Sustaining the unsustainable? The political sustainability of pensions in Finland and the Netherlands

What makes a pension scheme sustainable? Most answers to this question have revolved around expert assessments of pension schemes’ affordability or adequacy. This study shifts focus from the financial or social sustainability of pension scheme designs to their political sustainability. Political sustainability refers to policymakers’ ability and willingness to sustain pension schemes in the face of perceived challenges. We seek to fill a key research gap concerning the political sustainability of pensions by highlighting the processes of parametric adjustment through which pension schemes are sustained. We show how capital, labour and state actors have been able to actively sustain collective defined benefit (DB) pension schemes in two coordinated market economies, Finland and the Netherlands. The two countries have managed to sustain their DB pensions for relatively long periods of time despite facing the same sustainability challenges that have motivated paradigmatic shifts in other pension systems. We find that sustaining has been successful thanks to a governance culture in which policymakers have been willing to keep all pension scheme parameters open for negotiation and an institutional context that made policymakers able to turn parametric pension reforms into power resources for further reforms. Our findings also explain recent changes in the Netherlands, which moved the Dutch system towards collective defined contribution pensions.

Apparent raising in Tongan and its implications for multiple case valuation

Apparent raising (AR) constructions in Tongan resemble raising constructions in that the thematic subject of the embedded clause seems to occur in the matrix subject position. Unlike regular raising, however, Tongan AR shows characteristics of A-bar movement such as long-distance dependency, sensitivity to islands, and syntactic ergativity. This chapter argues that Tongan AR involves three operations: (a) topic movement of a DP to the embedded [Spec, C], (b) cancelation of the previous valuation of the case feature on the DP in [Spec, C], and (c) subsequent case valuation under Agree with the matrix v. The proposed analysis calls for a parametric adjustment to the activity condition to allow for multiple case valuation: in languages like Tongan, a DP located at the edge of a phase not only remains active, but the valuation of its case feature gets undone upon completion of the CP phase.

Evaluating the accuracy of determining the points’ position by free stationing method

The accuracy of determining the points’ position through the free stationing method is estimated. At performing alignment work, surveying facades, executive surveys, and geodetic monitoring of buildings and structures, the method of free stationing with an electronic total station installed in any suitable place and determining its position by serif, and then using the polar method, defi ning the coordinates of the determined point is considered. The accuracy assessment is identifi ed using the formulas of calculating the mean square error for the direct and reverse angular serifs, as well as for linear ones. The authors propose algorithms of accuracy evaluation for the located point positions with non-fi xed stationing method based on the parametric adjustment, and searching ones, at the same time the algorithms shall provide adjustment by considering or ignoring the errors in the input data. To determine the mean square error of the standing point’s position and the determined points according to the results of adjustment by the free stationing method, fi eld experimental studies were carried out. Numerical examples of accuracy evaluation are provided. The compliance of the adjustment results and root-mean-square errors will mean the validity of the proposed algorithms and accuracy of the performed survey.

Crowdsourced Manufacturing Cyber Platform and Intelligent Cognitive Assistants for Delivery of Manufacturing as a Service: Review of Fundamental Issues and Outlook

Future cyber manufacturing is envisioned to be fulfilled in a crowdsourcing environment that will engage a large population of manufacturer crowds to collaborate with the cyber platform on a shared understanding of the tasks for delivering manufacturing as a service (MaaS). This review paper is motivated towards a symbiosis of crowdsourcing cyber platform technologies to enhance intelligent decision support to manufacturing planning for achieving MaaS operational goals. The paper reviews the fundamental issues of MaaS through crowdsourcing from a model-based systems engineering perspective that is in line with a systematic framework of platform-driven MaaS. Also discussed is the outlook of analytic and model-based approach for crowdsourced manufacturing in order to enable new cyber manufacturing capabilities that represent a significant transformation of the manufacturing sector. The vision is to facilitate transition from the current practice of focusing on automation and manufacturing informatics within individual enterprise to open manufacturing crowds throughout the cloud platform to fulfill MaaS. The cyber platform and intelligent cognitive assistants enhance MaaS fulfilment by adopting computational modeling and decision analytics to exploit the implicit design and manufacturing knowledge that is incorporated in the library of previously executed manufacturing tasks, which in turn facilitates generation of manufacturing process plans by parametric adjustment of process plans for similar tasks.

FEATURES OF DESIGNING FUZZY REGULATORS IN THE COMPOSITION OF AUTOMATIC CONTROL SYSTEMS OF SEMICONDUCTOR COMPENSATORS

The article discusses the design features of fuzzy controllers as part of automatic control systems for semiconductor compensators. Tendencies to the use of fuzzy logic and neural networks to solve problems with a large number of variables that are random are analyzed. The functional scheme of the automatic control system on the basis of fuzzy logic is considered. Some features of the fuzzy regulator are given. Questions of optimization of parameters of digital fuzzy controllers are investigated. The importance of the choice of the method of parametric adjustment of the fuzzy controller is shown. The options for choosing the quality criterion for fuzzy controllers are considered. The market of commercial software products for working with fuzzy logic is analyzed.

IMPLEMENTATION OF AN ADAPTIVE CONTROL ALGORITHM WITH A REFERENCE MODEL FOR PROGRAMMABLE LOGIC CONTROLLERS

The paper proposes approaches to the software implementation of an adaptive control system with a reference model and parametric adjustment of the regulator on programmable logic con-trollers (PLC) and with practical evaluation of synthesized systems on combined models, includ-ing a simulation model of the controlled plant and a virtual or real controller.

Management of Development of Projects of Product IT Companies on Simulation Platforms

The article is aimed at disclosing the possibilities of using the simulation modeling apparatus in the management of the development of projects of product IT companies. Based on the analysis of a number of literary sources, an overview of research in the field of IT project management is carried out and the existing status of application of the simulation instrumentarium in the solution of applied tasks is described. The compliance of simulation technologies with the special requirements of the tasks inherent in the processes of software products development is substantiated. According to the life cycle of software creation, a brief characterization of the typical stages of project promotion is provided. A simulation model is proposed that reproduces the dynamics of the deployment of product projects of IT companies. The model is built using a hybrid approach – a combination of discrete-event and agent-based methodologies – on the software platform for multi-platform simulation AnyLogic. The discrete-event approach provides a high degree of detail of the processes being modeled. The agent-based approach allows to define the project as a dynamic unit with specific properties, which makes it possible to take into account the peculiarities of products ordered by consumers – clients of an IT firm. The model’s work is demonstrated by the results of standard and optimization simulation experiments implemented on conditional data of an average product IT company. These situations prove the possibility of using the model as a platform for making managerial decisions by the head of the product project development team. The model is presented as a simulator with the modular, open architecture and parametric adjustment for specific conditions of experiments. It may be recommended for product IT companies to practice management of the projects of software development.

Understanding fashion complexity through a systemic data approach

Nowadays, the role played by fashion industry in contributing to degradation of natural systems is increasingly acknowledged. Acting in terms of information flow from a systemic perspective does not represent a parametric adjustment, nor a reinforcement or a weakening of an existing cycle. It is the generation of a new cycle, that of information, in a place where it was not previously given, therefore inducing a different behavior in people. The structure of information flows can be an effective leverage point in the fashion system, if information is delivered where it was not before, causing people to change behavior. Adding or restoring information, in a fashion system where the information circulating is sometimes not linked to an ethical and social value, can therefore represent a powerful intervention, usually easier and cheaper than reconstructing physical infrastructures. The ambition of this paper is to offer a perspective that faces this complexity and align fashion with sustainability values through insights gained from data.