3D printing (3DP) is one of the innovative developments in rapid prototyping (RP) technology. The goal of the initial inception and progress of the technology was to assist the product development phase of product design and manufacturing. The technology has played an important role in educating product design and 3D modeling because it helps students/designer to visualize their design idea, to...

Large sized freeform objects of soft materials are widely used in various applications. Current layered rapid prototyping technologies cannot be applied for the fabrication of this kind of objects due to the number of layers and the limitations in size. This paper presents a novel approach of layered manufacturing that is most appropriate for the fabrication of these objects. A short overview i...

Computer simulation is a well-established decision support tool in the manufacturing industry. The rapid development and deployment of simulation models however, are inhibited by factors such as inecient data collection, lengthy model documentation, and poorly planned experimentation. Typically, more than one third of project time is spent on identi®cation, collection, validation, and analysis...

Several new technologies collectively referred to as solid freeform fabrication have been developed in the last decade for use in the rapid prototyping of solid three dimensional parts. These include stereolithography, photosolidi cation, solid ground curing, 3D printing, fused deposition modeling, ballistic particle manufacturing, selective laser sintering, laminated object manufacturing, and ...

An Object-Oriented Timed Petri-net (OOTPN) is proposed for modeling agile manufacturing cell (AMC). It consists of four phases: (1) grouping manufacturing resources into classes; (2) constructing general OOTPN block for each manufacturing resource class; (3) defining joint transitions and suitable control decision rules; (4) generating complete OOTPN model for agile manufacturing cell. This OOT...

Cloud Manufacturing is emerging as a new manufacturing paradigm which is believed to change the way industries and enterprises do their businesses, in that dynamically scalable and virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. It can transform the traditional manufacturing business model, help it align product innovation with business strategy, and create intelligent factor...

Research on dynamic capabilities emphasizes the importance and role of organizational routines in explaining interfirm differences in performance. While performance differences are well documented, few empirical analyses explore the processes inside organizations that lead to dynamic capabilities or attempt to define and measure their performance effects. This paper examines one type of dynamic...