The Quality Solution


Book Description

Poor healthcare quality is a public health emergency. Landmark reports by the Institute of Medicine and other leading groups exposed the continuing inadequacies that plague the United States healthcare system. Despite the red flags that these reports raised, there has been only marginal improvement in healthcare quality. Therefore, improving the quality of health care should be one of our highest public health priorities. the Institute of Medicine called the substantial gulf between the vision of ideal care and the reality of what most individuals receive a quality chasm. the Quality Solutio




The Strategic Quality Manager


Book Description

Are you a quality professional working in health and aged care (or other service industry) who wants to: design and implement quality systems that make a real, positive difference to consumers? • develop your role to be more strategic and influential? • create sustained change and improvement? • build your credibility and expertise? • play a key role in your organisation’s strategic direction? • increase your job satisfaction? The Strategic Quality Manager synthesises theory, research and real world experience into a handbook developed specifically for those in quality management roles. As the pressure on our health and aged care services grows, so do the demands on the quality professional and continuing to increase the quality and transparency of healthcare will require new and savvier ways of working. If you have looked for assistance within this challenging environment, you’ll know that there is no shortage of material on quality management, but very little on being a quality manager. The Strategic Quality Manager contains theory, tips, step by step models and practical examples to assist every quality professional to more easily and proactively navigate the many of challenges of their roles – and to enjoy the journey!







Critical Developments and Applications of Swarm Intelligence


Book Description

Artificial intelligence is a constantly advancing field that requires models in order to accurately create functional systems. The use of natural acumen to create artificial intelligence creates a field of research in which the natural and the artificial meet in a new and innovative way. Critical Developments and Applications of Swarm Intelligence is a critical academic publication that examines developing research, technologies, and function regarding natural and artificial acumen specifically, in regards to self-organized systems. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as evolutionary algorithms, optimization techniques, and computational comparison, this book is geared toward academicians, students, researchers, and engineers seeking relevant and current research on the progressive research based on the implementation of swarm intelligence in self-organized systems.




Small Groups


Book Description

Research on small groups is highly diverse because investigators who study such groups vary in their disciplinary identifications, theoretical interests, and methodological preferences. The goal of this volume is to capture that diversity, and thereby convey the breadth and excitement of small group research by acquainting students with work on five fundamental aspects of groups. The volume also includes an introductory chapter by the editors which provides an overview of the history of and current state-of-the-art in the field. Together with introductions to each section, discussion questions and suggestions for further reading, make the volume ideal reading for senior undergraduate and graduate students interested in group dynamics.




Electrochemical Industry


Book Description




Metaheuristics for Vehicle Routing Problems


Book Description

This book is dedicated to metaheuristics as applied to vehicle routing problems. Several implementations are given as illustrative examples, along with applications to several typical vehicle routing problems. As a first step, a general presentation intends to make the reader more familiar with the related field of logistics and combinatorial optimization. This preamble is completed with a description of significant heuristic methods classically used to provide feasible solutions quickly, and local improvement moves widely used to search for enhanced solutions. The overview of these fundamentals allows appreciating the core of the work devoted to an analysis of metaheuristic methods for vehicle routing problems. Those methods are exposed according to their feature of working either on a sequence of single solutions, or on a set of solutions, or even by hybridizing metaheuristic approaches with others kind of methods.




Modeling and Optimization of Parallel and Distributed Embedded Systems


Book Description

This book introduces the state-of-the-art in research in parallel and distributed embedded systems, which have been enabled by developments in silicon technology, micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), wireless communications, computer networking, and digital electronics. These systems have diverse applications in domains including military and defense, medical, automotive, and unmanned autonomous vehicles. The emphasis of the book is on the modeling and optimization of emerging parallel and distributed embedded systems in relation to the three key design metrics of performance, power and dependability. Key features: Includes an embedded wireless sensor networks case study to help illustrate the modeling and optimization of distributed embedded systems. Provides an analysis of multi-core/many-core based embedded systems to explain the modeling and optimization of parallel embedded systems. Features an application metrics estimation model; Markov modeling for fault tolerance and analysis; and queueing theoretic modeling for performance evaluation. Discusses optimization approaches for distributed wireless sensor networks; high-performance and energy-efficient techniques at the architecture, middleware and software levels for parallel multicore-based embedded systems; and dynamic optimization methodologies. Highlights research challenges and future research directions. The book is primarily aimed at researchers in embedded systems; however, it will also serve as an invaluable reference to senior undergraduate and graduate students with an interest in embedded systems research.




Mathematical Optimization Theory and Operations Research


Book Description

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Mathematical Optimization Theory and Operations Research, MOTOR 2019, held in Ekaterinburg, Russia, in July 2019. The 48 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 170 submissions. MOTOR 2019 is a successor of the well-known International and All-Russian conference series, which were organized in Ural, Siberia, and the Far East for a long time. The selected papers are organized in the following topical sections: mathematical programming; bi-level optimization; integer programming; combinatorial optimization; optimal control and approximation; data mining and computational geometry; games and mathematical economics.




Applications of Cuckoo Search Algorithm and its Variants


Book Description

This book highlights the basic concepts of the CS algorithm and its variants, and their use in solving diverse optimization problems in medical and engineering applications. Evolutionary-based meta-heuristic approaches are increasingly being applied to solve complicated optimization problems in several real-world applications. One of the most successful optimization algorithms is the Cuckoo search (CS), which has become an active research area to solve N-dimensional and linear/nonlinear optimization problems using simple mathematical processes. CS has attracted the attention of various researchers, resulting in the emergence of numerous variants of the basic CS with enhanced performance since 2019.