This book demonstrates the use of a wide range of strategic engineering concepts, theories and applied case studies to improve the safety, security and sustainability of complex and large-scale engineering and computer systems. It first details the concepts of system design, life cycle, impact assessment and security to show how these ideas can be brought to bear on the modeling, analysis and design of information systems with a focused view on cloud-computing systems and big data analytics. This informative book is a valuable resource for graduate students, researchers and industry-based practitioners working in engineering, information and business systems as well as strategy.

This book highlights the innovations in textile fibres, that is the starting point of the supply chain. There are numerous innovations made in terms of making the existing fibres sustainable and also to discover new sustainable fibres. This book deals with those innovative sustainable textile fibres in detail. It also presents an overview of various current textile fibres, their issues associated with sustainability and how new, sustainable fibres overcome those issues. Finally it discusses the challenges and implications of these sustainable fibres on technical and economic fronts.

The primary aim of this volume is to provide researchers and engineers from both academia and industry with up-to-date coverage of recent advances in the fields of robotic welding, intelligent systems and automation. It gathers selected papers from the 2018 International Conference on Robotic Welding, Intelligence and Automation (RWIA 2018), held Oct 20-22, 2018 in Guangzhou, China. The contributions reveal how intelligentized welding manufacturing (IWM) is becoming an inescapable trend, just as intelligentized robotic welding is becoming a key technology. The volume is divided into four main parts: Intelligent Techniques for Robotic Welding, Sensing in Arc Welding Processing, Modeling and Intelligent Control of Welding Processing, and Intelligent Control and its Applications in Engineering.

This book examines key aspects of the increasingly important phenomenon of reshoring - the decision of companies to reverse offshoring by bringing manufacturing back from overseas. The aim is to equip readers with a full understanding of the current extent of reshoring, its drivers, and the associated opportunities and challenges. The impact of governments' economic policies on the location choices of entrepreneurs in an era of globalization is carefully analyzed, drawing on experiences in the United States and Italy, where contrasting encouragement is provided for reshoring decisions. The effect on reshoring of recent developments regarding technology, the environment, and other factors is assessed in depth, and readers will also find close scrutiny of the relationship between reshoring and manufacturing performance. The book will be of interest to all academics, researchers, and practitioners with an interest in the manufacturing industry and will be an excellent teaching aid for a variety of courses in different disciplines at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.

This thesis develops a systematic, data-based dynamic modeling framework for industrial processes in keeping with the slowness principle. Using said framework as a point of departure, it then proposes novel strategies for dealing with control monitoring and quality prediction problems in industrial production contexts. The thesis reveals the slowly varying nature of industrial production processes under feedback control, and integrates it with process data analytics to offer powerful prior knowledge that gives rise to statistical methods tailored to industrial data. It addresses several issues of immediate interest in industrial practice, including process monitoring, control performance assessment and diagnosis, monitoring system design, and product quality prediction. In particular, it proposes a holistic and pragmatic design framework for industrial monitoring systems, which delivers effective elimination of false alarms, as well as intelligent self-running by fully utilizing the information underlying the data. One of the strengths of this thesis is its integration of insights from statistics, machine learning, control theory and engineering to provide a new scheme for industrial process modeling in the era of big data.

This book presents the latest key research into the performance and reliability aspects of dependable fault-tolerant systems and features commentary on the fields studied by Prof. Kishor S. Trivedi during his distinguished career. Analyzing system evaluation as a fundamental tenet in the design of modern systems, this book uses performance and dependability as common measures and covers novel ideas, methods, algorithms, techniques, and tools for the in-depth study of the performance and reliability aspects of dependable fault-tolerant systems. It identifies the current challenges that designers and practitioners must face in order to ensure the reliability, availability, and performance of systems, with special focus on their dynamic behaviors and dependencies, and provides system researchers, performance analysts, and practitioners with the tools to address these challenges in their work. With contributions from Prof. Trivedi's former PhD students and collaborators, many of whom are internationally recognized experts, to honor him on the occasion of his 70th birthday, this book serves as a valuable resource for all engineering disciplines, including electrical, computer, civil, mechanical, and industrial engineering as well as production and manufacturing.

Reliability of Microtechnology discusses the reliability of microtechnology products from the bottom up, beginning with devices and extending to systems. The book's focus includes but is not limited to reliability issues of interconnects, the methodology of reliability concepts and general failure mechanisms. Specific failure modes in solder and conductive adhesives are discussed at great length. Coverage of accelerated testing, component and system level reliability, and reliability design for manufacturability are also described in detail.

The book also includes exercises and detailed solutions at the end of each chapter.

As the sequel to the proceedings of the International Conference of Continuum Mechanics Focusing on Singularities (CoMFoS15), the proceedings of CoMFoS16 present further advances and new topics in mathematical theory and numerical simulations related to various aspects of continuum mechanics. These include fracture mechanics, shape optimization, modeling of earthquakes, material structure, interface dynamics and complex systems.. The authors are leading researchers with a profound knowledge of mathematical analysis from the fields of applied mathematics, physics, seismology, engineering, and industry. The book helps readers to understand how mathematical theory can be applied to various industrial problems, and conversely, how industrial problems lead to new mathematical challenges.

This multi-contributed volume provides a practical, applications-focused introduction to nonlinear acoustical techniques for nondestructive evaluation. Compared to linear techniques, nonlinear acoustical/ultrasonic techniques are much more sensitive to micro-cracks and other types of small distributed damages. Most materials and structures exhibit nonlinear behavior due to the formation of dislocation and micro-cracks from fatigue or other types of repetitive loadings well before detectable macro-cracks are formed. Nondestructive evaluation (NDE) tools that have been developed based on nonlinear acoustical techniques are capable of providing early warnings about the possibility of structural failure before detectable macro-cracks are formed. This book presents the full range of nonlinear acoustical techniques used today for NDE. The expert chapters cover both theoretical and experimental aspects, but always with an eye towards applications. Unlike other titles currently available, which treat nonlinearity as a physics problem and focus on different analytical derivations, the present volume emphasizes NDE applications over detailed analytical derivations. The introductory chapter presents the fundamentals in a manner accessible to anyone with an undergraduate degree in Engineering or Physics and equips the reader with all of the necessary background to understand the remaining chapters. This self-contained volume will be a valuable reference to graduate students through practising researchers in Engineering, Materials Science, and Physics. Represents the first book on nonlinear acoustical techniques for NDE applications Emphasizes applications of nonlinear acoustical techniques Presents the fundamental physics and mathematics behind nonlinear acoustical phenomenon in a simple, easily understood manner Covers a variety of popular NDE techniques based on nonlinear acoustics in a single volume

This book presents state-of-the-art probabilistic methods for the reliability analysis and design of engineering products and processes. It seeks to facilitate practical application of probabilistic analysis and design by providing an authoritative, in-depth, and practical description of what probabilistic analysis and design is and how it can be implemented. The text is packed with many practical engineering examples (e.g., electric power transmission systems, aircraft power generating systems, and mechanical transmission systems) and exercise problems. It is an up-to-date, fully illustrated reference suitable for both undergraduate and graduate engineering students, researchers, and professional engineers who are interested in exploring the fundamentals, implementation, and applications of probabilistic analysis and design methods.

This book presents advances and innovations in grouping genetic algorithms, enriched with new and unique heuristic optimization techniques. These algorithms are specially designed for solving industrial grouping problems where system entities are to be partitioned or clustered into efficient groups according to a set of guiding decision criteria. Examples of such problems are: vehicle routing problems, team formation problems, timetabling problems, assembly line balancing, group maintenance planning, modular design, and task assignment. A wide range of industrial grouping problems, drawn from diverse fields such as logistics, supply chain management, project management, manufacturing systems, engineering design and healthcare, are presented. Typical complex industrial grouping problems, with multiple decision criteria and constraints, are clearly described using illustrative diagrams and formulations. The problems are mapped into a common group structure that can conveniently be used as an input scheme to specific variants of grouping genetic algorithms. Unique heuristic grouping techniques are developed to handle grouping problems efficiently and effectively. Illustrative examples and computational results are presented in tables and graphs to demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of the algorithms. Researchers, decision analysts, software developers, and graduate students from various disciplines will find this in-depth reader-friendly exposition of advances and applications of grouping genetic algorithms an interesting, informative and valuable resource.

This book introduces the main concepts of manufacturing systems and presents several evaluation approaches for these systems' evaluation. The relevant macroergonomics methods are summarized and the theoretical framework for Macroergonomic Compatibility construct is explained. This book presents a Macroergonomic Compatibility Model which proposes an instrument in the form of a Macroergonomic. The authors introduce a methodology to obtain a novel Macroergonomic Compatibility Index that enables manufacturing companies to assess and follow their progress on the implementation of macroergonomics practices.

This book presents selected extended papers from The First International Conference on Mechanical Engineering (INCOM2018), realized at the Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. The papers focus on diverse areas of mechanical engineering and some innovative trends in mechanical engineering design, industrial practices and mechanical engineering education. Original, significant and visionary papers were selected for this edition, specially on interdisciplinary and emerging areas. All papers were peer-reviewed.

This book focuses on the design of Robotic Flexible Assembly Cell (RFAC) with multi-robots. Its main contribution consists of a new effective strategy for scheduling RFAC in a multi-product assembly environment, in which dynamic status and multi-objective optimization problems occur. The developed strategy, which is based on a combination of advanced solution approaches such as simulation, fuzzy logic, system modeling and the Taguchi optimization method, fills an important knowledge gap in the current literature and paves the way for future research towards the goal of employing flexible assembly systems as effectively as possible despite the complexity of their scheduling.

This volume contains 67 papers reporting on the state-of-the-art research in the fields of adaptive control and intelligent tuning. Papers include applications in robotics, the processing industries and machine control.

This title provides a general overview of recent developments and research into types of systems and their uses in the agricultural and horticultural industry. 64 papers are included, containing both theoretical models and applied examples for greenhouse systems, harvesting technology and plant factory systems.

This book introduces the materials and traditional processes involved in the manufacturing industry. It discusses the properties and application of different engineering materials as well as the performance of failure tests. The book lists both destructible and non-destructible processes in detail. The design associated with each manufacturing processes, such Casting, Forming, Welding and Machining, are also covered.

The area of Reliability has become a very important and active area of research. This is clearly evident from the large body of literature that has been developed in the form of books, volumes and research papers since 1988 when the previous Handbook of Statistics on this area was prepared by P.R. Krishnaiah and C.R. Rao. This is the reason we felt that this is indeed the right time to dedicate another volume in the Handbook of Statistics series to highlight some recent advances in the area of Reliability. With this purpose in mind, we solicited articles from leading experts working in the area of Reliability from both academia and industry. This, in our opinion, has resulted in a volume with a nice blend of articles (33 in total) dealing with theoretical, methodological and applied issues in Reliability.

"Kawaii" is a Japanese word that denotes "cute," "lovable," or "charming" although it does not have exactly the same meaning as those adjectives. This book proposes engineering methodologies for systematic measurement of the affective perception of kawaii, by using virtual reality and biological signals, and discusses the effectiveness of kawaii engineering for designing industrial products and services. Kawaii can draw sympathy from people and can embody a special kind of cute design, which reduces fear and makes dull information more acceptable and appealing. Following the introduction of the background of kawaii engineering in Chapter 1, Chapters 2 and 3 describe experiments on the systematic measurement and evaluation methods for kawaii products and affective evaluation experiments. Chapter 4 proposes a mathematical model to identify the physical attributes that determine kawaii in motion. Chapters 5 and 6 explain research that uses biological signals and eye-tracking. After a brief survey of psychological research on kawaii and cuteness in Chapter 7, Chapters 8 and 9 introduce the use of spoons designed to stimulate the appetite of the elderly and the practical implementation of an emotion-driven camera. Chapters 10-14 explain experimental research that examines kawaii perception of people from various cultural backgrounds. Kawaii Engineering will appeal to those who work on affective computing, product design, user experience design, virtual reality, and biological signals.

The papers within this volume reflect the multidisciplinary approach taken by the workshop to the development and improvement of existing production control theories and practices as applied to the process industry. Subjects covered include production planning, quality control and assurance, operational control and maintenance strategy. The development of this area is seen by those at the workshop as only being achieved by various groups working together rather than in isolation, so that the overall aim of production control is not lost in too much detail. This volume will provide the reader with essential information on new initiatives in the process industry with regard to production control.

This book aims to address how nanotechnology risks are being addressed by scientists, particularly in the areas of human health and the environment and how these risks can be measured in financial terms for insurers and regulators. It provides a comprehensive overview of nanotechnology risk measurement and risk transfer methods, including a chapter outlining how Bayesian methods can be used. It also examines nanotechnology from a legal perspective, both current and potential future outcomes. The global market for nanotechnology products was valued at $22.9 billion in 2013 and increased to about $26 billion in 2014. This market is expected to reach about $64.2 billion by 2019, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.8% from 2014 to 2019. Despite the increasing value of nanotechnologies and their widespread use, there is a significant gap between the enthusiasm of scientists and nanotechnology entrepreneurs working in the nanotechnology space and the insurance/regulatory sector. Scientists are scarcely aware that insurers/regulators have concerns about the potential for human and environmental risk and insurers/regulators are not in a position to access the potential risk. This book aims to bridge this gap by defining the current challenges in nanotechnology across disciplines and providing a number of risk management and assessment methodologies. Featuring contributions from authors in areas such as regulation, law, ethics, management, insurance and manufacturing, this volume provides an interdisciplinary perspective that is of value to students, academics, researchers, policy makers, practitioners and society in general.

The Symposium presented and discussed the latest research on new theories and advanced applications of automatic systems, which are developed for manufacturing technology or are applicable to advanced manufacturing systems. The topics included computer integrated manufacturing, simulation and the increasingly important areas of artificial intelligence and expert systems, and applied them to the broad spectrum of problems that the modern manufacturing engineer is likely to encounter in the design and application of increasingly complex automatic systems.

The book is focused primarily on characteristics and determinative methods of reservoir orientation, the concept of vector well pattern and corresponding realistic techniques of well pattern deployment, well pattern control principles, Optimum design of well pattern based on the reservoir direction characteristics, and the schemes of well spacing density regulation at different stages of development. The procedures for improving water flooding efficiency have been provided. This book is suitable for reservoir engineering managers, reservoir engineers, and students of petroleum engineering.