Decentralization

With my European background, I was when I came to America and still am impressed by the rather loosely organized, more decentralized way of research support. Of course, even in a great country like ours resources are not limitless and inevitably prevailing trends of research set priorities. In my field of interest the 1970s and 1980s were a period when, after two oil crises, research on hydrocarbon fuels and their synthetic preparation had significant public interest and support. Catalytic research in its many aspects was heavily pursued and considered a national priority. 

In an environment in which all R D is decentralized in the business units, the technology leader s abiUty to manage this dual role becomes difficult if not impossible. 

Another possibility is to decentralize the dc supply. Here the ac supply for the individual protection rectifiers comes from a potential-controlled central supply that is situated in the engine control room. The protection rectifiers can then be situated amidships with relatively short dc cables to the anodes. The dimension of the dc cable should maintain a voltage drop below 2 V. 

In an industrial organization the choice is between centralization in corporate or company headquarters and decentralization to the operating organizations or individual plans. The usual organization is a combinadon of headquarters centralization and company decentralization. 

These issues relate certain requirements of the layout of the air-handling system and individual units, including the question of whether to select centralized or decentralized systems, and the number of units required in the building. 

Controllers for decentralized control and regulation are usually positioned locally to the process and connected to the control room. 

Some of this information is presented in the form of very specific examples, used to illustrate a range of approaches and methods. TTiis range is not intended to be all-inclusive your company s precise oiganization may not be represented here. However, every effort has been made to address several common structures, including centralized and decentralized operations and "top-down" and "bottom-up" management structures. 

The experience of MCP shows how both centralized and decentralized management approaches can be consistent with implementation of PSM. There is more than one way to successfully design, develop, and install PSM systems, and in some cases more than one approach will be needed within the same company. 

In addition, the source of sponsorship may differ, reflecting centralized vs. decentralized corporate structures. In either case, effective sponsorship requires two tiers prime mover and key advocate, as shown in Figure 2-1. The prime mover, or primary sponsor, is the one who authorizes the initiative, while the key advocate is the individual without whose explicit support the initiative cannot go forward. To select the right sponsor for your company s PSM initiative, start by identifying the appropriate prime mover and key advocate. 

Decentralized operations, in which divisional managers have considerable independence, t uire commitment from "top" management at a more local-... 

In deciding where your primary sponsorship for PSM lies, keep in mind that the terms centralized" and decentralized" can be misleading because they are relative, not absolute. A company can be seen as decentralized because most operating decisions are made at the divisional level, working with broad corporate guidelines. A division that is part of the decentralized company may, itself, be a highly centralized entity, with key decisions coming from the top of the divisbn and most staff resources based at division headquarters, not in the field. 

Following Is a plan summary that a decentralized company might use In Introducing Its corporate PSM Initiative, either as a stand-alone document or as part of a larger communications package. 

The best approach is to begin by developing a plan for each PSM element. The summary of those plans represents an overall plan for the PSM program. The steps required to prepare a plan are the same whether your approach is centralized or decentralized. 

For facility-specific installation, it may make sense to start the installation process everywhere at once, paying particular attention to priority facilities. However, if your company is a decentralized one with many sites, you may wish to subdivide the installation by, for example, product lines or t) es of operations. 

Role Responsibility Function in centralized companies may be Function in decentralized companies may be ... 

Factors that influence this include the degree of decentralization to individual divisions or facilities and whether there are significant differences in organizational structure and business management processes between divisions and facilities. 

A major mass transit handicap is sprawling growth. Mass transit works most effectively in a hub and spoke manner, and the decentralization of urban areas makes it harder and harder to design effective mass transit. This mismatched segregation of home, work, and leisure—particularly in cities such as Houston, Atlanta, and Los Angeles— woiild require a long time to reverse. 

At this time, the petroleum industry was still a small scale affair and largely decentralized production, transportation, refining, and distribution of refined products were undertaken by separate companies. Periods of overcapacity caused price declines that cut deep into the profits of producers. In the last two decades of the nineteenth century, John D. Rockefeller imposed order on the industry by building a fully integrated corporation The Standard Oil T rust. 

Reynolds Boids is a good example of decentralized order not because the boids behavior is a perfect replica of the flocking of birds that occurs in nature — although it is a close enough match that Reynold s model has attracted the attention of professional ornithologists — but that much of the boids collective behavior is entirely unanticipated, and cannot be easily derived from the rules defining what each individual bold does. 

Moreover, behaviors frequently arise that appear to involve some form of intelligent division of red and blue forces to deal with local firestorms and skirmishes, particularly those forces whose personalities have been evolved (via a genetic algorithm sec below) to perform a specific mission, It is important to point out that such behaviors are not hard-wired but rather an emergent property of a decentralized and nonlinear local dynamics, A small sampling of behaviors is shown below. 

What is most surprising about many of the runs using GA-derived personalities is that the red force appears to task different agents with different missions, despite the fact that each red agent is endowed with exactly the same personality Thus, a higher-level tactic - such as use the two forward positioned agents to weaken the enemy s center - emerges out of the collective interactions of the same low-level decision rules i.e., an apparently centralized order induced by decentralized local dynamics. 

Explore tradeoffs between centralized and decentralized comm and-and-control (C2) structures Are some C2 topologies more conducive to information flow and attainment of mission objectives than others What do emergent forms of a self-organized C2 topology look like ... 

The market for sealed stationary batteries has greatly increased since 1980, both by the growth of the PC market as well as by the decentralization of emergency power supplies and telephone ex-... 

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