Warranty cost analysis for second-hand products

For second-hand products sold with warranty, the expected warranty cost for an item to the manufacturer, depends on (i) the age and/or usage as well as the maintenance history for the item and (ii) the terms of the warranty policy. The paper develops probabilistic models to compute the expected warranty cost to the manufacturer when the items are sold with free replacement or pro rata warranties. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Industrial challenges in grinding

This keynote paper aims at analyzing relevant industrial demands for grinding research. The chosen focus is to understand what are the main research challenges in the extensive industrial use of the process. Since the automotive applications are the most important driving forces for grinding development, the paper starts with an analysis on the main trends in more efficient engines and the changes in their components that will affect the grinding performance. A view from 23 machine tool builders is also presented based on a survey made in interviews and during the EMO and IMTS machine tool shows. Case studies received by the STC G members were used to show how research centers and industries are collaborating. A view from the authors and the final conclusions show hot topics for future grinding research. (C) 2009 CIRP.

User guide for shock and blast simulation with the OctVCE code (version 3.5+), Department of Mechanical Engineering Report 2007/13

OctVCE is a cartesian cell CFD code produced especially for numerical simulations of shock and blast wave interactions with complex geometries. Virtual Cell Embedding (VCE) was chosen as its cartesian cell kernel as it is simple to code and sufficient for practical engineering design problems. This also makes the code much more ‘user-friendly’ than structured grid approaches as the gridding process is done automatically. The CFD methodology relies on a finite-volume formulation of the unsteady Euler equations and is solved using a standard explicit Godonov (MUSCL) scheme. Both octree-based adaptive mesh refinement and shared-memory parallel processing capability have also been incorporated. For further details on the theory behind the code, see the companion report 2007/12.

Interfície de control de una línia industrial automatitzada

Estudi seriós sobre les interfícies gràfiques destinades al sector industrial. En aquest sentit, s'analitza el perfil d'usuari o usuaris més freqüent en aquest sector (les seves característiques i les seves necessitats), es presenten i es descriuen diverses pautes de disseny i diversos elements gràfics que compleixen una sèrie de requisits predefinits, es procedeix a fer un muntatge d'exemple presentant una sèrie de pantalles (se n'explica i justifica el funcionament) i, per acabar, es proposa un mètode per a fer la validació del disseny, mètode que pot comportar modificacions sobre el disseny inicial.

On the innovation capacity of technologyrelated knowledge-intensive business services. A case study of the technology and engineering consulting (TEC) sector in Singapore

Even though the research on innovation in services has expanded remarkably especially during the past two decades, there is still a need to increase understanding on the special characteristics of service innovation. In addition to studying innovation in service companies and industries, research has also recently focused more on services in innovation, as especially the significance of so-called knowledge intensive business services (KIBS) for the competitive edge of their clients, othercompanies, regions and even nations has been proved in several previous studies. This study focuses on studying technology-based KIBS firms, and technology andengineering consulting (TEC) sector in particular. These firms have multiple roles in innovation systems, and thus, there is also a need for in-depth studies that increase knowledge about the types and dimensions of service innovations as well as underlying mechanisms and procedures which make the innovations successful. The main aim of this study is to generate new knowledge in the fragmented research field of service innovation management by recognizing the different typesof innovations in TEC services and some of the enablers of and barriers to innovation capacity in the field, especially from the knowledge management perspective. The study also aims to shed light on some of the existing routines and new constructions needed for enhancing service innovation and knowledge processing activities in KIBS companies of the TEC sector. The main samples of data in this research include literature reviews and public data sources, and a qualitative research approach with exploratory case studies conducted with the help of the interviews at technology consulting companies in Singapore in 2006. These complement the qualitative interview data gathered previously in Finland during a larger research project in the years 2004-2005. The data is also supplemented by a survey conducted in Singapore. The respondents for the survey by Tan (2007) were technology consulting companies who operate in the Singapore region. The purpose ofthe quantitative part of the study was to validate and further examine specificaspects such as the influence of knowledge management activities on innovativeness and different types of service innovations, in which the technology consultancies are involved. Singapore is known as a South-east Asian knowledge hub and is thus a significant research area where several multinational knowledge-intensive service firms operate. Typically, the service innovations identified in the studied TEC firms were formed by several dimensions of innovations. In addition to technological aspects, innovations were, for instance, related to new client interfaces and service delivery processes. The main enablers of and barriers to innovation seem to be partly similar in Singaporean firms as compared to the earlier study of Finnish TEC firms. Empirical studies also brought forth the significance of various sources of knowledge and knowledge processing activities as themain driving forces of service innovation in technology-related KIBS firms. A framework was also developed to study the effect of knowledge processing capabilities as well as some moderators on the innovativeness of TEC firms. Especially efficient knowledge acquisition and environmental dynamism seem to influence the innovativeness of TEC firms positively. The results of the study also contributeto the present service innovation literature by focusing more on 'innovation within KIBs' rather than 'innovation through KIBS', which has been the typical viewpoint stressed in the previous literature. Additionally, the study provides several possibilities for further research.

International journal of engineering education

This work presents an analysis of the assessment tools used by professors at the Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya to assess the generic competencies introduced in the Bachelor’s Degrees in Engineering. In order to conduct this study, a survey was designed and administered anonymously to a sample of the professors most receptive to educational innovation at their own university. All total, 80 professors responded to this survey, of whom 26% turned out to be members of the university’s own evaluation innovation group (https://www.upc.edu/rima/grups/grapa), GRAPA. This percentage represents 47% of the total GRAPA membership, meaning that nearly half of the professors most concerned about evaluation at the university chose to participate. The analysis of the variables carried out using the statistical program SPSS v19 shows that for practically 49% of those surveyed, rubrics are the tools most commonly used to assess generic competencies integrated in more specific ones. Of those surveyed, 60% use them either frequently or always. The most frequently evaluated generic competencies were teamwork (28%), problem solving (26%), effective oral and written communication (24%) and autonomous learning (13%), all of which constitute commonly recognized competencies in the engineering profession. A two-dimensional crosstabs analysis with SPSS v19 shows a significant correlation (Asymp. Sig. 0.001) between the type of tool used and the competencies assessed. However, no significant correlation was found between the type of assessment tool used and the type of subject, type of evaluation (formative or summative), frequency of feedback given to the students or the degree of student satisfaction, and thus none of these variables can be considered to have an influence on the kind of assessment tool used. In addition, the results also indicate that there are no significant differences between the instructors belonging to GRAPA and the rest of those surveyed

A case study of concurrent engineering application on the development of parts for the white goods industry in Brazil

This classical way to manage product development processes for massive production seems to be changing: high pressure for cost reduction, higher quality standards, markets reaching for innovation lead to the necessity of new tools for development control. Into this, and learning from the automotive and aerospace industries factories from other segments are starting to understand and apply manufacturing and assembly oriented projects to ease the task of generate goods and from this obtain at least a part of the expected results. This paper is intended to demonstrate the applicability of the concepts of Concurrent Engineering and DFM/DFA (Design for Manufacturing and Assembly) in the development of products and parts for the White Goods industry in Brazil (major appliances as refrigerators, cookers and washing machines), showing one case concerning the development and releasing of a component. Finally is demonstrated in a short term how was reached a solution that could provide cost savings and reduction on the time to delivery using those techniques.

A useful empirical bayesian method to analyse industrial data from saturated factorial designs

The use of saturated two-level designs is very popular, especially in industrial applications where the cost of experiments is too high. Standard classical approaches are not appropriate to analyze data from saturated designs, since we could only get the estimates of the main factor effects and we would not have degrees of freedom to estimate the variance of the error. In this paper, we propose the use of empirical Bayesian procedures to get inferences for data obtained from saturated designs. The proposed methodology is illustrated assuming a simulated data set. © 2013 Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Ensino de gestão da capacidade e da empresa com o apoio do jogo Mercado Virtual no curso de Mestrado Integrado em Engenharia Industrial e Gestão da UMINHO/Azurém e no Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia de Produção da FEB/Bauru/UNESP

O jogo de empresas Mercado Virtual foi desenvolvido para mediar o processo ensino-aprendizagem na área de tomada decisão e gestão de empresas e tem um banco de dados que armazena as decisões dos alunos. Os dados nele armazenados foram analisados em relação ao balanceamento de capacidade, objetivo de lucro e uso de recursos financeiros da empresa e foram encontradas incoerências entre os conteúdos pertinentes ao modelo e as decisões dos alunos. Elas foram classificadas como lacunas de aprendizado. Com o objetivo de analisar se as mesmas se repetem entre alunos do Programa de Mestrado Engenharia de Produção da UNESP de Bauru e Mestrado Integrado em Engenharia Industrial e Gestão da Uminho de Guimarães, Portugal, foram realizados dois experimentos, um em cada grupo. Para realizá-los utilizou-se o jogo Mercado Virtual e uma planilha de dimensionamento da empresa nos dois locais. A Sala de Estudos, os indicadores e o questionário de pesquisa da opinião foram utilizados somente em Portugal. Os resultados mostraram que o jogo é capaz de evidenciar as diferenças de domínio de conteúdo nos dois grupos e, também, que estas diferenças estão associadas aos projetos dos cursos. Sendo uma pesquisa exploratória, os experimentos foram realizados considerando-se somente os controles do jogo. Por isso, propõe-se a realização de pesquisas adicionais combinando controle sobre algumas das variáveis relacionadas do uso do jogo e atuação sobre aprendizagem dos alunos na forma de entrevistas e pesquisas não estruturadas. Conforme previsto, a pesquisa mostrou que os jogos podem ser utilizados com objetivos de aprendizagem mais amplos, considerando-se a avaliação indireta e cruzada sobre as decisões tomadas pelos alunos, como é o caso dos indicadores. Outra contribuição importante da pesquisa refere-se ao uso de jogos de empresas sob condições pouco controladas, ou seja, não houve...

Engineering an Ontology for Autonomous Systems - The OASys Ontology

This paper describes the development of an ontology for autonomous systems, as the initial stage of a research programe on autonomous systems’ engineering within a model-based control approach. The ontology aims at providing a unified conceptual framework for the autonomous systems’ stakeholders, from developers to software engineers. The modular ontology contains both generic and domain-specific concepts for autonomous systems description and engineering. The ontology serves as the basis in a methodology to obtain the autonomous system’s conceptual models. The objective is to obtain and to use these models as main input for the autonomous system’s model-based control system.

Maintenance management model for industrial Smes

This paper presents the design and results of the implementation of a model for the evaluation and improvement of maintenance management in industrial SMEs. A thorough review of the state of the art on maintenance management was conducted to determine the model variables; to characterize industrial SMEs, a questionnaire was developed with Likert variables collected in the previous step. Once validated the questionnaire, we applied the same to a group of seventy-five (75) SMEs in the industrial sector, located in Bolivar State, Venezuela. To identify the most relevant variables maintenance management, we used exploratory factor analysis technique applied to the data collected. The score obtained for all the companies evaluated (57% compliance), highlights the weakness of maintenance management in industrial SMEs, particularly in the areas of planning and continuous improvement; most SMEs are evaluated in corrective maintenance stage, and its performance standard only response to the occurrence of faults.

Sistema regional de innovación para el fortalecimiento de la I+D+i, en el sector industrial del estado Bolívar, Venezuela

El Estado Bolívar cuenta con excelentes recursos de materias primas tales como el mineral de hierro y bauxita, y de profesionales especializados, los cuales representan oportunidades para mejorar las ventajas competitivas de una de las zonas industriales más grande de Latinoamérica. Para aprovechar tales ventajas se debe cambiar el modelos de política industrial actual de exportar en el mayor porcentaje productos primarios y semielaborados a través de las empresa básicas instaladas en la zona, a otro modelo económico basado en política de innovación para la diversificación de nuevos productos, soportados en la transformación de las Pequeñas y Medianas Industrias (PYMIS) del estado Bolívar, consolidando las empresas en organizaciones innovadoras que generen, aporten o adapten los conocimientos científicos y tecnológicos, obteniendo nuevos productos o mejoras de procesos con un alto contenido de valor agregado. Estos cambios avanzarán en la medida que se logren articular e integrar los actores que forman parte del Sistema Regional de Innovación (SRI). El presente proyecto se planteo como objetivo diseñar estrategias para desarrollar y articular las capacidades de los actores del SRI para el fortalecimiento de la I+D+i en el sector industrial de las cadenas siderúrgicas y del aluminio del estado Bolívar.

Coordination mechanisms and software in industrial networks - a literature review

This paper groups recent supply chain management research focused on organizational design and its software support. The classification encompasses criteria related to research methodology and content. Empirical studies from management science focus on network types and organizational fit. Novel planning algorithms and innovative coordination schemes are developed mostly in the field of operations research in order to propose new software features. Operations and production management realize cost-benefit analysis of IT software implementations. The success of software solutions for network coordination depends strongly on the fit of three dimensions: network configuration, coordination scheme and software functionality. This paper concludes with proposals for future research on unaddressed issues within and among the identified research streams.