蜕变——中国气象局华风影视大楼

华风气象影视大楼总面积4万平方米，根据空间功能不同分为办公大楼和商务写字楼两部分，办公大楼是集演播室、制作机房、办公室为一体的九层综合性建筑。设计师杨宇在刚接触到这个项目的时候，面对的是一个既成事实的建筑。     

Evaluating the impact of CASE: an empirical comparison of retrospective and cross-sectional survey approaches

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate two methods of assessing the productivity and quality impact of Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) and Fourth Generation Language (4GL) technologies: (1) by the retrospective method; and (2) the cross-sectional method. Both methods involve the use of questionnaire surveys. Developers' perceptions depend on the context in which they are expressed and this includes expectations about the effectiveness of a given software product. Consequently, it is generally not reliable to base inferences about the relative merits of CASE and 4GLs on a cross-sectional comparison of two separate samples of users. The retrospective method that requires each respondent to directly compare different products is shown to be more reliable. However, there may be scope to employ cross-sectional comparisons of the findings from different samples where both sets of respondents use the same reference point for their judgements, and where numerical rather than verbal rating scales are used to measure perceptions.     

Environmental-stress-screening using degradation measurements

ESS (environmental stress screening) has been extensively used to reduce infant mortality by precipitating defects. The existing ESS plans precipitate defects by stressing all products for specified durations. The plans usually require long screen durations to allow nearly all defective items to fail, and thus generate excessive aging effects on good items. For some products, failures are defined in terms of performance characteristics exceeding their critical values. This paper describes the principles of using degradation measurements of performance characteristics to screen the products. In an ESS, the performance characteristics of defective items degrade considerably faster than those of good ones, yielding a bimodal distribution of the characteristics. As screen duration increases, the 2 modes of the distribution shift apart. It is possible to find a tightened critical value to weed out the defective items before they fail. This paper, based on these principles, further designs the optimal 2-level screen plans which minimize a segment of life-cycle cost and which simultaneously meet the reliability requirement. The minimum cost is achieved by choosing optimal part-level and unit-level screen durations and tightened critical values of parts. A numerical example is followed by discussion. Because the ESS regime of this paper allows defective parts to be screened out before they fail, the developed optimal ESS plans can reduce life-cycle cost, shorten part-level screen duration, and alleviate aging effects on good products     

The organisational learning effects of management accounting information under advanced manufacturing technology

This study empirically examined the organisational learning effects of the nonfinancial performance information provided by management accounting information systems (MAISs) under advanced manufacturing technology (AMT). In this study, a target costing system and the frequent and quick reporting of information were considered the facilitators of learning. First, we examined the relationships between AMT level and the amount of nonfinancial performance information produced by MAISs. The empirical results showed that there are significant positive relationships between the level of AMT and nonfinancial performance information. With a systems approach, we also proved the impact of the relationships among AMT levels, nonfinancial performance information and learning facilitators on the organisational performance of a firm. The results of our research suggest that under a high level of AMT, for the provision of information to result in an increase of performance through organisational learning, a target costing system must be introduced and a large amount of information should be provided frequently and quickly. The results of this study also showed that although AMT level may be low, fairly well-arranged facilitators and a moderately large amount of information may be necessary for the improvement of performance. In conclusion, effective organisational learning depends on the provision of relevant information as well as efficient learning support mechanisms.     

Guest Editorial

The UK-China Research Network on Intelligent Automation, Computing and Manufacturing has been established since September 2004 by grants from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) of the UK and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. The initiative of the network is motivated by the last visit of the UK Science Minister Lord Sainsbury to China to open the first UK-China Hi-Tech Forum and by the current EPSRC initiative to set up specific network programmes in collaboration with partners in China.     

The hot blow forming of AZ31 Mg sheet: Formability assessment and application development

The hot blow forming of magnesium sheet offers significant opportunity for forming complex, lightweight parts for automotive applications. This paper characterizes the elevated-temperature formability of AZ31 magnesium sheet materials and the effect of processing conditions on the performance of these materials. In addition, magnesium sheet application development at General Motors Corporation is reviewed.