenced by the systems' age and usage. Despite the advantages of continuously analyzing reliability data to be able to improve the maintenance programme continuously, methods such as parametric and non-parametric analysis are often ignored due to a belief that the mean time between failures (MTBF) is sufficient to describe the reliability pattern of repairable units. This paper describes the use of the mean cumulative function (MCF) and linear estimates based on the recurrence rate to predict the expected number of failures in the future. Reliability data from two repairable units are used to verify the procedure and comparison. The empirical data used in the paper is based on field data gathered during the operational life of the Swedish military aircraft system FPL 37 Viggen from 1977 to 2006, which essentially is the whole life cycle of the system. ; Validerad; 2013; 20130120 (aliahm)