KEYWORDS: Zinc, Annealing, Thin film coatings, Coating, Computer simulations, Intelligence systems, Data modeling, Chemical analysis, Gas sensors, Lithium
A case study revealed that more than 13,500 MMBtu of energy is wasted annually when a single galvanizing line is off-production for hardware replacement for duration of a few hours every 2 weeks. This energy if utilized for production will yield about 13,000 tons of Galvanized Sheet Steel annually from a single galvanizing line. Thus for the 57 [1] hot dip galvanizing lines in US this figure results in a production loss of 741,000 tons/year. An attempt has been made to develop a spreadsheet that will take into account all the major energy consuming equipment in a typical hot dip continuous line. It maintains a track of the current production and energy consumption. It can simulate a scenario where either the number of shutdowns or the hours per shutdown will be reduced as a consequence of better material developed by the researchers. Different charts pertaining to energy consumed by different equipment group, total cost of energy spent on natural gas and electricity, MMBtu/Ton, Tons/Year and Production time before shutdowns assists the engineers decide the best operating stretch to suite their production rate and optimize energy consumption to some extent. Validation data gathered from the three well established galvanizing lines powers this spreadsheet to forecast annual increase in production and thus helps judge the performance of the new hardware.
KEYWORDS: General packet radio service, Data processing, Antennas, Defect detection, MATLAB, Optical filters, Reflection, Signal processing, Metals, Data acquisition
Presently there are no suitable non-invasive methods for precisely detecting the subsurface defects in logs in real time. Internal defects such as knots, decays, and embedded metals are of greatest concern for lumber production. While defects such as knots and decays (rots) are of major concern related to productivity and yield of high value wood products, embedded metals can damage the saw blade and significantly increase the down time and maintenance costs of saw mills. Currently, a large number of logs end up being discarded by saw mills, or result in low value wood products since they include defects.
Nondestructive scanning of logs using techniques such as Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) prior to sawing can greatly increase the productivity and yield of high value lumber. In this research, the GPR scanned data has been analyzed to differentiate the defective part of the wooden log from the good part. The location and size of the defect has been found in the GPR scanned data using the MATLAB algorithm. The output of this algorithm can be used as an input for generating operating instructions for a CNC sawing machine.
This paper explains the advantages of the GPR technique, experimental setup and parameters used, data processing using RADAN software for detection of subsurface defects in logs, GPR data processing and analysis using MATLAB algorithm for automated defect detection, and comparison of results between the two processing methods. The results show that GPR in conjunction with the proposed algorithm provides a very promising technique for future on-line implementation in saw mills.
In today's intensely competitive and highly volatile business environment, consistent development of low cost and high quality products meeting the functionality requirements is a key to a company's survival. Companies continuously strive to reduce the costs while still producing quality products to stay ahead in the competition. Many companies have turned to target costing to achieve this objective. Target costing is a structured approach to determine the cost at which a proposed product, meeting the quality and functionality requirements, must be produced in order to generate the desired profits. It subtracts the desired profit margin from the company's selling price to establish the manufacturing cost of the product. Extensive literature review revealed that companies in automotive, electronic and process industries have reaped the benefits of target costing. However target costing approach has not been applied in the machining industry, but other techniques based on Geometric Programming, Goal Programming, and Lagrange Multiplier have been proposed for application in this industry. These models follow a forward approach, by first selecting a set of machining parameters, and then determining the machining cost. Hence in this study we have developed an algorithm to apply the concepts of target costing, which is a backward approach that selects the machining parameters based on the required machining costs, and is therefore more suitable for practical applications in process improvement and cost reduction. A target costing model was developed for turning operation and was successfully validated using practical data.
KEYWORDS: Data acquisition, Statistical analysis, Manufacturing, Energy efficiency, Intelligence systems, Data analysis, Design for manufacturability, Lead, Strontium, Amplifiers
It has been found in the plant assessments that plant personnel are fairly uncertain about motor loading. The decisions about the motor sizing are based on judgment or easy slip method to avoid the hurdle of load determination methods. Accurate load determination methods involve working around high voltages hence have safety issues, are time consuming and also not economical. A method that is simple to use, economical, safe and fairly accurate is necessary, on which motor sizing decisions can be based. The paper aims at data acquisition and analysis for tackling this issue. Data was collected from fifteen facility energy audits by carrying out motor load monitoring with help of AmprobeTM data logger and DM II Pro acquisition software as well as stroboscope method. Statistical analysis can be carried out to establish a relationship between them, so that prediction of actual load factor can be made based on the load factor obtained by slip method.
Semiconductor industry accounts for 1.3% - 2% of the total US electricity consumption in the manufacturing sector. Energy in the form of electricity is required to operate the process tools, maintain the clean room conditions, operate Heating Ventilation and Air conditioning units, and Chillers, etc. The process tools account for 40% of the operating costs in a semiconductor fabrication unit. Since a significant amount of energy is used by the process tools, it becomes necessary to determine process parameters which govern energy. A model is built in this study to estimate the energy requirement of any particular process in semiconductor manufacturing based on the input variables. It is intended to enable the estimation of process energy beforehand by analysis of process parameters governing energy. This paper also reports a sensitivity analysis of process variables with respect to energy. Often physical energy measurement in semiconductor fabrication unit is time consuming as well as uneconomical. A research in this area will help the production managers in the Semiconductor fabrication facilities to effectively select the production parameters and use the process tools based on the results obtained from the analysis.
Database mining, widely known as knowledge discovery and data mining (KDD), has attracted lot of attention in recent years. With the rapid growth of databases in commercial, industrial, administrative and other applications, it is necessary and interesting to extract knowledge automatically from huge amount of data. Almost all the organizations are generating data and information at an unprecedented rate and they need to get some useful information from this data. Data mining is the extraction of non-trivial, previously unknown and potentially useful patterns, trends, dependence and correlation known as association rules among data values in large databases.
In last ten to fifteen years, data mining spread out from one company to the other to help them understand more about customers' aspect of quality and response and also distinguish the customers they want from those they do not. A credit-card company found that customers who complete their applications in pencil rather than pen are more likely to default. There is a program that identifies callers by purchase history. The bigger the spender, the quicker the call will be answered. If you feel your call is being answered in the order in which it was received, think again.
Many algorithms assume that data is static in nature and mine the rules and relations in that data. But for a dynamic database e.g. in most of the manufacturing industries, the rules and relations thus developed among the variables/items no longer hold true. A simple approach may be to mine the associations among the variables after every fixed period of time. But again, how much the length of this period should be, is a question to be answered. The next problem with the static data mining is that some of the relationships that might be of interest from one period to the other may be lost after a new set of data is used. To reflect the effect of new data set and current status of the association rules where some of the strong rules might become weak and vice versa, there is a need to develop an efficient algorithm to adapt to the current patterns and associations.
Some work has been done in developing the association rules for incremental database but to the best of the author’s knowledge no work has been done to do the same for periodic cause and effect analysis for online association rules in manufacturing industries. The present research attempts to answer these questions and develop an algorithm that can display the association rules online, find the periodic patterns in the data and detect the root cause of the problem.
With the giant leaps that technology has taken in the past few years, some professions are still largely artistic. A good example of this is the profession of design. Designers produce products that are efficient, attractive, practical, but not safe. This is because most Universities around the world fail to include safety and health issues into their curriculum. To overcome that flaw, a rule-based tool was designed to assist designers in pointing out the unsafe conditions in their designs. This tool, that utilizes expert systems technologies, took five years to reach its current version. The tool is called TEXPERT. The latest version of TEXPERT underwent a number of changes and continued growth. This year's efforts resulted in the selection of a focus area and investigations into the selection of two technologies (demolition and decontamination- D&D) by which to validate the program. Validation and expansion of the rule-base continued with an emphasis on those components necessary for D&D. Research in object-oriented prototypes, determination of report-format and approach, and development of an initial visual project builder interface were also accomplished. Latest accomplishments included the development of new components, two-way interactions, and the implementation of a maintainable component database that the user interface can use to build the current library that will be available in the menu system.
New technologies that are used on remediation sites rarely undergo testing for safety and health-related impacts on the workforce and the community. A user friendly safety and health assessment tool for design evaluation can help assure the safety for operators and the public. The system involves identifying a number of technology elements, the hazards associated with them, potential human injuries associated with the technologies, and the way they were designed. The system suggests recommendations for controlling the hazards and evaluates the interaction of technology elements. During the first year, the system was prototyped to a small existing technology of very limited scope. It showed that design for safety can indeed be possible using computer-systems. The focus of the second year has been to expand the system to accommodate 10 commonly used pieces of technologies. The system was developed to be a work-in-progress design aid.
Hazardous waste remediation often requires the application of new technologies. In recent years, these technologies have undergone rapid development. Intensely scrutinized in terms of design, new technologies surprisingly receive little attention when assessing the hazards they might pose to worker health and safety. A readily available and user friendly safety and health assessment tool for design evaluation can help assure the safety for operators and the public. This concept involves obtaining data for defining a technology, identifying and defining the elements and the hazards associated with these technology elements in terms of sources and types, evaluating the process to identify potential for human errors, building queries to suggest for removing or controlling the hazards, evaluating the interaction of technology elements, and finally, providing a summary of the hazards identified and suggested corrective measures. Thus far, the system was prototyped to a small existing technology of very limited scope. It showed that design-for-safety can indeed be possible using computer systems that are linked to the Internet. The system was researched for its robustness, design integrity, and the advantage of using expert systems for `What-If' scenarios.
In this paper, we identify fundamental issues and challenges in developing a component-based integrated engineering design approach. We classify issues under specification, verification, design, and reusability categories. We identify the properties of the necessary specification models such as genericity, formality, and consistency. Verification issues include integration constraints and other functional and performance aspects. Design issues include architectures of heterogeneous components, hardware/software codesign, and design metrics. Finally, we identify reusability issues as related to building manufacturing systems from reusable, highly generic, and highly parameterized components. We then describe our research approach to address these issues. By establishing a foundation for an integrated system design approach, we consequently improve our ability to specify, model, and verify effective intelligent manufacturable systems as well as develop tools to support integrated system designs.
As the emphasis of forest stand management shifts towards implementing ecosystem management, managers are examining alternative methods to harvesting stands in order to accomplish multiple objectives by using techniques such as shelterwood harvests, thinnings, and group selection methods, thus leaving more residual trees to improve the visual quality of the harvested land. Contemporary harvesting practices require the creative use of existing cable and ground-based technology. Silvicultural operations such as group selection methods, shelterwood harvests, partial cuts and thinnings require substantial planning in order to realize a profitable logging endeavor. THIN-PC is a personal computer based version of the original THIN developed by Chris B. LeDoux and David A. Butler in 1981. THIN and THIN-PC are computer simulation models, which evaluate the single-stage pre-bunch and swing methods of cable yarding. THINEX, the expert system developed as a result of this research, sues the results from THIN-PC and allows planners, managers, loggers to evaluate, plan, and execute profitable harvesting practices and permit effective sensitivity analysis by linking the terrain data with the production system information. Using THINEX, the user will be able to analyze several kinds of scenarios pertaining to a stand of trees and their harvesting resulting in the acquisition of production rate and cost values.
Remediation of hazardous waste may require the application of new technologies. These technologies are usually designed by experts who know very little about safety and health issues. A user-friendly, easily accessible system that is devised to assist designers during the design phase by pointing out the different downfalls of their design with respect to safety and health issues and impact, can dramatically improve hazardous waste remediation safety, reduce costs, and most important, reduce the chance of injuries.
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