Download or read book Design of Flexible Production Systems written by Tullio Tolio and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-12-11 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last decade, the production of mechanical components to be assembled in final products produced in high volumes (e.g. cars, mopeds, industrial vehicles, etc.) has undergone deep changes due to the overall modifications in the way companies compete. Companies must consider competitive factors such as short lead times, tight product tolerances, frequent market changes and cost reduction. Anyway, companies often have to define production objectives as trade-offs among these critical factors since it can be difficult to improve all of them. Even if system flexibility is often considered a fundamental requirement for firms, it is not always a desirable characteristic of a system because it requires relevant investment cost which can jeopardize the profitability of the firm. Dedicated systems are not able to adapt to changes of the product characteristics while flexible systems offer more flexibility than what is needed, thus increasing investment and operative costs. Production contexts characterized by mid to high demand volume of well identified families of products in continuous evolution do not require the highest level of flexibility; therefore, manufacturing system flexibility must be rationalized and it is necessary to find out the best trade-off between productivity and flexibility by designing manufacturing systems endowed with the right level of flexibility required by the production problem. This new class of production systems can be named Focused Flexibility Manufacturing Systems-FFMSs. The flexibility degree in FFMSs is related to their ability to cope with volume, mix and technological changes, and it must take into account both present and future changes. The required level of system flexibility impacts on the architecture of the system and the explicit design of flexibility often leads to hybrid systems, i.e. automated integrated systems in which parts can be processed by both general purpose and dedicated machines. This is a key issue of FFMSs and results from the matching of flexibility and productivity that respectively characterize FMSs and Dedicated Manufacturing Systems (DMSs). The market share of the EU in the machine tool sector is 44%; the introduction of focused flexibility would be particularly important for machine tool builders whose competitive advantage is based on the ability of customizing their systems on the basis of needs of their customers. In fact, even if current production contexts frequently present situations which would fit well with the FFMS approach, tradition and know-how of machine tool builders play a crucial role. Firms often agree with the focused flexibility vision, nevertheless they decide not to pay the risk and efforts related to the design of this new system architecture. This is due also to the lack of well-structured design approaches which can help machine tool builders to configure innovative systems. Therefore, the FFMS topic is studied through the book chapters following a shared mission: "To define methodologies and tools to design production systems with a minimum level of flexibility needed to face, during their lifecycle, the product and process evolution both in the technological and demand aspects. The goal is to find out the optimal trade-off between flexibility and productivity". The book framework follows the architecture which has been developed to address the FFMS Design problem. This architecture is both broad and detailed, since it pays attention to all the relevant levels in a firm hierarchy which are involved in the system design. Moreover, the architecture is innovative because it models both the point of view of the machine tool builder and the point of view of the system user. The architecture starts analyzing Manufacturing Strategy issues and generating the possible demand scenario to be faced. Technological aspects play a key role while solving process plan problems for the products in the part family. Strategic and technological data becomes input when a machine tool builder performs system configuration. The resulting system configurations are possible solutions that a system user considers when planning its system capacity. All the steps of the architecture are deeply studied, developing methods and tools to address each subproblem. Particular attention is paid to the methodologies adopted to face the different subproblems: mathematical programming, stochastic programming, simulation techniques and inverse kinematics have been used. The whole architecture provides a general approach to implement the right degree of flexibility and it allows to study how different aspects and decisions taken in a firm impact on each other. The work presented in the book is innovative because it gives links among different research fields, such as Manufacturing Strategy, Process Plan, System Design, Capacity Planning and Performance Evaluation; moreover, it helps to formalize and rationalize a critical area such as manufacturing system flexibility. The addressed problem is relevant at an academic level but, also, at an industrial level. A great deal of industrial sectors need to address the problem of designing systems with the right degree of flexibility; for instance, automotive, white goods, electrical and electronic goods industries, etc. Attention to industrial issues is confirmed by empirical studies and real case analyses which are presented within the book chapters.

Download or read book Industrial Production Management in Flexible Manufacturing Systems written by Dima, Ioan Constantin and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2013-01-31 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Industrial Production Management in Flexible Manufacturing Systems addresses the present discussions surrounding flexible production systems based on automation, robotics and cybernetics as they continue to replace the traditional production systems. The book also covers issues related to the use of multi-servicing in the operational management of the industrial production and its scheduling systems.

Download or read book Legislation to Provide a Flexible Production Rate at the Naval Petroleum Reserves written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Armed Services. Subcommittee on Investigations and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book World of Possibilities written by Charles F. Sabel and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-05-16 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book retells the history of Western industrialization, revealing possibilities unexplored in the nineteenth century, variants of which have come to transform present day economies. It shows that economic actors have historically been more aware of the great strategic choices they faced than standard theory credits them with being, and this surprising acuity allows them to imagine and put into practice solutions which current theories of industrial organization have scarcely anticipated. The book is therefore at one and the same time a contribution to a substantive revision of the history of mechanized production and a propaedeutic in a form of explanation that approximates the knowledge of the actor to the knowledge of the theorist. The volume groups essays presented by a multinational team of historians and social scientists drawing on intensive primary research on a wide range of firms, regions, sectors and national economies in Western Europe and the United States from the eighteenth century to the 1990s.

Download or read book The Transition to Flexibility written by Daniel C. Knudsen and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The advanced capitalist nations are currently undergoing an enormous economic, social, and political transformation. At the heart of this transformation is the transition between large scale, standardized production (Fordism) and new, more flexible approaches to manufacturing (flexibility), and a concomitant extension of manufacturing to include products both concrete (goods) and ephemeral (services). This volume explores the consequences of this transition from the standpoints of technology, labor relations, firm strategy, education, government programs, and geography. The book is a collection of papers by well-known scholars investigating the current global transition from mass consumption and production to flexible production for niche markets. The book is unique in that it not only discusses standard economic concerns, but also investigates the social and political implications of this transition. Each chapter is concerned with a different aspect of the same restructuring process.

Download or read book Working in Restructured Workplaces written by Daniel B. Cornfield and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2001-07-27 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are the contemporary trends in workplace restructuring and the sociological impact on workers′ lives? Around what concepts will work be organized and groups and individuals motivated in their work into the new century? To give you definition and answers to these contemporary questions, the editors of the sociological quarterly, Work and Occupations, assembled Working in Restructured Workplaces. It addresses contradictory influences in contemporary workplace restructuring, its impact on workers′ lives, and the direction and nature of future changes in the workplace. This authentic collection of sociological thought and research consists of previous works in Work and Occupations and some commissioned specifically for this book to focus on the nature, causes, and consequences of workplace restructuring. The editors introduce a new concept of "workplace restructuring" to broaden your perspective and then assess implications for workers and their lives. The chapters address four major themes: Reconfiguring workplace status hierarchies Casualization of employment relationships Restructuring and worker marginalization Comparative labor responses to global restructuring The last two chapters chart new research agendas on the boundaries and durability of workplace restructuring.

Download or read book Simulation Approach Towards Energy Flexible Manufacturing Systems written by Jan Beier and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-03-23 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This authored monograph provides in-depth analysis and methods for aligning electricity demand of manufacturing systems to VRE supply. The book broaches both long-term system changes and real-time manufacturing execution and control, and the author presents a concept with different options for improved energy flexibility including battery, compressed air and embodied energy storage. The reader will also find a detailed application procedure as well as an implementation into a simulation prototype software. The book concludes with two case studies. The target audience primarily comprises research experts in the field of green manufacturing systems.

Download or read book Flexibility and Lifelong Learning written by Katherine Nicoll and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-09-27 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book seeks to develop different approaches to policy analysis through a discursive and rhetorical engagement with the themes of flexibility and lifelong learning.

Download or read book Multiple Criteria Decision Making written by G.H. Tzeng and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It was a great honor and privilege to organize the Tenth International Conference on Multiple Criteria Decision Making at Taipei, Taiwan, July 19-24, 1992. Accompanying this unique honor and privilege there was a series of complex, challenging problems. Each of them involved multiple criteria, fuzziness, uncertainty, unknown yet dynamic changes. The problem sometimes cost us sleep because we wanted to do the very best job, but in reality it seemed to be impossible. The following are the main goals of the organization committee: (i) inviting all prominent and distinguished MCDM scholars around the world to participate in the conference and to present their up-to-date research results, (ii) providing financial aid and hospitality so that each invited speaker can have free room and board at a five star hotel, (iii) creating an environment so that all participants can freely exchange their ideas, and build friendships around the world. Due to the enthusiastic participation of the prominent scholars, the generous support of the Taiwan government, universities, the Industrial leaders and nonprofit foundations, and the active problem solving attitude and doing of the organizational committee and the Habitual Domain (HD) club, the conference was a great success.

Download or read book Contemporary Business written by Louis E. Boone and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-03-26 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary Business, 18th Edition, is a student friendly, engaging product designed to attract students to the field of business. Boone 18e offers a comprehensive approach to the material that will cater to a wide variety of students with different learning needs. Up-to-date content is vital to any Intro to Business course and Boone 18e with its contemporary style, wealth of new examples, and hot business topics can deliver that currency.

Download or read book Between Truth and Power written by Julie E. Cohen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-02 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A work of ambitious interdisciplinary scholarship that explores the ways that law and technology interact. Our current legal system is to a great extent the product of an earlier period of social and economic transformation. From the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century, as accountability for industrial-age harms became a pervasive source of conflict, the US legal system underwent profound, tectonic shifts. Today, struggles over ownership of information-age resources and accountability for information-age harms are producing new systemic changes. In Between Truth and Power, Julie E. Cohen explores the relationships between legal institutions and political and economic transformation. Systematically examining struggles over the conditions of information flow and the design of information architectures and business models, she argues that as law is enlisted to help produce the profound economic and sociotechnical shifts that have accompanied the emergence of the informational economy, it is too is transforming in fundamental ways. Drawing on elements from legal theory, science and technology studies, information studies, communication studies and organization studies to develop a complex theory of institutional change, Cohen develops an account of the gradual emergence of legal institutions adapted to the information age and of the power relationships that such institutions reflect and reproduce. A tour de force of ambitious interdisciplinary scholarship, Between Truth and Power will transform our thinking about the possible futures of law and legal institutions in the networked information era.

Download or read book Fordism and Flexibility written by Roger Burrows and published by Springer. This book was released on 1992-06-12 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the 1980s there were profound changes in the labour process towards the 'flexible worker' and in the labour market towards a 'flexible workforce'. Three approaches to explain these changes provide the focus for this book: Marxist regulation theory; the notion of flexible specialisation associated with the 'new' institutional economics; and the model of the flexible firm derived from managerialist literature. In the book, the claims made by these approaches are investigated and their implications are examined in relation to emerging patterns of work in advanced societies.

Download or read book Petty Capitalists and Globalization written by Alan Smart and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2005-03-10 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines how small firms, like large ones, are mobilizing to compete in a global economy.

Download or read book Proceedings of the Eighth Asia International Symposium on Mechatronics written by Baoyan Duan and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-07-12 with total page 2195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book presents high-quality papers from the Eighth Asia International Symposium on Mechatronics (AISM 2021). It discusses the latest technological trends and advances in electromechanical coupling and environmental adaptability design of electronic equipment, sensing and measurement, mechatronics in manufacturing and automations, energy harvesting & storage, robotics, automation and control systems. It includes papers based on original theoretical, practical and experimental simulations, development, applications, measurements, and testing. The applications and solutions discussed in the book provide excellent reference material for future product development.

Download or read book Routledge Library Editions Social Cultural Geography written by Various Authors and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-07-30 with total page 4310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Re-issuing books originally published between 1969 and 1990 this set of 15 volumes gives a 20 year perspective on the development of the discipline of social geography. The books emphasize the increasingly important contribution of geographical theory to the understanding of social change, values, economic and political organization and ethical imperatives. The volumes are authored by well-known international geographers and discuss the philosophy and sociology of geography as well as key themes such as the geography of health, crime, space. They also examine the cross-over of geography with other disciplines, such as literature and history.

Download or read book Innovations in Competitive Manufacturing written by Paul M. Swamidass and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Innovations in Competitive Manufacturing is an examination of manufacturing innovations - both technical and knowledge-based. Over the recent past, technology has created dramatic changes in manufacturing. As a result, the book focuses on the use of technology in gaining competitive advantage in global manufacturing. Forty topics are surveyed in the book, organized into thirteen chapters. Each topic is a carefully written account by one or more leading researchers in that area. This is the first systematic examination of the recent innovations in manufacturing strategy and technology. In addition to providing an understanding of these manufacturing innovations, the book underscores the strategic importance of creating and sustaining the technological resources to ensure a stable manufacturing economic base. The book's purpose is to examine the elements that make today's manufacturers successful. Many examples from industry throughout the book will enable the reader to appreciate and comprehend the concepts presented in the article. In addition to the technical and innovative information, implementation issues concerning new ideas and manufacturing practices are explored within the topical discussions. Four in-depth descriptions of real-life cases provide illustration of key principles. The book has been constructed as a reference tool for manufacturing researchers, students, and practitioners. Hence, after reading the introduction `Innovation in Competitive Manufacturing: From JIT to E-Business', any section or topic in the book can be consulted and/or read in any sequence the reader may choose.

Download or read book China And The World Economy Anti crisis And Rebalance written by Da Lei and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2022-07-27 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book studies the main characteristics of the operation of the Chinese economy and the world economy after the financial crisis in 2008. The analysis starts from the core logic of the dilemma of the anti-crisis and rebalancing growth of the world economy. It further analyzes the impact of major countries' macro-economic policies on the global economy and the external risks and countermeasures faced by the Chinese economy. In addition, this book studies the development of foreign direct investment and the service industry in major countries after the crisis.