Releasing a circuit designed and manufactured on a new technology: A comprehensive graphical decision aid

When a component manufacturer is developing a new technology, he is often faced with the problem of shipping so-called qualified products before the end of the complete line qualification. A usual approach to this problem is to systematically qualify the given production lot by submitting a sample to conventional reliability testing as life test, for example. Unfortunately, this methodology is no more acceptable due to cost and delay. The real problem is to decide whether or not a specific product needs specific reliability testing. That kind of decision is quite complex as it must embrace a lot of parameters: the product criticality, the technology maturity and the customer requirements. This paper presents a comprehensive graphical tool in order to rationalize the decision process.     

Incorporating component reuse, remanufacture, and recycle into product portfolio design

Product take-back laws have been enacted in the Netherlands, and the European Commission is expected to follow suit. The legislation mandates that manufacturers bear the economic burden of collection and disposal of products at the end of their useful lives. Reuse or remanufacturing of some components might be more cost-effective than disposal and provide an opportunity for recovery of their economic value. However, manufacturers have not traditionally engaged in the long-range planning over several product lifecycles that cost-effective reuse or remanufacturing requires. This paper develops a model for incorporating long-range planning for component reuse in product design. The model employs a product portfolio approach based on market segmentation, rather than a single product. The model is embedded in a decision tool that aids in determining when a product should be taken back, and which components should be reused, recycled, or disposed. A case study of a line of personal computers (PCs) demonstrates an implementation of the model. It also shows that if product take-back is mandated, it is in the PC manufacturer's best interest to shift from selling a product to essentially selling a service by controlling when the product is taken back and, thus, effectively creating a leasing program. The portfolio approach creates opportunities for the design engineer to distribute the cost, reliability, and environmental impacts of component reuse, remanufacture, and recycling in such a way that the end result is higher customer satisfaction than designing one product for all customer groups.     

Adding value in product development by creating information and reducing risk

Many firms expend a great amount of effort to increase the customer value of their product development (PD) processes. Yet, in PD, determining how and when value is added is problematic. The goal of a PD process is to produce a product "recipe" that satisfies requirements. Design work is done both to specify the recipe in increasing detail and to verify that it does in fact conform to requirements. As design work proceeds, certainty increases surrounding the ability of the evolving product design (including its production process) to be the final product recipe (i.e., technical performance risk decreases). The goal of this paper is to advance the theory and practice of evaluating progress and added customer value in PD. The paper proposes that making progress and adding customer value in PD equate with producing useful information that reduces performance risk. The paper also contributes a methodology-the risk value method-that integrates current approaches such as technical performance measure tracking charts and risk reduction profiles. The methods are demonstrated with an industrial example of an uninhabited combat aerial vehicle.     

An automated field repair tracking system [telecommunicationproducts]

The purpose of repair tracking (RT) is to provide ongoing feedback of product reliability performance in the customer environment. The authors present an RT technique and provide an overview of its automated software implementation, which has been used to track several transmission system products. The RT implementation, referred to as the repair equipment analysis program (REAP), tracks the field performance of electronic equipment at system, subsystem, circuit pack, and component levels. The features of REAP include monthly reliability performance reports, alarms when degradation in performance is detected, model sensitivity analysis, problem areas isolation for initiating corrective actions, and specific customer performance studies. The approach encompasses the entire population during the product life using existing sales and repair data as main inputs. Further, it does not require customer involvement or product serialization     

一种新型实用M-BUS主机方案

针对M-BUS(仪表总线)远程抄表系统市场产品多样,性能参差不齐,本文介绍了一种新型M-BUS远程抄表系统的主机方案,并重点介绍了它的发送电路和接收电路,该方案已经过严格检验,各项性能优良并提供客户参考。该方案的结构简洁合理,性能稳定可靠,成本低廉,具有重要的实用和参考价值。     

Integrated Configuration of Platform Products and Supply Chains for Mass Customization: A Game-Theoretic Approach

This paper is concerned with optimizing the configuration of a set of platform products and the associated supply chain consisting of one manufacturer and multiple suppliers using a three-move dynamic game-theoretic approach. The variants in the product family share a common platform for developing/configuring variant modules which are substitutable in the sense that high-end module options can functionally replace low-end ones at higher prices. As the customer in the supply chain, the manufacturer takes its leading role by making the first move to give decisions on platform products development (PPD) and supplier selection. The concerned suppliers make the second move to optimize their decisions including price discounts and their ordering policies. The manufacturer finishes the game by taking the last move to make his ordering decisions. The ranges of the rational reactions for the players are derived from the analyses of their payoff models, and an enumerative algorithm is developed to find the subgame perfect equilibrium of the game through the technique of backward induction. The game model and the proposed solution procedure are illustrated through a series of simulation experiments and sensitivity analyses using a numerical example. The results have allowed us to draw some meaningful interpretations and useful managerial insights. The use of platform commonality and modularity has been found generally beneficial not only to the supply chain as a whole but also to individual players that are eventually configured into the game. Flexibility of the suppliers' capability is also found to affect the PPD decisions     

A fuzzy due-date bargainer for the make-to-order manufacturingsystems

For a make-to-order manufacturing system, the uncertainty and flexibility of the due dates required by customers and the production capacity owned by the manufacturer can be modeled in a fuzzy environment. A combined due-date assignment and production planning methodology for the make-to-order manufacturing systems is developed. The fuzzy approach determines the optimal due dates for the manufacturer based upon a “rough-cut” resource balance, while a customer can request earlier due dates by paying a higher price to cover the extra manufacturing cost incurred. The resulting fuzzy due-date bargainer is exercised using manufacturing resource planning (MRP-II) data from a furniture manufacturing company. Experimental results indicate its potential as a useful tool for real applications     

支持大规模个性化需求描述的服务过程模型

传统的服务过程模型都是针对单个顾客的个性化需求,虽然能够满足顾客的个性化需求,但当大量的个性化需求到来时,需要为每一个需求建立独立的服务模型,导致整个服务过程模型的建立效率锐减、后期的维护成本增大。为此,提出了一种支持大规模个性化需求描述的服务过程模型(MPSPM),该服务过程模型首先将服务过程中的个性化需求按照功能、性能和价值三个方面进行总结和分类,并在此基础上给出基于可变点的满足大规模个性化需求的模型规范,以期在服务过程中使用最少的过程模型来满足大规模的顾客个性化需求。最后,以旅游服务为背景给出支持大规模的旅游个性化需求的服务过程模型,并开发出一款图形化建模工具来对该过程模型进行验证。     

灰色关联分析法在产品成本因素分析中的应用

影响产品成本因素很多,如何判断哪些是主要因素,直接关系企业的经济效益。文中采用灰色关联分析法,对影响产品成本的各个因素,通过建立数学模型,计算各自的综合关联度,分析得出影响产品成本的主要因素。通过实例,说明使用该方法的步骤。结果表明,灰色关联分析法对样本量和样本有无规律要求较低,不会出现量化结果与定性分析结果不符的情况。该方法计算简便快速,具有一定的客观性和科学性。     

Compound semiconductor equipment manufacturers perform well in VLSI survey

Compound semiconductor equipment manufacturers are well represented in this year’s VLSI customer satisfaction survey. Conducted annually, the survey looks at equipment performance and customer service, and asks semiconductor manufacturing equipment users to rank suppliers on a 10 point scale. Equipment performance is measured in terms of: build quality, cost of ownership, uptime, software, usable throughput, quality of results, and product performance. For customer service, the measures are: process support, field engineering support, spares support, support after sales, technical leadership in the supplier’s field and the supplier’s overall commitment to supporting its customers’ needs.This is a short news story only. Visit www.three-fives.com for the latest advanced semiconductor industry news.     

Integration of Kano's Model Into QFD for Multiple Product Design

Simultaneous multiple product design is essential to meet customer expectations faster and with a focus on shortening life cycles, and new methodologies are needed to address the complexities related to it. quality function deployment (QFD) can help gather customer needs and link them to product design. However, understanding customer needs accurately is a challenge for traditional QFD analysis, and for this reason, Kano's model of customer satisfaction is associated with QFD in the literature. However, incorporating the results of Kano's model into QFD presents another challenge. The objective of this research is to provide a step-by-step methodology that fine-tunes the QFD method by combining Kano's model and QFD in a robust manner, from the perspective of simultaneous multiple product design. This research also includes an application of this proposed methodology on cockpit weather information system (CWIS) design, a part of NASA's Aviation Weather Information (AWIN) project, to demonstrate its usefulness     

客户服务中心维修管理系统解决方案

分析了客户服务中心维修业务的管理模式及流程。在此基础上 ,给出基于J2EE的维修管理系统的解决方案。介绍了维修管理系统的架构 ,给出数据访问接口程序示例。     

An integrated e-supply chain model for agile and environmentallyconscious manufacturing

This paper presents a mathematically sound model for the design and optimization of supply chains in terms of such important performance indexes as product cost, cycle time, quality, energy and environmental impact in the context of global and Internet-based manufacturing. The two layer model is a hyper-network of material flows overlaid with an e-business information network. It extends from a traditional supply chain having suppliers, distributors, and users to include end-of-life product collectors and de-manufacturers. Furthermore, it extends the performance considerations from cost and productivity to include environmental performance. Such extensions allow one to develop Internet-based manufacturing systems that are agile and can produce desired products with the minimum environmental impact over their life cycles. Fuzzy logic-based optimization goals are used in the proposed multiobjective optimization model. A personal computer containing such mechatronic components as hard disk driver, keyboard, and mouse is used as an example to illustrate the application of the proposed integrated e-supply chain model     

A nonrenewable minimal-repair warranty policy with time-dependentcosts

Estimating warranty costs during the life cycle of a product is important to the manufacturer, who has to plan for creating a fund for warranty reserves. Replacement or repair costs associated with product-failure within the warranty period are drawn from this fund. This paper considers a policy where warranty is not renewed on product failure within the warranty period but the product is minimally repaired by the manufacturer. This implies that, on repair, the failure rate of the item remains the same as just prior to failure. Repair costs are assumed to depend on the product age. Such policies are suitable for complex and expensive products where repair typically involves a small part of the product. s-Expected warranty costs and amount of warranty reserves, based on a selected level of s-confidence, are derived. Applications of the results to various product market situations are considered. The results demonstrate how cost information can be used to decide and determine the warranty length     

差异化营销策略研究——以"欧西莱光电子公司"为例

在中国市场上,许多行业都面临同质化的问题.因此,制定一个与众不同的营销策略,形成差异化优势,是值得考虑的发展模式.本文以“欧西莱光电子公司“为例,从产品、客户需求、客户服务和市场策略等方面来讨论差异化营销.     

PCB制前设计成本控制浅谈简

文章主要讲述PCB制前设计对其生产制作成本的影响,从而给设计者提供了一套实用的参考资料,告诉设计者在日常工作中需要关注哪些项目,才能使用最低的制作的成本,设计出满足客户需求的产品。     

基于STC8A8K的智能LED灯条检测仪设计

LED智能背光源技术已成为平板显示产业主导产品技术,已大量应用于电视机、车载导航等各类显示器件中,而LED智能背光源中的核心部分是LED灯条。由于生产工艺、材料的缺陷,灯条在生产时会出现各种短路、开路等故障,为提高生产效率,智能背光源生产厂家极其需要一种能快速检测灯条故障点的设备。目前,智能背光源生产厂家一般都采用进口的检测设备,不少进口检测设备功能较单一,性价比不高。基于STC8A8K的智能LED灯条检测仪,能自动对待检测灯条的工作电压进行判断,输出所需的工作电压点亮灯条,并通过时序驱动,自动检测灯条存在的各种故障。具有检测功能多、检测范围宽、智能化、效率高、性价比高的特点,成品已实际应用于智能背光源生产厂家。     

基于优化GA-BP神经网络的金融产品营销预测

传统BP神经网络存在着网络结构参数确定过于依赖经验、易于陷入局部解等缺陷,为了改进BP神经网络模型的应用缺陷,提出优化GA-BP算法,通过GA算法优化BP神经网络拓扑结构和网络参数初始值的选取过程,并且为了验证模型的可行性,以某银行短期理财产品营销的客户历史数据作为实证研究对象,并通过与BP神经网络模型的对比实验,验证该模型可以更精确地预测银行理财产品的客户营销结果。实验结果表明将该模型用于对金融产品营销数据的仿真计算,可以更精确地预测未来营销结果。     

Effects of concurrent engineering on make-to-order products

An increasing number of manufacturing organizations are using concurrent engineering product development processes, which rely on parallel scheduling of activities throughout the product development cycle. This study examines the impact of such practices on product development time, product quality, and delivery leadtime. Using data obtained from structured interviews with product managers and engineers, six hypotheses are tested using a sample of 31 make-to-order (MTO) products from several industries. The results suggest that concurrent engineering may he appropriate for incremental innovation, but may have some “hidden costs” in the form of increased defects when applied to new “breakthrough” innovations. However, this strategy may be entirely suited to a specific customer segment that is willing to work with the manufacturer on debugging the product in the field. The study points out the importance of considering the hidden costs of concurrent engineering, and discusses the strategic implications of such decisions for technology managers     

Six-sigma design [quality control]

The approach to customer satisfaction taken at Motorola is described. It is based on two conclusions derived from various studies: A product is built in the shortest time and at the lowest cost if no mistake is made in the process; and if no defect can be found anywhere in the process of building a product for the customer, then the customer probably will not find one either. Beginning in 1987, Motorola designers were required to adopt ±6-sigma tolerance limits, i.e., product design margins were to be twice the normal variation of the process. The way in which this was implemented in a six-step design process is described