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 Methodologies for Comparisons of Agricultural Output Input and Productivity written by and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Fordism Flexibility and Regional Productivity Growth written by Richard A. Matthews and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 1996 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Download or read book Major Statistical Series of the U S Dept of Agriculture written by Harry Hays Harp and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Building the Flexible Firm written by Henk Wijtze Volberda and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do firms cope with changing environments? Is flexibility really the solution? Based on an Igor Ansoff Award winning study, Building the Flexible Firm shows how flexibility has become the new strategic challenge for contemporary firms. Offering a wealth of insights and based on extensive interviews with practitioners, Henk Volberda provides a strategic framework which explains what types of flexibility are effective under different organizational conditions and environmental characteristics. He also demonstrates an integrated method for diagnosing a firm's flexibility and for guiding the transition to greater flexibility and responsiveness.

Download or read book The Special Data Dissemination Standard written by International Monetary Fund. Statistics Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2014-01-07 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) launched the data standards initiatives to enhance member countries’ data transparency and to promote their development of sound statistical systems. The need for data standards was highlighted by the financial crises of the mid-1990s, in which information deficiencies were seen to play a role. Under the data standards initiatives, the IMF established the Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) in 1996 to provide guidance to countries that have or seek access to capital markets to disseminate key data so that users in general, and financial market participants in particular, have adequate information to assess the economic situations of individual countries. The SDDS not only prescribes that subscribers disseminate certain data categories, but also prescribes that subscribers disseminate the relevant metadata to promote public knowledge and understanding of their compilation practices with respect to the required data categories. In 1997, the IMF introduced under the initiatives the General Data Dissemination System (GDDS) to provide a framework for countries that aim to develop their statistical systems, within which they can work toward disseminating comprehensive and reliable data and, eventually, meet SDDS requirements. At the Eighth Review of the Fund’s Data Standards Initiatives in February 2012, the IMF’s Executive Board approved the SDDS Plus as an upper tier of the Fund’s data standards initiatives. The SDDS Plus is open to all SDDS subscribers and is aimed at economies with systemically important financial sectors.

Download or read book Digitalized and Harmonized Industrial Production Systems written by Armando Walter Colombo and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2019-10-28 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the one side, Industrial competitiveness today means shorter product lifecycles, increased product variety, and shorter times to market and customized tangible products and services. To face these challenges, the manufacturing industry is forced to move from traditional management, control, and automation approaches towards industrial cyber-physical systems. On the other side, several emergent engineering approaches and related Information‐Communication‐Control‐Technologies, such as Multi‐Agent-Systems, Service‐Oriented Architecture, Plug‐and‐Produce Systems, Cloud and Fog Technologies, Big Data and Analytics, among others, have been researched during the last years. The confluence of those results with the latest developments in Industrial Digitalization, Systems‐of‐Cyber-Physical-Systems Engineering, Internet‐of‐Things, Internet‐of‐Services, and Industry 4.0 is opening a new broad spectrum of innovation possibilities. The PERFoRM (Production-harmonizEd-Reconfiguration of Flexible Robots and Machinery) approach is one of them. It teaches the reader what it means when production machines and systems are digitalized and migrated into Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems and what happens when they are networked and start collaborating with each other and with the human, using the internet. After a Technology Trend Screening and beyond a comprehensive state-of-the-art analysis about Industrial Digitalization and Industry 4.0-compliant solutions, the book introduces methods, architectures, and technologies applicable in real industrial use cases, explained for a broad audience of researchers, practitioners, and industrialists.

Download or read book Statistical Reference Index written by and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 1062 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Agriculture Handbook written by and published by . This book was released on 1949 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Major Statistical Series of the U S Department of Agriculture written by and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Major Statistical Series of the U S Dept of Agriculture written by and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Economics and the Price Index written by S.N. Afriat and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-11-26 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The price index, a pervasive long established institution for economics, is a number issued by the Statistical Office that should tell anyone the ratio of costs of maintaining a given standard of living in two periods where prices differ. For a chain of three periods, the product of the ratios for successive pairs must coincide with the ratio for t

Download or read book Economic Indicators of the Farm Sector written by and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Farm Index written by and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Human Resource Management written by David G. Collings and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-06-22 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Effective management of human resources is essential to the success of any organization. In this authoritative, sophisticated and engaging new text on Human Resource Management, an international team of leading analysts guides the advanced student through this fundamental discipline of management in all its complexity. The book explores all the central themes and concepts of HRM theory and practice, and introduces the most important issues influencing contemporary practice in a wide range of organizational contexts. It systematically examines the main functional areas of HRM, and engages with a number of key contemporary issues for both scholars and practitioners. Topics covered include: Strategic HRM Ethics in HRM Knowledge management HRM and performance Outsourcing and implications for HRM HRM in small and medium enterprises Key functional areas of HR practice International HRM Adopting a critical perspective throughout that challenges the student to examine closely the fundamental purpose and practices of HRM, this book is essential reading for all serious students of Human Resource Management and for any HRM professional looking to deepen his understanding of the subject.

Download or read book Producer Price Indexes written by and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 670 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Continual Improvement A Bibliography with Indexes 1992 1993 written by and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: