At the time when economy is growing, there is strong competition in the market, and customers have increasingly higher expectations as regards quality of service and products. Under such conditions, organizations need to improve. One of the areas of improvement for an organization is to research the level of customer satisfaction. The article presents results of customer satisfaction surveys conducted by the Servqual method in a pharmaceutical service company. Use of this method allowed to improve the services provided by that pharmaceutical wholesaler, identify areas that need to be improved as soon as possible in order to improve the level of service provided.

Condition monitoring and fault diagnosis of engineering systems are critical for the stable and reliable operation in various areas as mobile technology (primarily agricultural, forestry, mining and construction machinery), railways, airlines and large fleets. Thus, to achieve a satisfactory level of reliability for the life of a machine, proactive maintenance strategy is the only key. This means that the application of classical reliability methods suitable for components with sudden failures can be complemented by technical diagnostic methods which have the potential to provide the information about the system condition. In this article we focus on the diagnostic signal related to the used oil – tribodiagnostic measures and is an interesting theoretical item related to the evaluation of the quality of lubricants in the aspect of operation. This is because the oil is in direct contact with single parts of the assessed technical systems. Results tests were reviewed and derived from various parameters of lubricants and their limits that highlight the condition and state of the lubricants under varying categories which include, physiochemical, elemental (wear), contamination and additive analysis.

The aim of the study was the examination of the morphological and compositional attributes of wear particles of tested universal tractor transmission oil (UTTO) samples by means of automatic particle counter and classifier LaserNetFines^TM-C, which is an ideal tool to establish the dynamic equilibrium concentration and hence to set the alarm limits for any type of machine. Such limits can be based on wear type and particle size ranges. The samples of two UTTO (mineral oil and biodegradable fully synthetic oil) were taken from the rear gearboxes of the wheel tractor during a long-term experiment. The measurement results showed that there was faster increase in the particle wear of mineral oil in comparison to biodegradable transmission oil. Considering the increase in the percentage of particles over 20 μm, the biodegradable oil seems to be more favourable for usage. Regardless of this, it can be concluded that the biodegradable oil is equivalent to petroleum-based oils.

Chainsaw operation is associated with several hazards, including exposure to wood dust, a risk factor which requires serious attention due to health impacts such as respiratory disease. This study aims to investigate the effect of saw chain type and wood species on the mass concentration of airborne wood dust during chainsaw cross-cutting operations. Real-time inhalable and respirable dust measurements in the breathing zone of the chainsaw operator were carried out using a desktop aerosol monitor. Three types of cutter shape (semi chisel, full chisel, and chamfer chisel) and four types of wood species (oak, beech, spruce, and fir) were used in the experiments. The split-plot ANOVA results showed that both respirable and inhalable mass concentrations of wood dust were affected exclusively by wood species. No statistically significant differences were found among particular levels of cutter shape. The highest average mass concentrations of airborne dust were generated by the combination of oak wood and a full chisel cutter.

Biomass energy for heating is going to be part of the spectrum of renewable energy sources. However, biomass combustion produces emissions of various pollutants with negative effects at both local and global scales. To reduce some of the locally important pollutant load, thermally treated biomass fuels may offer a partial solution. In this study, two biomass feedstocks, i.e., spruce chips and rapeseed straw, were thermally treated at 300 °C to produce biochars. Subsequently, both original materials and biochars were burned in a 25 kW retort combustion device. In both cases, the biochar showed lower emissions of carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides, usually almost across the whole range of tested combustion conditions. In total, for the emission production per unit of net calorific value, the spruce biochar showed reductions in CO and NOx productions of 10.8% and 14.5%, respectively. More importantly, in rapeseed straw biochar, the difference was more pronounced. The total production was reduced by 28% and 42%, again in CO and NOx emissions, respectively.