Matching Items (325)
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Description
This thesis aims to investigate the impacts of foreign banks’ management model on their degree of localization and operating efficiency. I decompose their management model into five major factors, including two formative factors and three reflective factors. The two formative factors are (1) strategic orientation and (2) target customers, and

This thesis aims to investigate the impacts of foreign banks’ management model on their degree of localization and operating efficiency. I decompose their management model into five major factors, including two formative factors and three reflective factors. The two formative factors are (1) strategic orientation and (2) target customers, and the three reflective factors are (1) top management team composition, (2) organizational structure, and (3) managerial authority and incentives. I propose that the formative factors influence foreign banks’ degree of localization, as demonstrated by the reflective factors, which subsequently influence foreign banks’ operating efficiency in China.

To test the above proposition, I conduct the empirical analysis in three steps. In the first step, I investigate foreign banks’ management model by surveying 13 major foreign banks locally incorporated in Mainland China. The results suggest that these 13 foreign banks can be categorized into three distinct groups based on their management model: intergrators, customer-followers, and parent-followers. The results also indicate that intergrators have the highest level of localization while parent-followers have the lowest level of localization.

In the second step, I conduct DEA (Data Envelope Analysis) and CAMEL (Capital Adequacy, Asset Quality, Management, Earnings, Liquidity Analysis) to assess the operating efficiency of these 13 foreign banks. The assessment is conducted in two ways: 1) the inter-group comparison between foreign banks and local Chinese banks; 2) the intra-group comparison between the three distinct groups of foreign banks identified in the first step. The results indicates that the principal factor driving the operating efficiency of both local Chinese banks and foreign banks is the comprehensive technical efficiency, which includes both the quality of management and the quality of technical elements. I also find the uptrend of technical efficiency of the integrators is more stable than that of the other two groups of foreign banks.

Finally, I integrate the results from step one and step two to assess the relevance between foreign banks’ localization level and operating efficiency. I find that foreign banks that score higher in localization tend to have a higher level of operating efficiency. Although this finding is not conclusive about the causal relationship between localization and operating efficiency, it nevertheless suggests that the management model of the higher performing integrators can serve as references for the other foreign banks attempting to enhance their localization and operating efficiency. I also discuss the future trends of development in the banking industry in China and what foreign banks can learn from local Chinese banks to improve their market positions.
ContributorsSun, Minjie (Author) / Shen, Wei (Thesis advisor) / Qian, Jun (Thesis advisor) / Pei, Ker-Wei (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
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Description
The grounding system in a substation is used to protect personnel and equipment. When there is fault current injected into the ground, a well-designed grounding system should disperse the fault current into the ground in order to limit the touch potential and the step potential to an acceptable level defined

The grounding system in a substation is used to protect personnel and equipment. When there is fault current injected into the ground, a well-designed grounding system should disperse the fault current into the ground in order to limit the touch potential and the step potential to an acceptable level defined by the IEEE Std 80. On the other hand, from the point of view of economy, it is desirable to design a ground grid that minimizes the cost of labor and material. To design such an optimal ground grid that meets the safety metrics and has the minimum cost, an optimal ground grid application was developed in MATLAB, the OptimaL Ground Grid Application (OLGGA).

In the process of ground grid optimization, the touch potential and the step potential are introduced as nonlinear constraints in a two layer soil model whose parameters are set by the user. To obtain an accurate expression for these nonlinear constraints, the ground grid is discretized by using a ground-conductor (and ground-rod) segmentation method that breaks each conductor into reasonable-size segments. The leakage current on each segment and the ground potential rise (GPR) are calculated by solving a matrix equation involving the mutual resistance matrix. After the leakage current on each segment is obtained, the touch potential and the step potential can be calculated using the superposition principle.

A genetic algorithm is used in the optimization of the ground grid and a pattern search algorithm is used to accelerate the convergence. To verify the accuracy of the application, the touch potential and the step potential calculated by the MATLAB application are compared with those calculated by the commercialized grounding system analysis software, WinIGS.

The user's manual of the optimal ground grid application is also presented in this work.
ContributorsLi, Songyan (Author) / Tylavsky, Daniel J. (Thesis advisor) / Ayyanar, Raja (Committee member) / Vittal, Vijay (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
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Description
The inherent intermittency in solar energy resources poses challenges to scheduling generation, transmission, and distribution systems. Energy storage devices are often used to mitigate variability in renewable asset generation and provide a mechanism to shift renewable power between periods of the day. In the absence of storage, however, time series

The inherent intermittency in solar energy resources poses challenges to scheduling generation, transmission, and distribution systems. Energy storage devices are often used to mitigate variability in renewable asset generation and provide a mechanism to shift renewable power between periods of the day. In the absence of storage, however, time series forecasting techniques can be used to estimate future solar resource availability to improve the accuracy of solar generator scheduling. The knowledge of future solar availability helps scheduling solar generation at high-penetration levels, and assists with the selection and scheduling of spinning reserves. This study employs statistical techniques to improve the accuracy of solar resource forecasts that are in turn used to estimate solar photovoltaic (PV) power generation. The first part of the study involves time series forecasting of the global horizontal irradiation (GHI) in Phoenix, Arizona using Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) models. A comparative study is completed for time series forecasting models developed with different time step resolutions, forecasting start time, forecasting time horizons, training data, and transformations for data measured at Phoenix, Arizona. Approximately 3,000 models were generated and evaluated across the entire study. One major finding is that forecasted values one day ahead are near repeats of the preceding day—due to the 24-hour seasonal differencing—indicating that use of statistical forecasting over multiple days creates a repeating pattern. Logarithmic transform data were found to perform poorly in nearly all cases relative to untransformed or square-root transform data when forecasting out to four days. Forecasts using a logarithmic transform followed a similar profile as the immediate day prior whereas forecasts using untransformed and square-root transform data had smoother daily solar profiles that better represented the average intraday profile. Error values were generally lower during mornings and evenings and higher during midday. Regarding one-day forecasting and shorter forecasting horizons, the logarithmic transformation performed better than untransformed data and square-root transformed data irrespective of forecast horizon for data resolutions of 1-hour, 30-minutes, and 15-minutes.
ContributorsSoundiah Regunathan Rajasekaran, Dhiwaakar Purusothaman (Author) / Johnson, Nathan G (Thesis advisor) / Karady, George G. (Thesis advisor) / Ayyanar, Raja (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
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Description
High-efficiency DC-DC converters make up one of the important blocks of state-of-the-art power supplies. The trend toward high level of transistor integration has caused load current demands to grow significantly. Supplying high output current and minimizing output current ripple has been a driving force behind the evolution of Multi-phase topologies.

High-efficiency DC-DC converters make up one of the important blocks of state-of-the-art power supplies. The trend toward high level of transistor integration has caused load current demands to grow significantly. Supplying high output current and minimizing output current ripple has been a driving force behind the evolution of Multi-phase topologies. Ability to supply large output current with improved efficiency, reduction in the size of filter components, improved transient response make multi-phase topologies a preferred choice for low voltage-high current applications.

Current sensing capability inside a system is much sought after for applications which include Peak-current mode control, Current limiting, Overload protection. Current sensing is extremely important for current sharing in Multi-phase topologies. Existing approaches such as Series resistor, SenseFET, inductor DCR based current sensing are simple but their drawbacks such low efficiency, low accuracy, limited bandwidth demand a novel current sensing scheme.

This research presents a systematic design procedure of a 5V - 1.8V, 8A 4-Phase Buck regulator with a novel current sensing scheme based on replication of the inductor current. The proposed solution consists of detailed system modeling in PLECS which includes modification of the peak current mode model to accommodate the new current sensing element, derivation of power-stage and Plant transfer functions, Controller design. The proposed model has been verified through PLECS simulations and compared with a transistor-level implementation of the system. The time-domain parameters such as overshoot and settling-time simulated through transistor-level

implementation is in close agreement with the results obtained from the PLECS model.
ContributorsBurli, Venkatesh (Author) / Bakkaloglu, Bertan (Thesis advisor) / Garrity, Douglas (Committee member) / Kitchen, Jennifer (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
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Description
The current study combines field study, survey study, and public financial reports, and conducts an in-depths comprehensive study of the cost of the global tire industry. By comparing the price and the total cost structure of standardized tire products, we investigate Chinese tire industry’s global competitiveness, especially in light of

The current study combines field study, survey study, and public financial reports, and conducts an in-depths comprehensive study of the cost of the global tire industry. By comparing the price and the total cost structure of standardized tire products, we investigate Chinese tire industry’s global competitiveness, especially in light of China’s fast increasing labor cost. By constructing a comprehensive cost index (CCI), this dissertation estimates the evolution and forecasts the trend of global tire industry’s cost structure. Based on our empirical analysis, we provide various recommendations for Chinese tire manufacturers, other manufacturing industries, and foreign trade policy makers.
ContributorsZhang, Ning (Author) / Zhu, Ning (Thesis advisor) / Shen, Wei (Thesis advisor) / Chen, Hong (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015