Most of the world s redundant ships are scrapped on the beaches of the Indian sub-continent, largely by hand. As well as cargo residues and wastes, ships contain high levels of hazardous materials that are released into the surrounding ecology when scrapped. The scrapping process is labour-intensive and largely manual; injuries and death are commonplace.

Ship breaking was a relatively obscure industry until the late 1990s. In just 12 years, action by environmental NGOs has led to the ratification of an international treaty targeting the extensive harm to human and environmental health arising from this heavy, polluting industry; it has also produced important case law.

Attempts to regulate the industry via the "Basel Convention" have resulted in a strong polarization of opinion as to its applicability and various international guidelines have also failed because of their voluntary nature. The adoption of the "Hong Kong Convention" in 2009 was a serious attempt to introduce international controls to this industry."

This excellent book systematically identifies the issues surrounding the effective linking of project management techniques and engineering applications. It is not a technical manual, nor is it procedure--led. Instead, it encourages creative learning of project engineering methodology that can be applied and modified in different situations. In short, it offers a distillation of practical 'on--the job' experience to help project engineers perform more effectively. While this book specifically addresses process plants, the principles are applicable to other types of engineering project where multidisciplinary engineering skills are required, such as power plant and general factory construction. It focuses on the technical aspects, which typically influence the configuration of the plant as a whole, on the interface between the various disciplines involved, and the way in which work is done -- the issues central to the co--ordination of the overall engineering effort. It develops an awareness of relationships with other parties -- clients, suppliers, package contractors, and construction managers -- and of how the structure and management of these relationships impact directly on the performance of the project engineer. Readers will welcome the author's straightforward approach in tackling sensitive issues head on. COMPLETE CONTENTS* Introduction* A process plant* A project and its management* A brief overview* The engineering work and its management* The project's industrial environment* The commercial environment* The contracting environment* The economic environment* Studies and proposals* Plant layout and modelling* Value engineering and plant optimization* Hazards, loss, and safety* Specification, selection and purchase* Fluid transport* Bulk solids transport* Slurries and two--phase transport* Hydraulic design and plant drainage* Observations on multidiscipline engineering* Detail design and drafting* The organization of work* Construction* Construction contracts* Commissioning* Communication* Change and chaos* Fast--track projects* Advanced information management* Project strategy development* Key issues summary

Industrial Process Automation Systems: Design and Implementation provides a clear guide to the practicalities of modern industrial automation systems.Bridging the gap between theory and technician level coverage, it offers a pragmatic approach to the subject based on industrial experience, taking in the latest technologies and professional practices. Clear coverage of concepts and applications provides engineers with the knowledge they need before referring to vendor documentation, while clear guidelines for implementing process control options and worked examples of deployments translate theory into practice with ease. "Industrial Process Automation Systems: Design and Implementation" is ideal as a detailed introduction for junior level professionals and as an applied reference for more experienced practitioners.
Provides knowledge of the different systems available and their applications, enabling engineers to design automation solutions to solve real industry problems.Includes case studies and valuable practical knowledge, such as key items that need to be specified when procuring automation systems.Written by an experienced practitioner from a leading technology company

This book provides an overview of intelligent decision-making techniques and discusses their application in production and retail operations. Manufacturing and retail enterprises have stringent standards for using advanced and reliable techniques to improve decision-making processes, since these processes have significant effects on the performance of relevant operations and the entire supply chain. In recent years, researchers have been increasingly focusing attention on using intelligent techniques to solve various decision-making problems. The opening chapters provide an introduction to several commonly used intelligent techniques, such as genetic algorithm, harmony search, neural network and extreme learning machine. The book then explores the use of these techniques for handling various production and retail decision-making problems, such as production planning and scheduling, assembly line balancing, and sales forecasting.

This book addresses information technologies recently applied in the field of construction safety. Combining case studies, literature reviews and interviews to study the issue, it presents cutting-edge applications of various information technologies (ITs) in construction in different parts of the world, together with a wealth of figures, tables and examples. Though primarily intended for researchers and experts in the field, the book will also benefit graduate students.

This book provides readers with a timely and comprehensive yet concise view on the field of fuzzy logic and its real-world applications. The chapters, written by authoritative scholars in the field, report on promising new models for data analysis, decision making, and systems modeling, with a special emphasis on their applications in management science. The book is a token of appreciation from the fuzzy research community to Professor Christer Carlsson for his long time research and organizational commitment, which have among other things resulted in the foundation and success of the Institute for Advanced Management Systems Research (IAMSR) at Abo Akademi University, in Abo (Turku), Finland. The book serves as timely guide for the fuzzy logic and operations research communities alike.

Although maintaining assets is now recognized as a significant engineering function, attention has usually been focused, particularly in the developing countries, on the acquisition of assets. "Maintenance Standardization for Capital AssetS" explores maintenance management systems, stressing the need for manufacturers and maintenance engineers to develop a maintenance policy and systems as early as the design stage, and suggests ways to approach this need. Also included are strategies for developing countries and their donors to organize systems which can minimize failures and predict maintenance problems.

Safe and high-efficiency operation are two main issues in rail transportation. This book focuses on these two key issues, bringing together a wealth of research to offer theoretical and technical support for rail operations and maintenance. In addition, it presents a comprehensive active safety assurance system for rail transportation, which includes the quantitative state identification and prediction of train components; rail transportation safety and reliability assessment methods; and rail transportation risk assessment at the rail networks level, which achieves the quantitative and high-precision monitoring of complex systems in real-time. In addition, it extends active safety based theory to safety prognostic analysis in the traffic system. Lastly, representative case studies verify that the theory is suitable for the actual traffic system.

Industrial Applications of Affective Engineering introduces new analytical methods such as fluctuation, fuzzy logic, fractals, and complex systems, and pursuing interdisciplinary research that traverses a wide range of fields, including information engineering, human engineering, cognitive science, psychology, and design studies. The book is split into two parts: theory and applications. The book is a collection of the best papers from ISAE2013 (International Symposium of Affective Engineering) held at Kitakyushu, Japan and Japan Kansei Engineering Meeting on March 6-8, 2013.

This book analyses the importance of consumer behaviour in sustainable fashion and consumption. Consumer behaviour plays a major role in sustainability, and when it comes to textile products, a number of studies have shown that for certain product categories, consumer behaviour during use and disposal stages influences the entire life cycle impacts of the product more than the raw material and manufacturing stages. However green the production, the overall sustainability of a product depends on the consumers who use and dispose of it.

This book presents the proceedings of the 2nd Pacific Rim Statistical Conference for Production Engineering: Production Engineering, Big Data and Statistics, which took place at Seoul National University in Seoul, Korea in December, 2016. The papers included discuss a wide range of statistical challenges, methods and applications for big data in production engineering, and introduce recent advances in relevant statistical methods.

This book uses case studies to discuss consumer awareness of and education on sustainable fashion. It highlights how some textile brands have started using consumer awareness tags to educate consumers on the use of their products (e.g. which machine cycle and temperature they should use to wash their products, as well as the best drying conditions in terms of environmental sustainability). Consumer awareness of and knowledge on sustainable fashion is the crux of customer-centric sustainability, and several NGOs and even brands have started taking essential steps to promote this.

Featuring selected contributions from the 2nd International Conference on Mechatronics and Robotics Engineering, held in Nice, France, February 18-19, 2016, this book introduces recent advances and state-of-the-art technologies in the field of advanced intelligent manufacturing. This systematic and carefully detailed collection provides a valuable reference source for mechanical engineering researchers who want to learn about the latest developments in advanced manufacturing and automation, readers from industry seeking potential solutions for their own applications, and those involved in the robotics and mechatronics industry.

This book presents original studies describing the latest research and developments in the area of reliability and systems engineering. It helps the reader identifying gaps in the current knowledge and presents fruitful areas for further research in the field. Among others, this book covers reliability measures, reliability assessment of multi-state systems, optimization of multi-state systems, continuous multi-state systems, new computational techniques applied to multi-state systems and probabilistic and non-probabilistic safety assessment.

This book presents a comprehensive study on microextrusion-based 3D bioprinting technologies for bioinks with various crosslinking mechanisms, chiefly focusing on the bioprinting process and bioink properties to provide readers with a better understanding of this state-of-the-art technology. Further, it summarizes a number of general criteria and research routes for microextrusion-based 3D bioprinting using three experimental studies based on shear-thinning, thermo-sensitive and non-viscous hydrogel bioinks. The book also presents sample applications in the areas of stem cells and cell matrix interaction. The book highlights pioneering results in the development of bioprinting technologies and bioinks, which were published in high-quality journals such as Advanced Materials, Biofabrication and ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering. These include an in-situ crosslinking strategy that overcomes the viscosity limits for bioinks, which is virtually impossible using conventional strategies, and can be generalized for other bioink formulations.

This book describes industrial applications of polyolefins from the researchers' perspective. Polyolefins constitute today arguably the most important class of polymers and polymeric materials for widespread industrial applications. This book summarizes the present state of the art. Starting from fundamental aspects, such as the polymerization techniques to synthesize polyolefins, the book introduces the topic. Basic knowledge about polyolefin composites and blends is explained, before applications aspects in different industry sectors are discussed. The spectrum comprises a wide range of applications and industry sectors, such as the packaging and food industry, the textile industry, automotive and buildings, and even biomedical applications. Topics, which are addressed in the various chapters, comprise synthesis and processing of the materials; their classification; mechanical, physical and technical requirements and properties; their characterization; and many more. In the end of the book, even the disposal, degradation and recycling of polyolefins are addressed, and light is shed on their commercial significance and economic value. In this way, the book follows the entire 'lifetime' of polyolefin compounds and materials: from their synthesis and processing, over applications, to the recycling and reuse of disposed or degraded polyolefin substrates.

This work illustrates research conducted over a ten-year timespan and addresses a fundamental issue in reliability theory. This still appears to be an empirically disorganized field and the book suggests employing a deductive base in order to evolve reliability as a science. The study is in line with the fundamental work by Gnedenko. Boris Vladimirovich Gnedenko (1912 - 1995) was a Soviet mathematician who made significant contributions in various scientific areas. His name is especially associated with studies of dependability, for which he is often recognized as the 'father' of reliability theory. In the last few decades, this area has expanded in new directions such as safety, security, risk analysis and other fields, yet the book 'Mathematical Methods in Reliability Theory' written by Gnedenko with Alexander Soloviev and Yuri Belyaev still towers as a pillar of the reliability sector's configuration and identity. The present book proceeds in the direction opened by the cultural project of the Russian authors; in particular it identifies different trends in the hazard rate functions by means of deductive logic and demonstrations. Further, it arrives at multiple results by means of the entropy function, an original mathematical tool in the reliability domain. As such, it will greatly benefit all specialists in the field who are interested in unconventional solutions.

"Reliability of Large and Complex Systems," previously titled "Reliability of Large Systems," is an innovative guide to the current state and reliability of large and complex systems.

In addition to revised and updated content on the complexity and safety of large and complex mechanisms, this new edition looks at the reliability of nanosystems, a key research topic in nanotechnology science. The author discusses the importance of safety investigation of critical infrastructures that have aged or have been exposed to varying operational conditions. This reference provides an asymptotic approach to reliability; its methodology, whilst largely mathematical, is designed to help the reader understand and construct general models of large and systems in a wide range of engineering fields.
A complete and innovative guide to the reliability of large and complex systemsProvides the reader with a strong foundational knowledge of safety investigation into critical infrastructures; the main research area in the world of safety scienceExplains how to construct large, reliable and safe systems in variable operation conditions

The fuel consumption of a modern combustion engine is one of the most important purchase criteria in contemporary society. Increasing oil prices and exhaust emissions taxes force the automotive industry to continuously improve the vehicle engines. The fuel consumption is closely related to the frictional losses of an engine. New material pairings or constructive modifications of the piston group can reduce such losses. Another innovative concept to lower the frictional forces is the micro-structuring of thermo-mechanically highly stressed surfaces. Within an interdisciplinary research group sponsored by the German Research Foundation, scientists at the Leibniz Universitat Hannover and Universitat Kassel have been working together to investigate this research topic. This final report presents their findings and offers scope for further discussion.

Aligning the latest practices, innovations and case studies with academic frameworks and theories, the broad area of multi-criteria and game theory applications in manufacturing and logistics is covered in comprehensive detail.

Divided into two parts, part I is dedicated to multi-criteria applications and includes chapters on logistics with a focus on vehicle routing problems, a multi-objective decision making approach to select the best storage policy and an exploratory study to predict the most important factors that can lead to successful mobile supply chain management adoption for manufacturing firms. Part II covers game theory applications and encompasses the process of forming a coalition within a corporate network to the problem of integrating inventory and distribution optimization together with game theory to effectively manage supply networks.

Providing a forum to investigate, exchange novel ideas and disseminate knowledge covering the broad area of multi-criteria and game theory applications in manufacturing and logistics, "Applications of Multi-Criteria and Game Theory Approaches" is an excellent reference for students, researchers but also managers and industry professionals working with manufacturing and logistics issues."

Written specifically for the oil and gas industry, Reliable Maintenance Planning, Estimating, and Scheduling provides maintenance managers and engineers with the tools and techniques to create a manageable maintenance program that will save money and prevent costly facility shutdowns. The ABCs of work identification, planning, prioritization, scheduling, and execution are explained. The objective is to provide the capacity to identify, select and apply maintenance interventions that assure an effective maintenance management, while maximizing equipment performance, value creation and opportune and effective decision making. The book provides a pre- and post- self-assessment that will allow for measure competency improvement. Maintenance Managers and Engineers receive an expert guide for developing detailed actions including repairs, alterations, and preventative maintenance.

This volume contains the Proceedings of the First International Conference of IFToMM Italy (IFIT2016), held at the University of Padova, Vicenza, Italy, on December 1-2, 2016. The book contains contributions on the latest advances on Mechanism and Machine Science. The fifty-nine papers deal with such topics as biomechanical engineering, history of mechanism and machine science, linkages and mechanical controls, multi-body dynamics, reliability, robotics and mechatronics, transportation machinery, tribology, and vibrations.

These proceedings exchange ideas and knowledge among engineers, designers and managers on how to support real-world value chains by developing additive manufactured series products. The papers from the conference show a holistic, multidisciplinary view.