The U.S. economy increasingly relies on the internet as a critical infrastructure for enabling business processes from product design, engineering and supply chain management upstream through sale and fulfillment of product downstream. As a result, there is much interest in the vulnerability of the U.S. economy to targeted and large-scale disruptions of the information infrastructure. Here we p...

An important goal in schedule production orders through a manufacturing facility is to assure that the work is completed as close as possible to its due date. Work that is late creates downstream delays, while early completion can be detrimental if storage space is limited. Production planning and control manufacturing is becoming more difficult as family products increase and quantity decrease...

Y. Jin and R. Curran and J. Butterfield School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Queen's University Belfast, UK BT9 5AH Aerospace Management & Operations, Delft University of Technology,2629 HS Delft, The Netherlands and R. Burke and B. Welch Bombardier Aerospace Belfast, Airport Road, Belfast, UK BT3 9DZ The implementation of effective time analysis methods fast and accurately in the era ...

In a distributed manufacturing shop (DMS), factories of various levels of manufacturing capabilities are equipped with diverse types of machines and tools and are scattered around many geographically different locations. Because of such geographical diversity, the quality control of sub-assemble products (SAP) is of great importance to ensure a high level of production quality. To address the c...

One of the most progressive trends in the development of modern science and technology is the creation of energy-efficient technologies for the synthesis of nanomaterials. Nanolayered graphite (thermally exfoliated graphite) is one of the key important nanomaterials of carbon origin. Due to its unique properties (chemical and thermal stability, ability to form without a binder, elasticity, etc....

Evaluation of a product or process involves simultaneous study of several product quality characteristics or responses. The ultimate goal of manufacturing process optimization is to determine the settings of the process variables such that the best combination of the responses is obtained. In case of multiple processing stages, determining optimal process condition is a critical and difficult t...

China’s WTO entry has led to further market reforms and openness. China’s manufacturing enterprises are realizing that they have to strive to survive in the increasingly competitive market. One of the ways to attain a better competitive edge is to use new technologies. However, research has found that there are many hurdles to successful implementation of new technologies. As the shop floor of ...

The Final Process System is an important part of the entire quality assurance system in the automobile manufacturing process. Operators and machines perform a series of crucial testing procedures before shipping a vehicle. Many complex factors impact the system throughput. The important ones are first time success rate, repair and service routing logic, process layout, operator staffing, capaci...

A ball joint for an automobile steering system is a pivot component which is connected to knuckle and lower control arm. The manufacturing process for its caulking comprises spinning and deforming. In this study, the process was simulated by flexible multibody dynamics. The caulking was evaluated qualitatively through numerical analysis and inspecting a plastically deformed shape. The structura...

Health care is a very large and important industry. Hospital and physician services are a large part of the U.S. economy. In 2009, hospital care alone accounted for 5.4% of GDP – roughly twice the size of automobile manufacturing, agriculture, or mining, and larger than all manufacturing sectors except food and beverage and tobacco products, which is approximately the same size. Physician servi...