In ongoing investigations to map and archive the microbial footprints in various components of the spacecraft and its accessories, we have examined the microbial populations of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Spacecraft Assembly Facility (JPL-SAF). Witness plates made up of spacecraft materials, some painted with spacecraft qualified paints, were exposed for approximately 7 to 9 months at JPL-S...

The dedicated facility built for the assembling of the nearly 1000 RPC units of the ATLAS m-spectrometer is described in detail. The necessity of keeping the gravitational sagitta below 10 mm for the 5-m-long RPC units has driven the careful design of the extruded Al lateral profiles and suspension end-plates. A special assembly table allows to maintain the mechanical tolerances of each unit we...

Currently, from the statistical analysis of accidents at home and abroad, the number of automobile defects and the resulting automobile accidents are very large. Obviously, the automobile defects have become one of the main factors affecting traffic safety, and risk assessment as an automobile key technical defect of risk management, the elimination of defects and reduce automobile accidents ar...

This study examines the impact of product variety on automobile assembly plant performance using data from GM's Wilmington, Delaware plant, together with simulation analyses of a more general auto assembly line. We extend prior product variety studies by providing evidence on the magnitude of variety-related production losses, the mechanisms through which variety impacts performance, and the ef...

Assembly line production is one of the widely used production systems. The problem of Assembly Line Balancing deals with the distribution of activities among the workstations which lead to the maximum utilization of Human Resources and facilities without disturbing the work sequence. The problem is motivated by a vehicle-sequencing problem at an Automobile company, Gurugram. A new Heuristic Met...

Properly functioning markets effi ciently allocate resources. Such markets must refl ect certain principles, including consumer options, cost-based pricing, and economic neutrality. Transportation markets oft en violate these principles. This report examines these distortions and their implications for transport planning. Transportation market distortions include various types of underpricing o...

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 production systems of automobile manufacturers multi-variant products are assembled on paced mixed-model assembly lines, which have to be supplied by a lean in-house logistic with containers of different sizes, alternative supply policies and different number of parts. The assignment of operations to workplaces within the assembly line balancing problem and the assignment of containers to su...