3D Printing for Product Designers closes the gap between the rhetoric of 3D printing in manufacturing and the reality for product designers. It provides practical strategies to support the adoption and integration of 3D printing into professional practice. 3D printing has evolved over the last decade into a practical proposition for manufacturing, opening up innovative opportunities for product designers. From its foundations in rapid prototyping, additive manufacturing has developed into a range of technologies suitable for end-use products. This book shows you how to evaluate and sensitively understand people, process, and products and demonstrates how solutions for working with additive manufacturing can be developed in context. It includes a practical, step-by-step plan for product designers and CEOs aimed at supporting the successful implementation of 3D printing by stakeholders at all levels of a manufacturing facility, tailored to their stage of technology integration and business readiness. It features a wide range of real-world examples of practice illustrated in full colour, across industries such as healthcare, construction, and film, aligning with the strategic approach outlined in the book. The book can be followed chronologically to guide you to transform your process for a company, to meet the unique needs of a specific client, or to be used as a starting point for the product design entrepreneur. Written by experienced industry professionals and academics, this is a fundamental reference for product designers, industrial designers, design engineers, CEOs, consultants, and makers.

To meet the needs of today, engineered products and systems are an important element of the world economy, and each year billions of dollars are spent to develop, manufacture, operate, and maintain various types of products and systems around the globe. This book integrates and combines three of those topics to meet today's needs for the engineers working in these fields. This book provides a single volume that considers reliability, maintainability, and safety when designing new products and systems. Examples along with their solutions are placed at the end of each chapter to test readers' comprehension. The book is written in a manner that readers do not need any previous knowledge of the subject, and many references are provided. This book is also useful to many people, including design engineers, system engineers, reliability specialists, safety professionals, maintainability engineers, engineering administrators, graduate and senior undergraduate students, researchers, and instructors.

This book presents the proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on the Industry 4.0 Model for Advanced Manufacturing (AMP 2018), held in Belgrade, Serbia, on 5-7 June 2018, the latest in a series of high-level conferences that brings together experts from academia and industry to exchange knowledge, ideas, experiences, research findings, and information in the field of manufacturing. The book addresses a wide range of topics, including, for example, design of smart and intelligent products, developments in CAD/CAM technologies, rapid prototyping and reverse engineering, multistage manufacturing processes, manufacturing automation in the Industry 4.0 model, cloud-based products, and cyber-physical and reconfigurable manufacturing systems. By providing updates on key issues and recent advances in manufacturing engineering and technologies, it aids the transfer of vital knowledge to the next generation of academics and practitioners. It appeals to anyone working or conducting research in this rapidly evolving field.

Although the emergence of virtual reality (VR) goes back to the 1960s, with the recent availability of low-cost and high-accuracy systems it has become increasingly prevalent in a wide variety of areas; with uses ranging from training and education to rehabilitation and entertainment. Nowadays, there are many companies that have their own VR systems with various types of headsets and controllers. This has shaped how VR is being used today and how we interact with the latest generation VR systems. With the rapidly evolving dynamics gained through technological advancements, VR is projected to grow and transform the way humans do everyday tasks both in the workplace and in personal lives. In addition to the VR headsets, there are now augmented reality (AR) headsets that allow the user to see their real-world surroundings while also viewing computer generated imagery. This leads to an enhanced user experience. This book aims to provide a comprehensive update of the latest scientific research, mainly in VR and partly in AR, from the last five years. The content is themed around the application areas of training, education, robotics, health and well-being, and user experience.

"A valuable, practical guide for navigating through ICT turbulence and dynamics. A lighthouse for the human side of ICT." Erik van de Loo, Director Executive Masters in Change, INSEAD Professor of Organisational Behaviour, INSEAD Business School "The ICT Malaise is a different and thorough point of view on the dysfunctional approach the world has taken to information and technology. In an era of exponential changes where humans are rendered obsolete at the same pace of technology, it is fundamental to go back to basics on why we lead and innovate in the first place." Silvio Rugolo, VP, Global Sales, BMC Software, Digital Service Operations We hurtle ahead with technology, apps, and the newest innovation in a world that already demands a constant online presence and availability. You are included if you quickly adapt the newest technology and excluded if you wait too long. Information and communication technology (ICT) service providers, suppliers, and customers all try to make sense and make the most money out of technology developments and constant innovation with the help of frameworks, methodologies, best-practice approaches, and models. They continuously improve, align, integrate, and optimize, but unfortunately do not apply the same drive to safeguarding quality. This book leads the reader along a path of critical thinking, reflecting, and contemplating while offering alternative ways for service providers, customers, and suppliers to interact with each other. In addition, it encourages them to conduct their business in such a way that customers, service providers, and suppliers achieve satisfaction. The author implies a different mindset, a new way of interacting and a surprising approach to the many frameworks, models, and methodologies being introduced ceaselessly. While reading this book, IT professionals receive practical guidelines for using these newfound methodologies and models to help build and maintain healthy business relations while ensuring quality delivery of products and services. Readers will be surprised by how much more satisfying and less stressful their work environment becomes!

Many leaders and managers have led improvement initiatives in a variety of different industry sectors. Most believe that when they begin these efforts, they already have the tools they need in their improvement "backpack." Using these tools, they make substantial improvements to processes in a wide array of industry segments. As time passes, however, most realize that there is a missing link in their arsenal of tools for improvement. The author of this book faced this same predicament and he discovered what the missing link was in his improvement tool kit: Theory of Constraints (TOC). Once he learned the details of TOC, his ability to make major improvements jettisoned upward to levels he had not seen before. TOC is the common denominator in all the case studies presented in this book. This book opens with a chapter on what Theory of Constraints is and why it works so well in improvement efforts. The second and third chapters cover the important points related to Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma as well as key points related to variability. Chapter 4 demonstrates how to effectively combine these three components to achieve maximum improvement and the corresponding enhancement to your company's profitability. The remainder of this book is composed of true case studies from different industry segments, using this integrated improvement methodology. Essentially, this book lays the foundation for what most practitioners are just beginning to understand-this integrated improvement methodology is superior to the three components used in isolation from each other. This book presents a step-by-step method of how to combine the Theory of Constraints, Lean, and Six Sigma, and then demonstrates its effectiveness in a very diverse array of industries.

Achieve any cost goals in half the time and achieve stable production with quality designed in right-the-first-time. Design for Manufacturability: How to Use Concurrent Engineering to Rapidly Develop Low-Cost, High-Quality Products for Lean Production is still the definitive work on DFM. This second edition extends the proven methodology to the most advanced product development process with the addition of the following new, unique, and original topics, which have never been addressed previously. These topics show you how to: Cut cost from 1/2 to 1/10 in 9 categories-with ways to remove that much cost from product charges and pricing Commercialize innovation-starting with Manufacturable Research and learning from the new section on scalability, you will learn how to design products and processing equipment to quickly scale up to any needed demand or desired growth. Design product families that can be built "on-demand" in platform cells that also "mass customize" products to-order Make Lean production easier to implement with much more effective results while making build-to-order practical with spontaneous supply chains and eliminating forecasted inventory by including an updated chapter on "Designing Products for Lean Production" The author's 30 years of experience teaching companies DFM based on pre-class surveys and plant tours is the foundation of this most advanced design process. It includes incorporating dozens of proven DFM guidelines through up-front concurrent-engineering teamwork that cuts the time to stable production in half and curtails change orders for ramps, rework, redesign, substituting cheaper parts, change orders to fix the changes, unstable design specs, part obsolescence, and late discovery of manufacturability issues at periodic design reviews. This second edition is for the whole product development community, including: Engineers who want to learn the most advanced DFM techniques Managers who want to lead the most advanced product development Project team leaders who want to immediately apply all the principles taught in this book in their own micro-climate Improvement leaders and champions who want to implement the above and ensure that the company can design products and versatile processing equipment for low-volume/high-mix product varieties Designing half to a tenth of cost categories can avoid substituting cheap parts, which degrades quality, and encourages standardization and spontaneous supply chains, which will encourage Lean initiatives. Using cellular manufacturing to shift production between lines for mixed production of platforms and build-to-order to offer the fastest order fulfillment can beat any competitors' delivery time.

ReducedEffort (R) Changeover: The Lean Way to Quickly Reduce Changeover Downtime provides a step-by-step guide for conducting a Kaizen event that empowers the people who do the work to improve how that work is done. Packed with tips, tools, and examples, this practical guide begins with a clear description of the Lean principles underlying the ReducedEffort Changeover system. In addition, it explains how and why reducing the effort always reduces the time of converting a machine, line, or process from one product to another. In this book, you'll find everything you need to quickly and dramatically reduce the effort and time of any process using the ReducedEffort method. This is not another book about how to do SMED. Like SMED, ReducedEffort Changeover (REC) does reduce changeover time, but REC is not SMED. SMED, Single Minute (or digit) Exchange of Dies, developed by Dr. Shigeo Shingo, has been the process used for many years by countless manufacturing plants to reduce changeover time. The SMED process was used in Toyota to reduce the changeover of a 1,000-ton stamping press from four hours to three minutes. As a Lean-based process, the REC system focuses on reducing the labor, not the time, involved in changing over a machine to work on a different product. With REC, there are no Standard Operation Combination Sheets to fill out and no Problem Identification Sheets to complete, and it does not require the arduous chore of timing every task, as SMED does. Very little capital investment is required with REC. Unlike SMED, it does not require management-approved funding to achieve substantial results. Because REC is not capital-driven, management does not need to drive the process. The operators will drive the process because it reduces their labor. One of the biggest advantages of REC over SMED is that operators will readily accept the process, and more important, they will want to sustain it. The reason for this is quite simple and will become evident when the REC process is defined. REC takes SMED to a new level that is easier and faster both to implement and to deliver sustainable results.

Introduction to Flat Panel Displays describes the fundamental physics and materials of major flat panel display technologies including LED, OLED, LCD, PDP and FED and reflective displays. A reference for graduate students and new entrants to the display industry, the book currently covers the basic science behind each display technology and gives solved problems and homework problems in each chapter to aid self-study. With advancements in this field, there is enough change in the FPD industry to justify a second edition. This book offers the latest information on modern display technology and features new developments in OLED materials including phosphorescent, TTA, and TADF OLEDS, white light OLED and light extraction. It provides key information on blue phase, automotive lighting, quantum-dot enhanced LCDS, device configurations and performance, and LEDs, specifically nitrate-based. Application features include OLED for mobile, TV, light and flexible OLED, and reflective display specifically e-paper technology and low power consumption displays.

Written in a novel format, this book addresses the challenge of changing a "sick" culture. Some organizations wake up one day and realize they have become something they never intended. Their employees run scared. There is no innovation, only blind obedience. There are warlords within the ranks of management, and they fight over turf without considering the best interests of customers, their employees, or their organization as a whole. At the Charleston, SC, branch of Copper-Bottom Insurance, the wakeup call comes when an employee files a lawsuit against the company and its leaders. The Charleston division Vice President, Jack Simmons, is put on probation and given an ultimatum: "Change the culture!" Jack understands the "or be fired" implication all too well. He scrambles to find help and runs into an old friend, Don Spears, from Friedman Electronics. With Don's help, Jack begins the journey that will heal his organization. In the course of their first visit, Don and his Director of Continuous Improvement, Tim Stark, help Jack to make an important discovery: Copper-Bottom's executives are not showing their people respect. Don and Tim point to the following observations as proof. Copper-Bottom leaders are Using top-down, "command-and-control" leadership behaviors rather than recognizing their people as Subject Matter Experts and listening to them Issuing instructions to their people rather than observing then improving performance through coaching Keeping employees in the dark as to the impact their work has on the organization's mission Unaware of the obstacles in their people's paths; hence, never using the authority of their positions to remove those obstacles Staying in their offices, aloof to the difficulties their subordinates face As Don and Tim see it, Copper-Bottom's problems stem from the way its leaders lead. After the executive who precipitated the lawsuit is let go, the Friedman team begins the process of teaching Copper-Bottom's executives that a healthy culture begins at the leadership level. Don, Friedman's General Manager, states that cultures change when their leaders change. In short, leaders need to initiate the changes in the culture by first demonstrating the desired behavior. So begins the process of reeducating Copper-Bottom's leaders in the difference between managing and leading. In short order, Tim begins to work with Jack's leadership team while Don takes Jack to Friedman's Oakland facility. There Jack learns To first concentrate on surrounding himself with the right people The importance of top-down metrics to which leaders first hold themselves accountable Cascading their metrics (KPIs) down through their organization and using a dialog about them as a way of developing relationships of respect Although a long way from complete, by the end of Jack's six-month probation, Copper-Bottom has made significant strides and is well on its way to changing its culture. Jack will learn that he is not the only one to appreciate the new developments.

The crucial need to substitute true leadership for bad management practices such as Management By Objectives (MBO) and the use of fear is now well known and was often championed by Dr. W. Edwards Deming. While significant progress has been made, many organizations (especially outside of manufacturing) are either just getting started with their improvement efforts or they are faking their way forward (going through the motions), trying to imitate what they have read in books or have seen at conferences. The executives of these organizations might give permission for the tools of Lean and Six Sigma to be taught but many of them still refuse to look in a mirror and change their own leadership style. They have built a "facade of excellence" that crumbles quickly whenever a bit of chaos is introduced. Not being able to sustain improvements over the long term is one of the top complaints from improvement professionals. What ingredient is missing that prohibits changes to occur throughout the leadership ranks that might create a culture that embraces teamwork, collaboration and improvement? To start, what exactly do we mean by leadership? The common mistake is to try and put all effective leaders into the same box. Leadership actually has many dimensions and several definitions. This book explores four different styles of leadership that includes "The Crisis Leader," "The Idea Gathering Leader," "The Team Forming Leader," and "The Empowerment Leader." Each of the four styles is appropriate when given a certain set of circumstances (an organization in trouble needs a "Crisis Leader" for example). The goal is to shift the organization, including the leaders and all of the employees at every level, toward collaboration and empowerment. Why go through the pains to rebuild an organization's culture and leaders? In the annual "IndustryWeek Magazine - Best Plants" competition, the companies that have made the transition to high performance, fully empowered teams ("The Empowerment Leader"), in general, demonstrate far better results than all other applicants (and they tend to win "Best Place to Work" awards as well). So, what is keeping organizational leaders, especially those in the middle of the organization chart, from adopting the "The Empowerment" leadership style? This book defines and helps the reader understand what this new normal of leadership consists of and: Explains the four different styles of leaders and how these are different than a typical "old style" manager. Indicates which style is appropriate given a certain set of circumstances and how a leader knows when it is time to migrate from one style to another. Illustrates what it means for an organization to shift from a "dictator" culture to one of collaboration and what steps can be taken to help this transformation. Explores the current definition of a "promotable manager" and how this differs from a new normal definition of an outstanding, effective "Empowerment" leader. Defines Mission, Vision, Strategy, and Values and how these four cultural principles fit into the leadership progression model. Shows how the culture within the organization will be different after the adoption of empowered teams and introduces the concept of "Enthusiastic Productivity."

This book provides a new approach to systems architecting not previously available. The book provides a compact innovative procedure for architecting any type of system. Systems Architecting: Methods and Examples describes a method of system architecting that is believed to be a substantial improvement over "methods" previously covered in other systems architecting books. Incorporates analytic procedure (decision analysis) Defines and evaluates alternative architectures Improves upon existing architecting methods Considers cost-effectiveness of alternatives Provides for competitive analysis and its advantages Shows alternatives on one simple and easily understood page With the book's relatively straightforward approach, it shows how to architect systems in a way that both developers and clients/customers can readily understand. It uses one of the essential principles suggested by Rechtin and Maier, namely, Simplify, Simplify, Simplify. Systems engineers as well as students taking systems engineering courses will find this book of interest.

This book provides the much-needed, no-nonsense guidance crucial for project managers - that is, the type of guidance that is missing from every major body of knowledge and educational offering for working project managers. This very practical book identifies the activities that influence project success and focuses the limited time and energy available towards just those activities. The Project Management Institute (PMI) and most literature on project management discusses all aspects of project management under the assumption that project managers will narrow down focus because they cannot be expected to use every process outlined by PMI to manage every project. This book uses the concept of "hacking" our standard conventions of project management and outlines a standard path identified by conventional wisdom, an evil path that project managers frequently resort to under time/quality pressures, and a hacker path that provides a better way to look at the challenge. This book equips project managers with streamlined approaches to refocus their efforts on factors that matter while spending less time doing it. Project management is a demanding discipline with a growing body of knowledge with few instructions on how to do it all. The author provides humorous anecdotes and examples while teaching readers how to save time, improve quality, and advance their career. The primary sections of the book cover how to approach the most common certifications in project management; continuing education; leading project teams; initiating, planning, executing, monitoring, and controlling projects; general life skills; and taking on additional responsibilities. Hacking project management is about focusing the limited bandwidth a project manager can give a project towards the activities that drive success.

This book presents the proceedings from the 5th NEWTECH conference (Belgrade, Serbia, 5-9 June 2017), the latest in a series of high-level conferences that bring together experts from academia and industry in order to exchange knowledge, ideas, experiences, research results, and information in the field of manufacturing. The range of topics addressed is wide, including, for example, machine tool research and in-machine measurements, progress in CAD/CAM technologies, rapid prototyping and reverse engineering, nanomanufacturing, advanced material processing, functional and protective surfaces, and cyber-physical and reconfigurable manufacturing systems. The book will benefit readers by providing updates on key issues and recent progress in manufacturing engineering and technologies and will aid the transfer of valuable knowledge to the next generation of academics and practitioners. It will appeal to all who work or conduct research in this rapidly evolving field.

Strategic Excellence in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction Industries is a process of applied strategic thinking designed to develop a strategy empowered with the agility to adapt to changing circumstances and to drive a high performing culture of ideal behaviors. It is infused with the insight and the thought leadership of the Shingo Model and the scientific thinking of Lean Six Sigma. The book goes beyond the classic approach to strategic planning by driving effective execution of the strategy through the embedment of collective ownership and organization-wide alignment into the entire process. Significant advances in strategic planning and management have been developed over decades of learning and practice. Many of those advances, however, have been developed in the manufacturing industry and have not been translated into terms easily applicable to the A/E/C (Architectural / Engineering / Construction) industry. This book incorporates current best practices from cutting edge organizations around the globe and presents those in a way that they can easily be applied to A/E/C organizations through an efficient and effective process.

This book encompasses the most updated and recent account of research and implementation of Microbial Electrochemical Technologies (METs) from pioneers and experienced researchers in the field who have been working on the interface between electrochemistry and microbiology/biotechnology for many years. It provides a holistic view of the METs, detailing the functional mechanisms, operational configurations, influencing factors governing the reaction process and integration strategies. The book not only provides historical perspectives of the technology and its evolution over the years but also the most recent examples of up-scaling and near future commercialization, making it a must-read for researchers, students, industry practitioners and science enthusiasts. Key Features: Introduces novel technologies that can impact the future infrastructure at the water-energy nexus. Outlines methodologies development and application of microbial electrochemical technologies and details out the illustrations of microbial and electrochemical concepts. Reviews applications across a wide variety of scales, from power generation in the laboratory to approaches. Discusses techniques such as molecular biology and mathematical modeling; the future development of this promising technology; and the role of the system components for the implementation of bioelectrochemical technologies for practical utility. Explores key challenges for implementing these systems and compares them to similar renewable energy technologies, including their efficiency, scalability, system lifetimes, and reliability.

This revised and updated book explores the academics behind managing the complex service environment that is the Emergency Department (ED) by combining applied management science and practical experiences to create a model of how to improve operations. This book offers a presentation of Lean tools used in the ED along with basic and advanced flow principles. It then shows how these concepts are applied and why they work, supported by case studies in which Lean principles were used to transform an underperforming ED into a world-class operation. After reviewing best practices, the authors explain how to achieve excellence by discussing the elements of creating a culture of change.

This book fully details, as the title suggests, the real secret to maximizing an organization's profitability. While many companies have implemented improvement initiatives such as Six Sigma and Lean Manufacturing, there is a missing link which, when discovered and implemented, will take these same companies to profit levels not seen before. This missing link is the Theory of Constraints, and when it's combined with Lean and Six Sigma, true transformational improvements are sure to follow. In this book, the author walks you through the step-by-step method on how to combine these three methodologies with the result being significant improvements to flow, major improvements in variation, substantial reductions in waste, superior on-time delivery, and ultimately, maximized profitability. He has been using this integrated methodology for many years and each time, the results realized were well beyond what the leadership teams had experienced previously. The genesis behind this combined improvement cycle is based upon many years of analysis of both failures and successes using Lean, Six Sigma, and the Theory of Constraints as stand-alone improvement initiatives. By integrating Lean, Six Sigma and the Theory of Constraints into a single improvement cycle, the author has developed a recipe that will maximize your return on investment, cash flow, and net profit. The Secret to Maximizing Profitability is both stimulating and thought provoking, but more importantly it will provide your organization with a roadmap for maximizing the use of your resources to achieve more bottom-line improvement than you ever imagined possible.

This book presents a model of organization transformation success. The model framework comprises a series of S-Curves (maturity curves) of planning and execution activities phased over time. The model is illustrated through description and analysis of an actual, two-decade, highly successful, global enterprise transformation Six Sigma program at a Fortune 200 company: Cummins, Inc. Lessons learned from the model and company case study are completely transferrable to other organizational culture, improvement and innovation transformation settings. This insightful book: * Documents a firsthand account of a successful transformation. The authors completely explain what was accomplished and the lessons learned from a 16-year deployment of Six Sigma at Cummins. * Acts as a benchmark for those organizations interested in pursuing primarily a continuous improvement transformation, and more generally for other types of transformation efforts. * Includes substantive interviews with ten key leaders and others who made the transformation possible. * Helps organizations shorten the overall transformation timelines. The documentation of a transformation provides you a model for how to think about organization transformation maturity over time and plan for it. * Recognizes the work of thousands of people involved in transforming a global company. The interviews provide extraordinary perspectives not only by executives who initiated and sustained the transformation program but also by program participants who themselves grew as managers and leaders in their careers through the program. Essentially, this book helps early-career managers and executives see the broader picture of enterprise transformation, especially over time. This helps them be better managers and executives, and importantly, helps them better plan for and hasten their upward career trajectories. Lastly, the book describes a view of possibilities. It describes a clear, sustained success, the steps taken to get there and the measurement of progress. The result provides you with confidence that successful transformation is possible and worth the effort.

Many of the struggles that we are currently experiencing when attempting to implement Lean in the construction environment are the direct result of applying Lean tools out of proper context. Understanding Lean as an overall operating system will help to avert this all too common pitfall. An in-depth exploration of the application of Lean initiatives in the construction industry, Lean Culture for the Construction Industry: Building Responsible and Committed Project Teams, Second Edition provides updated chapters with new insights on the relationships between owners, architects, general contractors and subcontractors - demonstrating how Kaizan events focused on building positive culture through vulnerability-based trust improved processes and eliminated work stoppages. Lean tools alone don't lead to successful Lean initiatives: the missing piece is culture. Written by a veteran consultant in the construction field, the book draws a connection between how construction professionals act as leaders and how their attitude and behavior affect productivity and waste daily. While value stream mapping is an important tool for righting broken processes and resolving conflicts, future state maps will fail if leaders continue to work in silos, protect their territories, and don't see that their success is directly tied to the success of their co-leaders. The author expands the notion of ethics beyond the simple litmus test of right and wrong, so team leaders can adopt professional and productive attitudes and behaviors toward the implementation of Lean improvements. This book demonstrates how, in an industry where waste is rampant, and depends on wide range of people and personalities to successfully build a job, Lean thinking can make the difference between a profitable, competitive construction team, and mass inefficiencies, stunted profitability, and lost future opportunities.

In the past, when goods and services were simpler, measurement of quality was self-evident. As business became more complicated, so too did the implementation of quality management and our ability to measure it. Ultimately, the practice of quality strayed from being a business practice to become much more of an engineering discipline producing plenty of data, but little actual improvement. In Quality Management: Theory and Application, highly respected quality management specialist Peter Mauch shows you how to set up a Quality Management System (QMS) that will stay aligned with your business goals. Using examples from actual situations that can be readily applied in any industrial situation, these pages will show you how to: Plan for quality by setting objectives and metrics, and creating effective flexible blueprints, and procedures Get staff involved by understanding how to motivate and train them Establish responsibility and accountability across your entire organization Create the right reporting mechanisms and learn how to analyze them Understand the value and particulars of certification QMS is a performance-reporting system designed to accumulate and report data useful for the achievement of management's objectives. Combining the technical aspects of quality engineering with successful business management practices, this book will teach you that quality is an ongoing practice, and that it must be implemented throughout an organization rather than stand as the responsibility of one department. Ultimately, through this system, you will align individual departments to continuously maximize quality throughout your entire organization.

This book provides a new approach to systems architecting not previously available. The book provides a compact innovative procedure for architecting any type of system. Systems Architecting: Methods and Examples describes a method of system architecting that is believed to be a substantial improvement over "methods" previously covered in other systems architecting books. Incorporates analytic procedure (decision analysis) Defines and evaluates alternative architectures Improves upon existing architecting methods Considers cost-effectiveness of alternatives Provides for competitive analysis and its advantages Shows alternatives on one simple and easily understood page With the book's relatively straightforward approach, it shows how to architect systems in a way that both developers and clients/customers can readily understand. It uses one of the essential principles suggested by Rechtin and Maier, namely, Simplify, Simplify, Simplify. Systems engineers as well as students taking systems engineering courses will find this book of interest.

The roles of corporate and public stewards and the nature of their social contract with society have been changing over the past two centuries, and those changes have accelerated in recent decades. Moreover, with increasing focus on sustainability factors from the marketplace (regulators, investors, financiers, and consumers), corporate sustainability disclosure is shifting from voluntary to vital. Corporate and public stewards are now responsible for their performance and services from cradle-to-grave: they must properly manage corporate social responsibility and integrate it into their global strategies, rather than consider it as merely a moral obligation or a risk/reputation management exercise. Sustainability analytics, the critical link between sustainability and business strategy, helps professionals track, trend, and transform sustainability information into actionable insights across the value chain and life cycle, to enhance their sustainability performance and its disclosure. This book, Introduction to Sustainability Analytics, provides corporate and public stewards with a comprehensive understanding of how to determine which sustainability metrics are material to them and relevant to their business, and how to incorporate them into corporate strategy, resource allocation, and prioritization. Focusing on practical decision-making needs, it explains how to value and prioritize initiatives, and how to best allocate necessary resources through several real case studies and practical examples. Features: Examines pressing issues such as climate change, water scarcity, and environmental justice Explains how to develop a business case and global strategy for social responsibility Includes both corporate and public policy perspectives on sustainability economics Covers emerging regulations on sustainability disclosure and responsible investing

With the pressure of time-based competition increasing, and customers demanding faster service, availability of service parts becomes a critical component of manufacturing and servicing operations. Service Parts Management first focuses on intermittent demand forecasting and then on the management of service parts inventories. It guides researchers and practitioners in finding better management solutions to their problems and is both an excellent reference for key concepts and a leading resource for further research. Demand forecasting techniques are presented for parametric and nonparametric approaches, and multi echelon cases and inventory pooling are also considered. Inventory control is examined in the continuous and periodic review cases, while the following are all examined in the context of forecasting: * error measures, * distributional assumptions, and * decision trees. Service Parts Management provides the reader with an overview and a detailed treatment of the current state of the research available on the forecasting and inventory management of items with intermittent demand. It is a comprehensive review of service parts management and provides a starting point for researchers, postgraduate students, and anyone interested in forecasting or managing inventory.

"Success is often the culmination of a series of lesser known accomplishments." -Stephen A. Ruffa and Michael J. Perozziello

In the Muroc, California desert over fifty years ago, a team of contractors and government engineers along with a daring young test pilot named Chuck Yeager achieved the seemingly impossible and broke the sound barrier. It was a brilliant, selfless team effort; one that opened the doors for limitless advances in aviation.

Yet, once again, this industry is faced with an apparently insurmountable barrier; not one of performance, but of cost. To break this barrier, a team of manufacturing professionals led by the Department of Defense's Stephen Ruffa-was given unprecedented access by the giants of military and commercial aircraft engines and avionics production. Their mission? Go beyond the age old focus on flying farther, faster, and higher to discover how to effectively and permanently slash the cost of producing aircraft to allow this industry to continue its rapid pace of advancement.

The results of their study set the stage for a new approach that will again change the face of this industry. These findings lauded by leaders across the industry and comprehensively explored in Breaking the Cost Barrier prove that production variation, as opposed to more common targets like labor utilization and inventory levels, is the chief cause of escalating production costs.

More importantly, they reveal how companies can control spiraling production costs by first controlling the variability that has for too long been considered a necessary evil in manufacturing circles.

While much has been written about what "lean production" techniques are, Breaking the Cost Barrier is the first book to explain how to effectively put lean techniques into place. It presents the big picture on how you can understand and adopt the industry proven techniques used in the lean production environment and coordinate the best into one powerhouse variation management program. Case studies and examples showcase how these techniques can be applied to control production variability across industries and requirements.

Breaking the Cost Barrier provides far more than just another plug-and-play technique for increasing efficiency. Instead, it tells the step-by-step story of how one team of professionals, guided by the belief that an answer was closer than anyone realized, broke the code on production variability problems and introduced exciting, profitable, and easily adaptable variation management methods to one of the world's most important and noteworthy industries.

THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MANUFACTURERS is the nation's largest broad-based industrial trade association. The NAM is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and has regional offices across the country. For more information on the NAM, call David W. Walker, Vice President, Marketing and Member Services, at (202) 637-3186.

The dramatic account of how a team of aerospace professionals attacked production variation to slash costs by 25%

Variation Management the identification and control of variation in production processes-is critical to today's cost-conscious aerospace industry. Now, the story of how its underlying framework was discovered by a team of professionals in a cooperative effort with a range of organizations, from McDonnell Douglas and Pratt & Whitney to Westinghouse and even the U.S. government, is chronicled in the innovative and technique-packed Breaking the Cost Barrier.

This fast-paced, highly entertaining book gives you a behind-the-scenes look at how you can design and implement a system to successfully control production variability and leverage the power of that system for your own organization. It describes what many of the components of a variability control system are and what goals they should achieve, then demonstrates from the inside out why each comprises an important part in the puzzle.