Enhancing creativity in engineering students

There is an increasing perception of the need for graduates of engineering to be creative thinkers and innovators. It is however, not clear how creativity can be nurtured or fostered within students or how it can be assessed. What is creativity? What blocks it and what facilitates it? What potential do students have for creative thinking and how can this be enhanced? What is the creative process and how can our understanding of this help with curriculum design? If the creative process can be described as 'preparation, generation, incubation and verification', what idea generation strategies are appropriate for engineering? In this paper a model to consider the 'creative potential' is presented in order to promote discussion about appropriate education developments that may be incorporated within or be additional to an engineering programme. Examples of two such developments are given which place the engineering student in a multidisciplinary context to enhance the potential for creative thinking.     

University-industry research interactions: A guide to the proceedings

Concern for economic growth in the industrialized countries has focused attention on society's use of technical resources. One mechanism for enhancing the effectiveness of the reservoir of science and engineering is university-industry interactions. There are growing indications that such linkages are now becoming more formal, more frequent, more planned. Why is this so? What objectives are served? How can these interactions produce the most effective use of our technical resources to serve universities, industry, and society? These questions are addressed from different viewpoints in the papers contained in this collection. There are different objectives, and, therefore, different emphases from the many countries represented. There are different characteristics for each major industry sector, and there are indications that the nature of the industry is at least as important in determining the degree of university-industry cooperation as the nature of the country. And there are a number of issues of particular interest that call for special attention, such as the role of research institutes or the problems of regional economic development.     

Empirical Analysis of Software Success Rate Forecasting During Requirement Engineering Processes

Forecasting on success or failure of software has become an interesting and, in fact, an essential task in the software development industry. In order to explore the latest data on successes and failures, this research focused on certain questions such as is early phase of the software development life cycle better than later phases in predicting software success and avoiding high rework? What human factors contribute to success or failure of a software? What software practices are used by the industry practitioners to achieve high quality of software in their day-to-day work? In order to conduct this empirical analysis a total of 104 practitioners were recruited to determine how human factors, misinterpretation, and miscommunication of requirements and decision-making processes play their roles in software success forecasting. We discussed a potential relationship between forecasting of software success or failure and the development processes. We noticed that experienced participants had more confidence in their practices and responded to the questionnaire in this empirical study, and they were more likely to rate software success forecasting linking to the development processes. Our analysis also shows that cognitive bias is the central human factor that negatively affects forecasting of software success rate. The results of this empirical study also validated that requirements’ misinterpretation and miscommunication were the main causes behind software systems’ failure. It has been seen that reliable, relevant, and trustworthy sources of information help in decision-making to predict software systems’ success in the software industry. This empirical study highlights a need for other software practitioners to avoid such bias while working on software projects. Future investigation can be performed to identify the other human factors that may impact software systems’ success.     

The phenomenon of innovation overload

Information Overload is a subject of immense debate among consumer marketers; Can too much information overload a consumer and cause poor judgment? What defense mechanisms do consumers have to control against the flow of information? A comparable phenomenon is Innovation Overload, meaning a consumer's response to the ever increasing speed of change in information, knowledge, and innovations. In this paper, the concept of Innovation Overload is examined, as well as the potential impact of the phenomenon on manufacturers, designers, and innovators. Examples are provided. Also reviewed are the potential effects on diffusion curves and adoption patterns. Numerous recommendations are provided for technical and marketing managers for handling and overcoming this phenomenon more efficiently via better design and marketing principles.     

Six Sigma Literature: A Review and Agenda for Future Research

Like quality management in general, Six Sigma has penetrated into most sectors of today's business world. Although Six Sigma originated in industry, it has inspired a considerable amount of academic literature. This paper reviews this literature describing the trends, sources, and findings. The paper also seeks to synthesize the literature, with an emphasis on establishing its relationship to quality management theory and topics for future research. In doing so, there is an attempt to answer the following fundamental questions. (i) What is Six Sigma? (ii) What are its impacts on operational performance? (iii) What roles can academics usefully play in relation to Six Sigma? Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Internet rules of engagement: then and now

Imagine that we had carefully established the rules of engagement for the Internet in its earliest days around the time of its birth in 1969. What would those rules have contained? What, indeed, were the underlying principles and policies that we actually documented, said, understood, implied, and instilled back then? What, if any, additional elements should have been included, given the benefit of the hindsight? How has the impact of the Internet on society been influenced by the rules of engagement, and in what ways do they need changing at this point?     

Procedure for the analysis of errors of commission during non-power modes of nuclear power plant operation

The continued, historical occurrence of human interactions which place nuclear power plants in a condition of potentially heightened risk is of increasing interest to regulators, utility management, and industry observers alike. These Errors of Commission (EOCs), as they are often called, lead to a variety of questions such as: ‘Can the event lead to a potentially dangerous condition such as core damage? By what failure mechanisms? With what frequency? What defences does the plant have to mitigate the event? Are these actions in the Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) model of the plant?’. EOCs are often excluded from the bounds of a typical PRA model, yet they have the potential for being significant contributors to risk. This paper is the second of two describing procedures for the analysis of the potential for significant errors of commission. The first paper addressed operations at power while this paper describes the procedure for non-power operations. Each procedure describes a method for identifying the opportunities for error, identifying failures modes of functions, systems, or components that could arise from such errors (referred to in this paper as error expressions), and the identification of the most significant of these EOCs based on consideration of consequences, recovery potential, and likelihood.     

Safety, economic incentives and insurance in the Norwegian petroleum industry

There is an increased use of key performance indicators and incentive schemes in the petroleum industry. Applying modern incentive theory, we explore what implications this management trend has for injury and major accident prevention efforts and safety. Can economic incentives be designed for accident prevention activities? In cases where this is not possible, what are the challenges for the safety efforts? In particular, how are safety efforts affected by enhanced economic incentives for other performance dimensions like production and rate of return? Can safety be neglected? What remedies are available?     

Using scanning electron,confocal and optical microscopes to measure microscopic holes in trays

Package integrity is of paramount importance to the medical device industry. As healthcare costs soar and integrity testers become more and more sensitive, concern with the question ‘what hole size allows microbial penetration into device packages?’ is re‐ignited. However, producing a consistent and measurable defect in the microcosm presents challenges. Varying techniques are currently employed to produce these defects. Use of an excimer laser is one of the most precise and accurate techniques, and holes ‘certified’ to be a given size can be purchased at a significant cost. To verify the accuracy and precision of holes drilled with an excimer laser, researchers measured laser‐drilled ‘exit’ and ‘entry’ holes in glycol‐modified polyetheylene terephthalate (PETG) trays using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and confocal microscopy. This data and the certification data provided by the laser driller were analysed using a mixed‐model analysis of variance (ANOVA). Both the effect of measuring technique and hole side (entry vs. exit) were found to be significant. These significant differences have the potential to impact the question that the industry faces with regard to penetration threshold. This suggests that a shift in thinking is needed. Perhaps it would be better if the industry stops thinking about hole size and begins to think in terms of what researchers have referred to as the ‘effective hole’, which is defined as the volume of gas that will flow through a hole of defined size per unit time. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

LED照明产品的全生命周期评价方法研究

生命周期评价（LCA）作为一种重要的环境管理工具,不仅能够对材料或产品全生命周期所涉及的环境问题进行评价,而且能为可持续发展决策提供依据,有利于促进产品、行业甚至整个产业链的行为更符合可持续发展的原则。但是目前国内还尚未有关于LED照明产品的生命周期评价。本文综述了生命周期评价方法在LED照明领域的应用,并提出我们的新思路,即将产品设计要素、经济成本要素及环境影响相结合的LED照明产品全生命周期评价方法。     

从3R原则分析绿色包装设计

在当今世界环保大潮的冲击下,进行绿色包装设计已经成为包装业发展的必然趋势.通过对减量化原则、重复利用原则和再循环原则3个方面对绿色包装设计的原则和内容进行分析与探讨,为设计师提供了一个新的思考点和设计方法.     

The Strange Career of the American Spaceplane: The Long History of Wings and Wheels in Human Space Operations

What is it about the concept of a Space Shuttle that has been so inviting throughout the 20th century? A winged, reusable space vehicle for human flight beyond Earth dominated thinking about the task prior to the space age, but to compete with the Soviet Union in the human space spectaculars that began in the late 1950s the USA opted for easier to build and fly ballistic capsules. No sooner had that competition ebbed, however, than NASA returned to the pursuit of a spaceplane, resulting in the building of the winged, reusable Space Shuttle which flew for 30 years. This essay reviews the more than 40‐year history of the quest for a spaceplane that eventually found fruition with the operations of the Space Shuttle and continues with current attempts to create a replacement and ensure that spaceplane dreams are kept alive. Three major lessons concerning this quest come to the fore and are highlighted in this essay: (1) the power of an idea to push engineering reality, (2) the delta between technological knowledge and potential, and (3) the reality of how critical design elements are not only fostered by hard‐headed engineering analysis but also by other conventions and priorities.     

加入WTO后印刷企业外部经营战略环境分析

中国加入WTO之后对于中国包装印刷业有何影响?中国包装印刷企业的外部经营环境将发生怎样变化，以及中国包装印刷企业如何应对这些由于加入世贸而带来的变化呢?文中对“入世”后中国包装印刷企业所处的外部环境，即宏观环境因素和行业环境因素进行了分析。     

The Quest for Relevance: Roles for Academia and Industry in Japan and the U.S.

While U.S. industry is making headway in worldwide markets, much remains to be done. Some have proposed that improving the relevance of engineering education can have a marked influence on the future success of U.S. manufacturing. Some in academia have heard industries' cries for help to improve relevancy in engineering education and have responded with various solutions. Is this the situation in Japan? What is the state of engineering education in Japan? Where is it headed and how does the U.S. compare? We found that industry-academia relationships like those being strengthened in the U.S. are minimal in Japan. Surprisingly, Japanese industry and academia appear not to be headed in a collaborative direction and are even more detached from one another than in the United States. This paper presents some differences in the way Japan and the U.S. view their roles for academia and industry and their interrelationships. Our objective is to further motivate U.S. educators to collaborate with industry and continue to integrate greater relevancy into engineering education.     

Compact static Fourier transform spectrometer with a large field of view based on liquid-crystal technology

We present designs of static Fourier transform spectrometers that are based on a Wollaston prism with a large field of view. Besides the usual advantages of static Fourier spectrometers (large resolving power, large wave-number range, high throughput), these designs also present the advantage of using relatively cheap liquid-crystal technology. The use of twisted liquid-crystal structures gives a large field of view, which in turn gives the ability to collect more light from a divergent light source. Measurements are compared with simulations. Different simulation principles are used. We found new configurations by using twisted structures that show a large field of view.     

Concept Mapping as a Form of Student Assessment and Instruction in the Domain of Bioengineering

This paper describes two pilot studies investigating the use of concept mapping for assessing students' conceptual knowledge at a given point and over time. In Study 1, three groups constructed concept maps in response to the question, “What are the 10–20 most important concepts in biomedical engineering and how are they related?” Group differences were consistent with expert‐novice distinctions in structural knowledge: faculty generated dense networks of higher‐order principles and their applications while students generated fewer connections among concepts pertaining largely to domain content. Study 2 assessed students' conceptual understanding of the biomedical engineering design process in a yearlong design course at three different time points. Later maps contained a greater number of concepts, more precise vocabulary, and were more valid. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for theories about the structure of knowledge and identification of the skills associated with a culture of practice.     

Thinking Preferences of Engineering Students: Implications for Curriculum Restructuring

The thinking preferences of engineering students at the University of Toledo have been assessed in a longitudinal study, using the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI). The scores and profiles reveal thinking preferences in four different ways of thinking and “knowing”: A = analytical-logical-quantitative, B = sequential-organized-detailed, C = interpersonal-sensory-kinesthetic, and D = innovative-holistic-conceptual thinking. With the HBDI, we have a tool that can assess the effects of curriculum restructuring. Data from 1990–1993 fall freshmen classes and 1991–1994 spring senior classes have been evaluated, where the 1994 seniors are the first group for which freshmen data are available. Conclusions drawn from the results are: 1) Overall, there has been a shift from “plug-and-chug” quadrant B thinking to increased “creative” quadrant D thinking, because more students with strong quadrant D preferences are being developed and retained, primarily due to the new creative problem solving course. 2) Avoidance of quadrant C thinking (teamwork skills) is persisting and creates classroom climates that are uncomfortable for some students, a high percentage being females. Students are not developing the teamwork and interpersonal thinking skills demanded by industry. 3) A majority of students are still being cloned in the A-dominant profile of the faculty. Students who have developed independent ways of practicing right-brain thinking and all students who were involved in creative problem solving as class assistants became more whole-brained or right-brained. Quadrant C and D thinking activities must be integrated into the curriculum each term for students to develop their full potential and reinforce the whole-brain thinking skills introduced in the first-year creative problem solving course.     

The relationship between operating efficiency and service quality: are they compatible?

Transferring and applying manufacturing principles and practices to improve both service efficiency and service quality is an important area of research in service operations. This paper advances this stream of research by examining the compatibility of operating efficiency and service quality. Specifically, our research addresses the following questions: (1) Do operating efficiency and service quality have to be traded off, or can they exist in unison (are they compatible)? and (2) What aspects of service quality have a stronger association with operating efficiency? In disentangling these important issues, we utilise a combination of data envelopment analysis (DEA) and survey-based empirical research methods. Additionally, our focus lies on a novel type of service industry where such research has been sparse. We evaluate the relative operating efficiencies of service driving agencies based on actual transaction data and subsequently analyse differences in service quality dimensions based on efficiencies. Overall, our analyses suggest important strategic decision-making implications for service operations managers and provide novel insights for academic research.     

Cryocooler reliability issues for space applications

Analyzing cryocooler reliability has been problematic from the beginning. Classic reliability analyses rely on statistical sampling and comparing failure modes to other similar systems where statistical results are available. These approaches do not apply to cryocoolers, particularly cryocoolers for aerospace applications. The industry has not built enough total cryocoolers, let alone a single type of cooler, to provide any meaningful statistical sample. This forces us to rely on comparing failure modes of similar systems to that of the cryocooler, which leads to the next problem; today's aerospace cryocooler is designed to have no failure modes. What can it be compared to? Any classic reliability study performed on a cryocooler makes several critical assumptions that completely dominate the results. Change the assumptions and you get a different answer; the results are dictated by the assumptions not the hardware. There are no easy answers to these problems. This paper attempts to show why classic reliability studies do not apply to cryocoolers and that as an industry we must work together to show that all cryocoolers have high levels of reliability.     

Action strategies for strengthening industrial clusters in southern Taiwan

For the past decade, the Taiwanese government has applied the policy of “North heavy, South light” to put more emphasis on development in northern Taiwan instead of the south. This has resulted in uneven development between the northern and southern regions, especially when introducing, developing, and supporting high technology and resource allocation in education. Industry clusters have become the centerpiece of economic development policy in many parts of the world. In this study, it is assumed that there are two categories of less-advantaged regions in Taiwan: (1) older industrialized regions dominated by labor-intensive/capital-intensive industries, and (2) industrial regions that have merged with potential high-technology small firms but still lack infrastructure. This study discusses the following points: (a) How do industrial clusters work in action? (b) What barriers do less-advantaged industrial clusters face? (c) What action strategies promote less-advantaged industrial clusters?