Whilst previous methods for business process reengineering have focused on time and cost reduction policies to preserve competitive services and products, "Re-engineering of Products and Processes: How to Achieve Global Success in the Changing Marketplace" presents a new approach which aims to include aspects that impact the customer perceived value. This method supports business reengineering initiatives by identifying process bottlenecks as well as new products and services viable to overcome market competition.

This original approach is described step-by-step, explaining the theory through examples of performable tasks and the selection of relevant tools according to the nature of the problem. Supported by illustrations, tables and diagrams, "Re-engineering of Products and Processes: How to Achieve Global Success in the Changing Marketplace" clearly explains a method which is then applied to several case studies across different industrial sectors.

"Re-engineering of Products and Processes: How to Achieve Global Success in the Changing Marketplace" provides a scientific reference for researchers and PhD students working in several fields of the Industrial Engineering: mechanical, electric, electronic sectors and, more in general, all the industrial areas where there are needs to design innovative products. The step-by-step description on how to employ the proposed method and its application to practical examples, make the book a key resource for industry consultants and managers who look to increase the value of their products and services for new and existing customers."

Along the years, rough set theory has earned a well-deserved reputation as a sound methodology for dealing with imperfect knowledge in a simple though mathematically sound way. This edited volume aims at continue stressing the benefits of applying rough sets in many real-life situations while still keeping an eye on topological aspects of the theory as well as strengthening its linkage with other soft computing paradigms. The volume comprises 11 chapters and is organized into three parts. Part 1 deals with theoretical contributions while Parts 2 and 3 focus on several real world data mining applications. Chapters authored by pioneers were selected on the basis of fundamental ideas/concepts rather than the thoroughness of techniques deployed. Academics, scientists as well as engineers working in the rough set, computational intelligence, soft computing and data mining research area will find the comprehensive coverage of this book invaluable.

This work presents a systematic and comprehensive overview to the theory and applications of mechatronic processes, emphasizing the adaptation and incorporation of this important tool in fulfilling desired performance and quality requirements. The authors address the core technologies needed for the design and development of the mechatronic product, cover design approaches, discuss related mechatronic product design aspects, and detail mechatronic product application examples.

An integrated approach to the problems of vision and vehicle control is presented in this volume.
Current work on all aspects of vision and its relationship to vehicle design is reported on, including the internal and external design of vehicles, visual displays, and the perceptual and cognitive capabilities of the controller of the vehicle. Environmental influences, the effects of alcohol, and visual standards are among the topics discussed. All types of vehicles (including ships and combat aircraft) are considered, though the majority of papers deal with automobiles and their drivers.

Multidisciplinary Design Optimization supported by Knowledge Based Engineering supports engineers confronting this daunting and new design paradigm. It describes methodology for conducting a system design in a systematic and rigorous manner that supports human creativity to optimize the design objective(s) subject to constraints and uncertainties. The material presented builds on decades of experience in Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO) methods, progress in concurrent computing, and Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE) tools. Key features: * Comprehensively covers MDO and is the only book to directly link this with KBE methods * Provides a pathway through basic optimization methods to MDO methods * Directly links design optimization methods to the massively concurrent computing technology * Emphasizes real world engineering design practice in the application of optimization methods Multidisciplinary Design Optimization supported by Knowledge Based Engineering is a one-stop-shop guide to the state-of-the-art tools in the MDO and KBE disciplines for systems design engineers and managers. Graduate or post-graduate students can use it to support their design courses, and researchers or developers of computer-aided design methods will find it useful as a wide-ranging reference.

This is the second of two edited volumes from an international group of researchers and specialists, which together comprise the edited proceedings of the First International Conference on Engineering Psychology and Cognitive Ergonomics, organized by Cranfield College of Aeronautics at Stratford-upon-Avon, England in October 1996. The applications areas include aerospace and other transportation, human-computer interaction, process control and training technology. Topics addressed include: the design of control and display systems; human perception, error, reliability, information processing, and human perception, error, reliability, information processing, and awareness, skill acquisition and retention; techniques for evaluating human-machine systems and the physiological correlates of performance. While Volume one is more clearly focused on the domain of aviation and ground transportation, Volume two is concerned with human factors in job and product design, the basics of decision making and training, with relevance to all industrial domains. Part one opens with a keynote chapter by Ken Eason. It is followed by Part two dealing with learning and training, while Part three reflects the rapidly growing area of medical ergonomics. Part four entitled 'Applied Cognitive Psychology' is biased towards human capabilities, an understanding of which is central to sound human engineering decisions. Part five firmly emphasizes equipment rather than its human operators.

This book demonstrates that emotion is a highly influential component in creating a new society and new engineering, revealing the importance of emotion in various aspects of the Connected World. It addresses a wide variety of topics, but with this one underlying aim throughout. Further, it stands out for the approach it takes to the Internet of Things and the Connected Society. The contributing authors illustrate that humans are essentially either playmakers or playing managers, with teamwork and play being crucial aspects of our lives. They argue that strategy is becoming increasingly important, and consider the most adaptable strategy, one that will allow us to respond to today's quickly and radically changing situations. The book is particularly focused on the Connected Society as the point of departure, and explores what motivates humans, what decisions they should make, and what actions they should take. With engineering quickly moving from product development to experience development, and the role of emotion in engineering becoming increasingly apparent, this book offers a timely and valuable resource for engineers and researchers alike.

This major practical handbook bridges the gap between strategy and design, presenting a step-by-step design process with a strategic approach and extensive methods for innovation, strategy development, design methodology and problem solving. It is an effective guide to planning and implementing design projects to ensure strategic anchoring of the process and outcome. Built around a six-part phase structure that represents the design process, covering initial preparations and project briefing, research and analysis, targets and strategy, concept development, prototyping and modelling, production and delivery, it is a must-have resource for professionals and students. Readers can easily dip in and out of sections, using the phase structure as a navigation tool. Unlike other books on the market, Design and Strategy addresses the design process from the perspective of both the company and the designer. For businesses, it highlights the value of design as a strategic tool for positioning, competition and innovation. For the designer, it teaches how to create solutions that are strategically anchored and deliver successful outcomes for businesses, resulting in appreciative clients. It includes over 250 illustrations and diagrams, tables, and text boxes showing how to move through each stage with clear visualisation and explanation. This book encourages all designers in product design and manufacturing, service design, communication design, branding, and advertising, to think beyond shape and colour to see design through the lens of strategy, process and problem solving, and all business managers, innovators and developers, to see the value in strategic design outcomes.

This pioneering volume comprehensively and systematically describes the Parameter Space Investigation (FSI) method, a novel concept for choosing the optimal design variables in solving multicriteria problems. Emphasizing the construction of the feasible solution set, the authors demonstrate state-of-the-art multicriteria optimization and identification. Applicable to a wide range of engineering problems in machines, structures and instrument design, this method enables readers to efficiently design higher-quality, lower cost objects with less metal requirements, vibration and noise, and with lower dynamic loads and energy consumption; determine optimal solutions, regardless of the number of criteria involved, and to identify relationships among different criteria and between criteria and design variables; accurately account for discrepancies between theoretical and actual characteristics, using a special set of adequacy criteria; and determine optimal design variables for complex finite element models. In addition, the book helps readers enhance the potential of the PSI method with theoretical investigations and algorithms for approximating the feasible solutions set and Pareto optimal set, facilitate proficient problem-solving by incorporating recently obtained results from the theory of uniformly distributed sequences, and evaluate design procedures by observing examples ranging from machine tools and agricultural equipment to automobiles and aviation. This practical, in-depth treatment of multicriteria optimization and engineering is essential for engineers and designers working in research and development of manufacturing machines, mechanisms and structures. It is also an importanttext for students of applied mechanics, mechanical engineering, optimal control and operation research.

Manual Materials Handling MMH creates special problems for many different workers worldwide. Labourers engaged in jobs which require extensive lifting/lowering, carrying and pushing/pulling of heavy materials have suffered increasing rates of musculo-skeletal injury, especially to the back.; This guide is intended to include all activities involved in MMH lifting, pushing, pulling, carrying and holding. Recommendations are provided in the form of design data that can be used to design different MMH work activities.
The guide is divided into two parts. Part I outlines the scope of the problem, discusses the factors that influence a person's capacity to perform MMH activities and / or should be modified to reduce the risk of injuries, and reviews the various design approaches to solving the MMH problem. Part II provides specific design data in six distinct chapters. The seventh chapter of Part II of the guide describes various mechanical devices that are available to aid MMH activities.; The guide is aimed at all concerned with the health impact of MMH activities; occupational health and safety workers; senior human resource managers; ergonomists; workers' compensation lawyers; union representatives.

This superb study offers insights into the methods and techniques that enable the implementation of a Collaborative Engineering concept on product design. It does so by integrating capabilities for intelligent information support and group decision-making, utilizing a common enterprise network model and knowledge interface through shared ontologies. The book is also a collection of the latest applied methods and technology from selected experts in this area.

Design considerations for low-power operations and robustness with respect to variations typically impose contradictory requirements. Low-power design techniques such as voltage scaling, dual-threshold assignment and gate sizing can have large negative impact on parametric yield under process variations. This book focuses on circuit/architectural design techniques for achieving low power operation under parameter variations. We consider both logic and memory design aspects and cover modeling and analysis, as well as design methodology to achieve simultaneously low power and variation tolerance, while minimizing design overhead. This book will discuss current industrial practices and emerging challenges at future technology nodes.

This book provides up-to-date information about the promising use of feature technology for integrating computer-aided-design with subsequent applications. The book consists of 20 articles based upon the international IFIP conference on this topic held in Valenciennes, France in May 1994.

Although first published nearly thirty years ago, this book remains up-to-date, intellectually stimulating and realistic. Unlike most texts in the field, it relates design closely to the science and mathematics that are students' chief concern, and shows their relevance. It shows how to make simple but illuminating calculations, and how to achieve the insight and the invention that often result from them. Covering design principles in depth, this is, and remains, an original book: although some of the ideas which were novel in 1971 are now widely accepted, others remain new.

For many years, computers have been playing a prominent role in the process of product design and manufacture. As manufacturing continues to march into the future, there is a critical need to address the role of computer technologies in an integrated fashion, placing emphasis on product data exchange as well as product data management. Integrating Advanced Computer-Aided Design, Manufacturing, and Numerical Control: Principles and Implementations presents basic principles of product modeling and manufacturing while featuring contemporary industrial case studies. A one-stop reference source for the latest international standards, and their implementations, this comprehensive title also expands beyond the traditional scope of the product development process to give a brief account on product data management (PDM) and product lifecycle management (PLM).

This book contains selected contributions from the 7th CIRP International Seminar on Computer Aided Tolerancing, which was held on 24-25 April 2001, at the Ecole Normale SupA(c)rieure de Cachan, France.

Tolerancing research is of major importance in the fields of design, manufacturing and inspection. Designers use tolerancing as a tool for expressing functional intents and for managing geometrical variations during a product life cycle. This book focuses in particular on Geometrical Product Specification and Verification which is an integrated tolerancing view and metrology proposed for ISO/TC213. Common geometrical bases for a language allowing to describe both functional specification and inspection procedures are provided. An extended view of the uncertainty concept is also given.

Geometric Product Specification and Verification: Functionality Integration is an excellent resource to anyone interested in computer aided tolerancing, as well as CAD/CAM/CAQ. It can also be used as a good starting point for advanced research activity and is a good reference for industrial issues. A global view of geometrical product specification, models for tolerance representation, tolerance analysis, tolerance synthesis, tolerance in manufacturing, tolerance management, tolerance inspection, tolerancing standards, industrial applications and CAT systems are also included.

There is a growing recognition amongst those involved with the creation and distribution of nuclear power of the value and positive impact of ergonomics, recognition heightened by the realization that safety incidents are rarely the result of purely technical failure. This work provides insights into plant design, performance shaping factors, the fostering of a safety culture, training, selection, alarm design, team performance and data collection.

This book gathers the latest experience of experts, research teams and leading organizations involved in computer-aided design of user interfaces of interactive applications. This area investigates how it is desirable and possible to support, to facilitate and to speed up the development life cycle of any interactive system: requirements engineering, early-stage design, detailed design, development, deployment, evaluation and maintenance. In particular, it stresses how the design activity could be better understood for different types of advanced interactive systems such as context-aware systems, multimodal applications, multi-platform systems, pervasive computing, ubiquitous computing and multi-device environments.

Case-based reasoning in design is becoming an important approach to computer-support for design as well as an important component in understanding the design process. Design has become a major focus for problem solving paradigms due to its complexity and open-ended nature. This book presents a clear description of how case-based reasoning can be applied to design problems, including the representation of design cases, indexing and retrieving design cases, and the range of paradigms for adapting design cases. With a focus on design, this book differs from others that provide a generalist view of case-based reasoning.
This volume provides two important contributions to the area:
* a general description of the issues and alternatives in applying case-based reasoning to design, and
* a description of specific implementations of case-based design.
Through this combination, the reader will learn about both the general issues and the practical problems in supporting design through case-based reasoning. This book was prepared to fill a gap in the literature on the unique problems that design introduces to computational paradigms developed in computer science. It also addresses the needs of computational support for design problem solving from both theoretical and practical perspectives.

This text discusses the skills and abilities that air-traffic controllers need. Its approach is international as air-traffic control practices throughout the world have to be mutually compatible and agreed. The book aims to include every kind of

This influential text was fully revised and updated for the second edition with the addition of substantial new material, and takes the reader, in a logical sequence, through the main areas of ergonomics relevant to design, in a way that allows ergonomics to be integrated with all aspects of the design process.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203482611

A detailed and comprehensive study of the Celts from the first evidence of them in the archaeological and historical record to the early post-Roman period. This volume looks at archaeology, language, literature, towns, warfare, rural life, art, religion and myth, trade and industry, political organizations, society and technology. It draws together material from all over pagan Celtic Europe and includes contributions from British, European and American scholars. The book addresses some important issues - Who were the ancient Celts? Can we speak of them as the first Europeans? In what form does the Celtic identity exist today and how does this relate to the ancient Celts?

This volume seeks to answer the question: "Can findings from cognitive science enhance the user-computer interaction process?" In so doing, it recognizes that user-computer interfaces (UCIs) are often essential parts of an information or decision support system -- and often critical components of software-intensive systems of all kinds. From the outset, the authors note that the design, prototyping, and evaluation of user-computer interfaces are part of larger systems and are therefore ideally designed, developed, and evaluated as part of a larger design and developmental process or "life cycle."
Thus, this book describes the process by which functional, nonfunctional, or display-oriented requirements are converted first into prototypes and then into working systems. While the process may at times seem almost mysterious, there is in fact a methodology that drives the process -- a methodology that is defined in terms of an adaptive life cycle. There are a number of steps or phases that comprise the standard life cycle, as well as methods, tools and techniques that permit each step to be taken. Describing the effort to implement this process to enhance user-computer interaction, this book presents a methodological approach that seeks to identify and apply findings from cognitive science to the design, prototyping, and evaluation of user-computer interfaces.

Dead-Reckoning aided with Doppler velocity measurement has been the most common method for underwater navigation for small vehicles. Unfortunately DR requires frequent position recalibrations and underwater vehicle navigation systems are limited to periodic position update when they surface. Finally standard Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers are unable to provide the rate or precision required when used on a small vessel. To overcome this, a low cost high rate motion measurement system for an Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) with underwater and oceanographic purposes is proposed. The proposed onboard system for the USV consists of an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) with accelerometers and rate gyros, a GPS receiver, a flux-gate compass, a roll and tilt sensor and an ADCP. Interfacing all the sensors proved rather challenging because of their different characteristics. The proposed data fusion technique integrates the sensors and develops an embeddable software package, using real time data fusion methods, for a USV to aid in navigation and control as well as controlling an onboard Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP). While ADCPs non-intrusively measure water flow, the vessel motion needs to be removed to analyze the data and the system developed provides the motion measurements and processing to accomplish this task.

Software for engineering applications has become, during the last few years, a multi-billion pound industry as applications of computer programs are now an essential part of any engineering project. In spite of this, engineer ing software is not always reliable and many fail to produce good solutions. The extent of this problem, which is very costly to the engineering industry, and its consequences, are somewhat hidden because the software industry has not reached the necessary maturity. An engineer needs a long training before being able to design a body for instance. However, to do that, he may use a computer program which has undergone no validation whatsoever and is written by someone without any engineering knowledge. It is imperative to address this problem to ensure that computer codes are properly prepared to provide good solutions, and that they are robust and reliable. This 2nd International Conference on Reliability and Robustness of En gineering Software (RRES 91) was called to address this problem. The meeting was held in Milan, Italy, in April 1991 and was of importance to engineers working in industry who are actively involved with the develop ment of computer codes.