Using ICT to Overcome Constraints in the Agriculture Value Chain

2012 ◽  
pp. 31-41
Author(s):  
Siegfried Kofi Debrah ◽  
Isaac Kwadwo Asare
Keyword(s):  
Value Chain ◽  
Smallholder Farmers ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Monitoring And Control ◽  
Farming Communities ◽  
Development Partner ◽  
Management Context ◽  
Pertinent Information ◽  
Real Time Information ◽  
And Control

Development partner efforts and private sector initiatives on ICT applications in agriculture have brought new opportunities for farmers and traders to reduce transaction costs and increase incomes. The applications are primarily used for linking actors in the agricultural value chain, accessing real time information on prices, buyers and sellers, transport and haulage, and other relevant information services in the agricultural value chain. Limited evidence from Ghana and elsewhere show that cell phone applications have resulted in increased incomes but the impacts and sustainability of other ICT applications have proven elusive. The role of ICT in overcoming the key constraints in the agricultural value chain and for making evidence-based decisions will be greatly enhanced if farmers, aggregators, and other stakeholders in the value chain pay attention to their business scope and schedule planning, executing, monitoring and control, procurement, risk planning, and stakeholder communications in a “project management” context. When this is done, ICT applications will facilitate supply chain management through sharing of timely and pertinent information on producers, buyers and other services, thereby helping to promote industry competitiveness. The major challenges to the widespread use and sustainability of ICT remain access to the appropriate ICT tool, poor road and storage infrastructure (particularly in the farming communities) and illiteracy on the part of the majority of smallholder farmers.

Using ICT to Overcome Constraints in the Agriculture Value Chain

2013 ◽  
pp. 689-699
Author(s):  
Siegfried Kofi Debrah ◽  
Isaac Kwadwo Asare
Keyword(s):  
Value Chain ◽  
Smallholder Farmers ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Monitoring And Control ◽  
Farming Communities ◽  
Development Partner ◽  
Management Context ◽  
Pertinent Information ◽  
Real Time Information ◽  
And Control

Development partner efforts and private sector initiatives on ICT applications in agriculture have brought new opportunities for farmers and traders to reduce transaction costs and increase incomes. The applications are primarily used for linking actors in the agricultural value chain, accessing real time information on prices, buyers and sellers, transport and haulage, and other relevant information services in the agricultural value chain. Limited evidence from Ghana and elsewhere show that cell phone applications have resulted in increased incomes but the impacts and sustainability of other ICT applications have proven elusive. The role of ICT in overcoming the key constraints in the agricultural value chain and for making evidence-based decisions will be greatly enhanced if farmers, aggregators, and other stakeholders in the value chain pay attention to their business scope and schedule planning, executing, monitoring and control, procurement, risk planning, and stakeholder communications in a “project management” context. When this is done, ICT applications will facilitate supply chain management through sharing of timely and pertinent information on producers, buyers and other services, thereby helping to promote industry competitiveness. The major challenges to the widespread use and sustainability of ICT remain access to the appropriate ICT tool, poor road and storage infrastructure (particularly in the farming communities) and illiteracy on the part of the majority of smallholder farmers.

scholarly journals Management Accounting and Control System

NCC Journal ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-166
Author(s):  
Rewan Kumar Dahal
Keyword(s):  
Control System ◽  
Balanced Scorecard ◽  
Value Chain ◽  
Management Accounting ◽  
Evaluation Process ◽  
Monitoring And Control ◽  
Use Of Resources ◽  
The Cost ◽  
And Control ◽  
Technical Considerations

A larger entity of the cost management system which assists executives in fulfilling organizational objectives is known as management accounting and control system (MACS). It is used for planning, monitoring and control of different organizational activities, to optimize the use of resources, to support the process of decision making and to the performance evaluation process. The scope of the MACS can be divided into two broad groups: technical considerations and behavioral considerations. Technical considerations fall into two categories: (i) the relevance of information generated and (ii) the scope of the system like the value chain, total life cycle costing, target costing, kaizen costing, benchmarking, balanced scorecard etc. whereas the behavioral consideration involves individuals and their behavior within organizations.NCC JournalVol. 3, No. 1, 2018, Page: 153-166

Gender relations along the maize value chain in Mozambique

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-144
Author(s):  
Rahma I Adam ◽  
Maria da Luz Quinhentos ◽  
Pauline Muindi ◽  
Jessica Osanya
Keyword(s):  
Value Chain ◽  
Gender Relations ◽  
Smallholder Farmers ◽  
Maize Production ◽  
Head Of Household ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Hired Labor ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Female Headed Households ◽  
And Control

This article offers insights into gender relations at every node of the maize value chain in rural Mozambique. Data were collected using mixed methods, including a survey of 295 households, key informant interviews with 29 individuals (breeders, agro-dealers, traders, and processors), and 12 sex-disaggregated focus group discussions with smallholder farmers. The findings show that in terms of the gender division of labor in maize production, there is no significant difference between male-headed and female-headed households concerning the participation of men, women, children, and hired labor. In addition, due to their culturally prescribed role as head of household, men are responsible for maize marketing and for making decisions both at the farm level and across the higher nodes of the value chain. Moreover, cultural restrictions on women’s mobility and gender disparities in access to transportation tend to exclude women from participating in the markets. However, women from matrilineal villages are shown to have more autonomy than those from patrilineal villages in making decisions about the quantity of maize to sell, participation in the market, and control of revenue. Finally, whether the woman belongs to the patriarchal or matriarchal system, she still faces challenges as she accedes to the higher nodes of the value chain, for example, participating as a trader, because of her dual roles as mother/homemaker and business woman.

Analysis of Filtered Thermal-Fluid Video Data From Downward Facing Boiling Experiments

2018 ◽  
Vol 140 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chi-Shih Jao ◽  
Faith R. Beck ◽  
Nurali Virani ◽  
Fan-Bill Cheung ◽  
Asok Ray
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Nucleate Boiling ◽  
Video Data ◽  
Monitoring And Control ◽  
Two Phase ◽  
Severe Accidents ◽  
Process Monitoring And Control ◽  
Core Meltdown ◽  
Pertinent Information ◽  
And Control

During severe accidents in a nuclear power plant, in-vessel cooling may be required to mitigate the risk of vessel failure in the event of core meltdown and subsequent corium contamination. This cooling technique, known as in-vessel retention (IVR), entails flooding the reactor cavity with water. If the temperatures are sufficiently high, IVR may cause downward facing boiling (DFB) on the outer surface of the reactor pressure vessel (RPV), which gives rise to two-phase thermal-hydraulic phenomena. The regimes in DFB may range from film boiling to nucleate boiling, where the efficiency of cooling varies immensely between these two. In the DFB geometry under consideration (i.e., a hemispherical vessel), the collected signals/images are heavily contaminated by unavoidable noise and spurious disturbances, which hinder the extraction of pertinent information, such as film thickness and the boiling cycle. This paper proposes a wavelet-based filtering of sensor measurements for denoising of the nonstationary signals with the future objective of estimating the thickness of vapor films in real time, as needed for process monitoring and control. The proposed concept has been validated with experimental data recorded from a pool boiling apparatus for physics-based understanding of the associated phenomena.

Legal Comment, Part 2: Confidentiality: A Legal Cornerstone in Infection Control Programs

1988 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 268-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
William W. Hesson ◽  
Cynthia W. Thu
Keyword(s):  
Infection Control ◽  
Control Process ◽  
Hospital Setting ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Monitoring And Control ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
Control Programs ◽  
Liability Law ◽  
And Control ◽  
Infection Monitoring

This is the second in a series of articles addressing legal issues in infection control. The first article (Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol 1988: 9(3):127-129) discussed the basic elements of liability law as it relates to infection control in the hospital setting. This article will focus on confidentiality in the infection control process.Infection monitoring and control, as it occurs in most hospital settings, depends on ready access to relevant information, careful evaluation of the data, and appropriate communication of conclusions and recommendations. Equally obvious, however, is the risk associated with free-floating information of this significance. Infection control programs produce a multitude of documents that are of potential interest to outsiders such as fellow staff members, other health care institutions, and attorneys. Without specific attention to mechanisms for protecting its confidentiality, information gathered in the infection control process may well become available to some or all of those interested parties.

Unlocking scalable people power in India

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Intellectual Capital ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Reading Time ◽  
Monitoring And Control ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Competency Based ◽  
Pertinent Information ◽  
And Control ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies. Design/methodology/approach This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context. Findings This research paper concentrates on the challenges of competency modeling (CM) and supplies a competency-based intellectual capital-promoting framework for implementing it successfully. Direction setting, selling and negotiation, and monitoring and control are the three core processes of this framework. It's recommended that organizations equip their HR teams with sufficient resources and consistent skills, so they're empowered to lead and overcome the challenges of CM implementation from within. Originality/value The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

scholarly journals Performance measurement and operations control in advanced public transit systems

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nader Azizi
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Traffic Congestion ◽  
Public Transit ◽  
Monitoring And Control ◽  
Real Time Control ◽  
Transit Systems ◽  
Transit Agencies ◽  
Real Time Information ◽  
And Control ◽  
Time Information

In most major cities, levels of traffic congestion are rising along with their associated problems such as travel delays and pollution. While any increase in public transit rider-ship could reduce the level of traffic congestion and related costs, most transit agencies are not able to expand their existing services because of fiscal• and physical constraints. As a result, a growing interest has been developing recently to maximize the transit system efficiency and productivity using new emerging technologies. Recently, the emergence of new technologies such as automatic vehicle location (AVL) and global positioning systems (GPS) has facilitated the design of computer-based real-time decision support systems for public transits. These technologies could significantly help transit agencies improve their operations monitoring and control. In the context of public transit systems, operations monitoring refers to real-time service performance measure and problems detection, and control refers to implementing real time control actions to remedy those problems. This thesis presents a new approach for operations monitoring and control in public transit systems with real-time information. First, an integrated model that combines both headway-based and schedule-based services is presented. To measure the headway or schedule adherence, the model uses predicted arrival times of vehicles at downstream stops. This feature allows the operational managers to avoid major service interruptions by proactively taking necessary corrective actions. Transit agencies have used and continue to use real-time control strategies to improve quality of their services. These strategies are employed by inspectors at various points along a route to remedy the problems as they occur. Practice shows that it is difficult to apply such strategies effectively without real-time information. In the second part of this thesis, a mathematical model for holding control strategy with real-time information is described. The proposed model aims at minimization of the total passengers waiting time and considers both cases of overcrowded and underutilized services. Due to complexity of the holding problem, several metaheuristics are proposed and tested. Among all intelligent search algorithms, a new version of simulated annealing algorithm is proposed to solve the real-time holding control model.

scholarly journals Model Predictive Control of Smart Greenhouses as the Path towards Near Zero Energy Consumption

Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 3647 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiara Bersani ◽  
Ahmed Ouammi ◽  
Roberto Sacile ◽  
Enrico Zero
Keyword(s):  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Model Predictive Control ◽  
Predictive Control ◽  
Crop Production ◽  
Control Strategies ◽  
Farming Systems ◽  
Monitoring And Control ◽  
Zero Energy ◽  
Real Time Information ◽  
And Control

Modern agriculture represents an economic sector that can mainly benefit from technology innovation according to the principles suggested by Industry 4.0 for smart farming systems. Greenhouse industry is significantly becoming more and more technological and automatized to improve the quality and efficiency of crop production. Smart greenhouses are equipped with forefront IoT- and ICT-based monitoring and control systems. New remote sensors, devices, networking communication, and control strategies can make available real-time information about crop health, soil, temperature, humidity, and other indoor parameters. Energy efficiency plays a key role in this context, as a fundamental path towards sustainability of the production. This paper is a review of the precision and sustainable agriculture approaches focusing on the current advance technological solution to monitor, track, and control greenhouse systems to enhance production in a more sustainable way. Thus, we compared and analyzed traditional versus model predictive control methods with the aim to enhance indoor microclimate condition management under an energy-saving approach. We also reviewed applications of sustainable approaches to reach nearly zero energy consumption, while achieving nearly zero water and pesticide use.

Application of Scatterometry to BEOL Measurements: Post Cu CMP Measurements

2007 ◽  
Vol 991 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deepak Kulkarni ◽  
Shom Ponoth ◽  
Li Wu ◽  
Rui Fang ◽  
Xiaoping Liu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Control Strategy ◽  
Measurement Techniques ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Optical Metrology ◽  
Monitoring And Control ◽  
Patterned Structures ◽  
Process Monitoring And Control ◽  
And Control ◽  
Cu Cmp ◽  
Scaling Resistance

ABSTRACTWith shrinking interconnect dimensions, as a result of scaling, resistance variations in percentage terms are increasing. Quick and reliable measurements on the interconnect structures are the first step to the detection and implementation of a process-control strategy in order to reduce process related variations. This paper discusses the application of Optical Digital Profilometry (ODP) to the measurement of BEOL parameters, specifically the measurement of post copper-CMP metal dimensions with the intention of understanding CMP related contribution to resistance variations. Traditionally a combination of electrical test, optical metrology and profilometry is needed to understand the contribution of CMP to the interconnect and inter-layer-dielectric (ILD) dimensions. This paper discusses the successful use of ODP to model and measure the dimensions of both the metal and the dielectric in nested patterned structures with different pattern densities for a single level patterned build. Hence this technique could potentially simplify and replace multiple measurement techniques and help in quickly providing relevant information for process monitoring and control.

scholarly journals A VALUE FOR SMALLHOLDER FARMERS PARTICIPATING IN THE AGRICULTURAL VALUE CHAIN:

2020 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mfusi Mjonono
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Value Chain ◽  
Smallholder Farmers ◽  
Value Chains ◽  
Smallholder Farmer ◽  
Functional Value ◽  
Experiential Value ◽  
Improved Learning ◽  
Upgrading Strategies ◽  
And Control

Participation of smallholder farmers in the agricultural value chain is determined by their ability to capture value. There are different concepts of value that should be considered: those that drive an improvement in output value of a smallholder farmer, and those that pertain to smallholder farmers themselves, the functional (upgrading) and experiential value. Upgrading in the value chain takes three major areas of upgrading strategies: product, process and functions (Kaplinsky and Morris, 2008); the authors of this paper argue that these represent the functional value. The authors therefore claim that functional value refers to an improved or enhanced value in a more physical sense (e.g. higher prices per product sold). That leaves experiential value, which is intrinsically gained by the smallholder farmer, and is driven by improved learning and experience, confidence gained and control. Therefore, for a balanced analysis and understanding of the value for farmers participating in the value chain, the authors propose a conceptual framework which includes the elements of experiential value and functional value. The contribution of this work is therefore an expansion of the perceived value approach that may shed more light on the drivers of inclusion and exclusion of smallholder farmers in value chains. This paper begins by expanding the concept of value as it relates to smallholder farmers. Then, the authors propose a conceptual framework for participating in the value chain in an effort to understand the participation of smallholder farmers in agricultural value chains.

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