Dynamic simulation of product process

During 90’s Nokia utilized Concurrent Engineering (CE) process in mobile phone business successfully. Strong growing of the company, more complex technologies, maturing markets and changes in competition has increased the need to develop the product process of the company to keep its position as an agile, innovative and productive product developer. Dynamic simulation approach has been one of the activities among other product process re-engineering efforts in the company.This paper describes the approach and “Product Process Decision Simulation” (PPDS) solution as the first implemented application of the approach. A dynamic model of product development has been created and applied to manage product process complex dynamic behavior on system level in order to reduce product development cycle times, slippages and costs as well as improve perceived product quality. The key contribution of the simulation solution is to provoke facilitated discussion in order to gain shared understanding of interdependencies and dynamic causes and effects in product process.The implementation and frequent simulation workshops have started in June 2006 and about 500 R&D people have already participated.     

DEPOSITIONAL AND STRUCTURAL DYNAMICS OF THE PLIOCENE PERI-ADRIATIC FOREDEEP, NE ITALY

Seismic analyses and detailed well-log correlations have been used to define the depositional patterns and the relative timing of thrust movements in the highly mobile Peri-Adriatic Foredeep, a gas-bearing basin of Pliocene age in NE Italy. Due to the high rates of sedimentation and subsidence, up to 8,000 m of mostly deep-water clastics were deposited in the foredeep in the Marche-Abruzzo area during the Pliocene-early Pleistocene.
Three phases of foredeep evolution can be recognised. In the first phase, during which there was little structural activity, a sandy turbidite system of regional dimensions (the Cellino Turbidite System) developed on a flat, stable substratum. Discrete sand-bodies belonging to this system can be traced over distances of up to 80 km. This turbidite system is a key unit in the analysis of the foredeep. The rapid deposition and burial of organicrich sediments favoured the generation of biogenic gas.
The second phase offoredeep evolution coincided with the onset of structural deformation. Sediments are mainly deep-marine shales and minor turbidite sandstones, which were deposited during a period of almost continuous tectonic activity. A major eastward migration of the deep-marine depocentre then occurred. In the study area, this phase is represented by a series of closely-spaced local unconformities which can be correlated eastwards with a major late Pliocene turbidite system. The high frequency of the unconformities is a distinctive feature of this interval.
The third phase was characterised by thrusting in the eastern part of the foredeep and by the development of a piggy-back basin. During this phase, shallow-water, coarse-grained deltas replaced the deep-water turbidite systems. Accommodation space for the coarse-grained deltas was provided to begin with by rapid subsidence. The progressive decrease in accommodation resulted in delta progradation eastwards and ultimately in the infilling of the foredeep.     

Ubimedia based on readable and writable memory tags

Ubimedia is a concept where media files are embedded in everyday objects and the environment. We propose an approach where the user can read and write these files with his/her personal mobile phone simply by touching the physical objects. This facilitates easy access and storage of, e.g. video and audio files related to the physical object in question. This paper describes our work in developing a technical solution for ubimedia and studying user acceptance of forthcoming ubimedia services. Our technical development of the ubimedia concept has been focused on a mobile phone platform with a tag reader/writer, memory tags with large storage capacity, and the communication between the phone and the tags. Currently, the technical design is in test and evaluation phase. The preliminary results show that the concept works and it can be implemented technically. In parallel with the technical development, we have studied usage possibilities for ubimedia and user acceptance of future ubimedia services. User acceptance has been studied in a web survey and in user evaluations of proofs-of-concept. In addition, an ethical assessment has been carried out. The users appreciated especially the simplicity, speed, low cost and reliability of ubimedia. Ethical concerns were related to control over the download with regard to viruses and other unwanted content.     

Effect of Annealing Conditions on the Texture and Normal Anisotropy of Al‐Killed Steels in Simulated Batch Annealing

Three commercial cold rolled Al‐killed steels were investigated to study the effect of annealing conditions on the crystallographic texture and the resulting plastic anisotropy. The heating rates, maximum temperatures and isothermal holding times were varied in 18 laboratory scale thermal cycles applied to all steels. The annealed and skin‐passed samples were tensile tested to determine mechanical properties and anisotropy parameters. Grain structures and average grain sizes were examined by an optical microscope and the textures were measured by X‐ray diffraction. It was found that the chemical composition of the steel had a significant effect on the texture and normal anisotropy obtained at certain heating rates. The differences between the current steels were discussed in the light of the competition between the kinetics of AIN precipitation and recrystallization. Excess heating rates led to a low normal anisotropy, which was not improved by extending the isothermal time of annealing. Pancake grain structure and the grain size larger than 20 mm were found to be indicators of the properly chosen heating rate and resulting in high normal anisotropy. At the proper heating rate high normal anisotropy was attained at low annealing temperatures and in short isothermal times, but a longer isothermal annealing was required to obtain a low yield strength.     

Forward‐adaptive method for context‐based compression of large binary images

A method for compressing large binary images is proposed for applications where spatial access to the image is required. The proposed method is a two‐stage combination of forward‐adaptive modeling and backward‐adaptive context based compression with re‐initialization of statistics. The method improves compression performance significantly in comparison to a straightforward combination of JBIG and tiling. Only minor modifications to the QM‐coder are required, and therefore existing software implementations can be easily utilized. Technical details of the modifications are provided. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Contextual weighted representations and indexing models for the retrieval of HTML documents

The diffusion of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the consequent increase in the production and exchange of textual information demand the development of effective information retrieval systems. The HyperText Markup Language (HTML) constitues a common basis for generating documents over the internet and the intranets. By means of the HTML the author is allowed to organize the text into subparts delimited by special tags; these subparts are then visualized by the HTML browser in distinct ways, i.e. with distinct typographical formats. In this paper a model for indexing HTML documents is proposed which exploits the role of tags in encoding the importance of their delimited text. Central to our model is a method to compute the significance degree of a term in a document by weighting the term instances according to the tags in which they occur. The indexing model proposed is based on a contextual weighted representation of the document under consideration, by means of which a set of (normalized) numerical weights is assigned to the various tags containing the text. The weighted representation is contextual in the sense that the set of numerical weights assigned to the various tags and the respective text depend (other than on the tags themselves) on the particular document considered. By means of the contextual weighted representation our indexing model reflects not only the general syntactic structure of the HTML language but also the information conveyed by the particular way in which the author instantiates that general structure in the document under consideration. We discuss two different forms of contextual weighting: the first is based on a linear weighted representation and is closer to the standard model of universal (i.e. non contextual) weighting; the second is based on a more complex non linear weighted representation and has a number of novel and interesting features.     

The Effect of Intense Air Drying on Material Distribution and Quality in Coated Papers

The aim of this study was to find out what will happen to paper coating quality and material gradients if coating is dried in one air dryer at a high convection rate (150 kg/m²h). Different printing papers were coated, calendered and printed with pilot machines. The binder and pigment gradients of the coated, and also printed, samples were analyzed with LIPS (Laser Induced Plasma Spectrometry). It was found that drying affects the migration of starch, but not latex. Total air drying can be used to dry printing papers, if air temperature, velocity and moisture content can be separately controlled. The control of web temperature is more important for paper quality formation in a coater drying section than that of evaporation rate.     

Context quantization by kernel Fisher discriminant.

Optimal context quantizers for minimum conditional entropy can be constructed by dynamic programming in the probability simplex space. The main difficulty, operationally, is the resulting complex quantizer mapping function in the context space, in which the conditional entropy coding is conducted. To overcome this difficulty, we propose new algorithms for designing context quantizers in the context space based on the multiclass Fisher discriminant and the kernel Fisher discriminant (KFD). In particular, the KFD can describe linearly nonseparable quantizer cells by projecting input context vectors onto a high-dimensional curve, in which these cells become better separable. The new algorithms outperform the previous linear Fisher discriminant method for context quantization. They approach the minimum empirical conditional entropy context quantizer designed in the probability simplex space, but with a practical implementation that employs a simple scalar quantizer mapping function rather than a large lookup table.     

BOOTSTRAP — a European assessment methodology

During the last three years an ESPRIT project BOOTSTRAP has assessed the capability of examples of the European software industry using a European process assessment and improvement methodology that was developed in the project. The BOOTSTRAP assessment methodology was developed by applying the original SEI model as the main background model. The original SEI approach was adopted in the methodology, and extended with features based on the guidelines from ISO 9000 quality standards and ESA (European Space Agency) process model standards. The extensions were made in order to fit the methodology into the European context, and to attain more detailed capability profiles in addition to maturity levels, separately for both organizations and projects. Although the BOOTSTRAP approach was formed by extending the original SEI model with new and reshaped features, it is still possible to distinguish the maturity levels that are equivalent to the SEI model. The methodology includes a guided assessment process, questionnaires and an algorithm for maturity and capability determination, guidelines for process improvement, an assessor training programme and licensing policy, and computer-based tools and a European database that support the consultancy activities.