Lean product development in practice: Insights from 4 companies

This paper aims to elucidate practitioners' understanding and implementation of Lean in Product Development (LPD). We report on a workshop held in the UK during 2012. Managers and engineers from four organizations discussed their understanding of LPD and their ideas and practice regarding management and assessment of value and waste. The study resulted in a set of insights into current practice and lean thinking from the industry perspective. Building on this, the paper introduces a balanced value and waste model that can be used by practitioners as a checklist to identify issues that need to be considered when applying LPD. The main results indicate that organizations tend to focus on waste elimination rather than value enhancement in LPD. Moreover, the lean metrics that were discussed by the workshop participants do not link the strategic level with the operational one, and poorly reflect the value and waste generated in the process. Future directions for research are explored, and include the importance of a balanced approach considering both value and waste when applying LPD, and the need to link lean metrics with value and waste levels.

Partial and total replacement of fishmeal with poultry by-product meal in diets for gibel carp, Carassius auratus gibelio Bloch

Triplicate groups of gibel carp Carassius auratus gibelio Bloch (initial body weight: 4.89 g) were fed for 8 weeks at 24.8-30.8 degrees C with nine isonitrogenous and isoenergetic diets. The control diet (F1) used white fishmeal (FM) as the sole protein source. In the other eight diets (F2-F9), 40.5-100% of FM protein was substituted by poultry by-product meal (PBM) at 8.5% increments. The specific growth rate (SGR), feed efficiency ratio, protein efficiency ratio, protein retention efficiency and energy retention rate for fish fed PBM diets (F2-F9) were all higher, but not always significantly, than those for fish fed F1. All apparent digestibility coefficients for fish fed PBM diets were lower than those for fish fed F1. Fish fed F1 had a significantly higher hepatosomatic index value than fish fed PBM diets (P < 0.05). No significant (P > 0.05) effect of diet was found in whole-body moisture and fat content. Whole-body protein and energy content for fish fed PBM diets were slightly higher than that for fish fed F1. The optimal replacement level of FM by PBM was estimated by second-order polynomial regression to be 66.5% in protein.

A derivation of the source-channel error exponent using nonidentical product distributions

This paper studies the random-coding exponent of joint source-channel coding for a scheme where source messages are assigned to disjoint subsets (referred to as classes), and codewords are independently generated according to a distribution that depends on the class index of the source message. For discrete memoryless systems, two optimally chosen classes and product distributions are found to be sufficient to attain the sphere-packing exponent in those cases where it is tight. © 2014 IEEE.

Effect of replacement of dietary fish meal by meat and bone meal and poultry by-product meal on growth and feed utilization of gibel carp, Carassius auratus gibelio

Triplicate groups of gibel carp Carassius auratus gibelio (initial body weight: 5.25 +/- 0.02 g) were fed for 8 weeks at 20-25 degreesC on five isonitrogenous (crude protein: 400 g kg(-1)) and isoenergetic diets (gross energy: 17 kJ g(-1)). Meat and bone meal (MBM) or poultry by-product meal (PBM) were used to replace fish meal at different levels of protein. The control diet contained fish meal as the sole protein source. In the other four diets, 150 or 500 g kg(-1) of fish meal protein was substituted by MBM (MBM15, MBM50) or PBM (PBM15, PBM50). The results showed that feeding rate for the MBM50 group was significantly higher than for other groups except the PBM50 group (P < 0.05). Growth rate in the MBM15 group was significantly higher than that in the control (P < 0.05), while there was no significant difference in growth between the control and other groups (P > 0.05). Feed efficiency and protein efficiency ratio in MBM50 was significantly lower while that in MBM15 was significantly higher (P < 0.05). Replacement of fish meal by MBM at 500 g kg(-1) protein significantly decreased apparent dry matter digestibility (ADC(D)) and gross energy (ADC(E)) while apparent protein digestibility (ADC(P)) was significantly decreased by the replacement of MBM or PBM (P < 0.05). The results suggest that MBM and PBM could replace up to 500 g kg(-1) of fish meal protein in diets for gibel carp without negative effects on growth while 150 g kg(-1) replacement by MBM protein improved feed utilization.

Effect of replacement of fish meal by meat and bone meal and poultry by-product meal in diets on the growth and immune response of Macrobrachium nipponense

The potential use of poultry by-product meal (PBM) and meat and bone meal (MBM) as alternative dietary protein sources for juvenile Macrobrachium nipponense was studied by a 70-day growth trial. Triplicate groups of M. nipponense (initial body weight: 0.37 g) were fed at 20.7-22.4 degreesC on each of the five isoenergetic and isonitrogenous diets (protein content about 38%) with different replacement of fish meal by MBM or PBM. The control diet used white fish meal as the sole protein source, the other four diets were prepared with 15% or 50% fish meal protein substituted by either MBM (MBM15, MBM50) or PBM (PBM15, PBM50). The results showed that replacement of fish meal by MBM in diets did not affect growth performance of M. nipponense (P > 0.05), while specific growth rate in PBM15 was significantly higher than that in other groups (P < 0.05). Survival rates of shrimp fed with MBM15 diet were significantly higher than that in other groups (P < 0.05). No significant differences in immunological parameters, including total haemocyte count (THC), phenoloxidase activity (PO) and respiratory burst (O-2(-)), were observed between the shrimps that were fed five experimental diets, and all determined immunological parameters in control groups were slightly higher than those in replacement groups. In conclusion, either MBM or PBM investigated could replace up to 50% fish meal protein in diets for M. nipponense. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Measurement of gain spectrum for semiconductor lasers utilizing integrations of product of emission spectrum and a phase function over one mode interval

A technique based on the integrations of the product of amplified spontaneous emission spectrum and a phase function over one mode interval is proposed for measuring gain spectrum for Fabry-Perot semiconductor lasers, and a gain correction factor related to the response function of the optical spectrum analyzer (OSA) is obtained for improving the accuracy of measured gain spectrum. The gain spectra with a difference less than 1.3 cm(-1) from 1500 to 1600 nm are obtained for a 250-mum-long semiconductor laser at the OSA resolution of 0.06, 0.1, 0.2, and 0.5 nm. The corresponding gain correction factor is about 9 cm(-1) at the resolution of 0.5 nm. The gain spectrum measured at the resolution of 0.5 nm has the same accuracy as that obtained by the Hakki-Paoli method at the resolution of 0.06 nm for the laser with the mode interval of 1.3 nm.

Effect of acidity in TS-1 zeolites on product distribution of the styrene oxidation reaction

The role of Bronsted acidity of titanium silicalite zeolite (with different ratios of Si/Ti) in oxidation reactions of styrene has been investigated and discussed. For zeolites with Si/Ti > 42, most of the titanium is in the zeolite framework. These framework titanium species, which act both as the isolated titanium centers and as Bronsted acidity centers (together with the Bronsted acidity produced by the tetrahedral aluminum impurity introduced during synthesis), can catalyze both the epoxidation and the succeeding rearrangement reactions, thus promoting the formation of phenylacetaldehyde. With an increase in the titanium content of the zeolite, titanium will tend to stay outside the zeolite lattice, except for the TiOx nanophases which can be occluded in the zeolite channels or on the external surface. These non-framework titanium species are favorable for the carbon-carbon bond scission, leading to the production of additional benzaldehyde. The catalytic performances of these zeolites with different Si/Ti ratios are correlated here with their structural information by using solid-state NMR and UV-Vis methods. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.