Mass Production Efficiency Research Articles

A novel paper rag as ‘D-SERS’ substrate for detection of pesticide residues at various peels

Many important considerations in the design of practical Surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) substrates are necessary, such as the low cost, simple preparation, mass production and high efficiency of sample collection, which the conventional rigid substrates are lack of. In this work, practical SERS substrates based on deposition of silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) on commercially available low-cost filter paper were prepared by simple silver mirror reaction in a large scale, and utilized for rapid, portable and accurate identification and detection of pesticide residues at various peels. Compared with conventional substrates, this novel SERS substrate dramatically enhanced the sample collection efficiency by simply swabbing paper-based device across different surfaces without destroying the sample, meanwhile avoiding the substrate signal of real-world samples. Considering their low cost, portability, simplicity and high sample collection efficiency, Ag NP-decorated filter paper, as practical SERS substrate, are used in solving critical problems for detection of pesticide residues at various peels. SERS experiments were carried out on Ag NP-decorated filter paper combined with ‘dynamic SERS’ (D-SERS) due to its high detection sensitivity. The excellent detection performance of the Ag NP-based filter paper was demonstrated by detection thiram and paraoxon residues at various peels. Besides, the stability and reproducibility of the practical substrates were also involved.

A New Engineering Design Paradigm – The Quadruple Bottom Line

The number of product variants has increased dramatically in recent years. The increase in variety has a multitude of reasons including customers’ demand for new product functions and features, different regional requirements, and large number of market segments having different needs. The emergence of new materials and technologies make new and different product features possible, and the fierce competition among manufacturers and retailers to distinguish their products, attract more buyers and secure larger markets are important drivers of increased variety. Mass customization (MC) means producing goods and services to meet individual customer's needs with near mass production efficiency without compromising cost, quality or delivery. It aims at achieving economy of scope at a cost approaching that of economy of scale by delaying products differentiation and capitalizing on commonality and similarity between variants within a product family. Personalization means that products are made-to-measure or to customers’ personal specifications. However, to achieve some measures of economy, only few product components are allowed to be manufactured to fit the customer specifications.This paper discusses the evolution of product design for mass customization and personalization as well as product variety and complexity management in the context of engineering design and the changing design paradigms.The main objective of customization and personalization is to be competitive in the market and to maintain a good market share. This significant innovation has been based primarily on achieving the traditional objectives of the best quality product, produced for a competitive cost just in time to meet the market needs in a timely manner. Beyond customization and personalization for companies to sustain in the future, they must also meet the continuous innovation requirements while producing environmentally friendly products and the socio-technical objectives, hence meeting a quadruple bottom line.

Image tracking for the high similarity drug tablets based on light intensity reflective energy and artificial neural network.

It is obvious that tablet image tracking exerts a notable influence on the efficiency and reliability of high-speed drug mass production, and, simultaneously, it also emerges as a big difficult problem and targeted focus during production monitoring in recent years, due to the high similarity shape and random position distribution of those objectives to be searched for. For the purpose of tracking tablets accurately in random distribution, through using surface fitting approach and transitional vector determination, the calibrated surface of light intensity reflective energy can be established, describing the shape topology and topography details of objective tablet. On this basis, the mathematical properties of these established surfaces have been proposed, and thereafter artificial neural network (ANN) has been employed for classifying those moving targeted tablets by recognizing their different surface properties; therefore, the instantaneous coordinate positions of those drug tablets on one image frame can then be determined. By repeating identical pattern recognition on the next image frame, the real-time movements of objective tablet templates were successfully tracked in sequence. This paper provides reliable references and new research ideas for the real-time objective tracking in the case of drug production practices.

A Systemic Perspective for Mass Customization: An Approach to Defining Product Lines

Nowadays, the customer-oriented market and the stress on performances lead a lot of enterprises to adopt the Mass Customization (MC) (Davis 1987) strategy as identified in (Tseng and Jiao 2001). Ideally MC is a business approach that provides a product customization capability like an engineer-to-order organization (ETO - the product is designed at each order entry), preserving the mass production efficiency. In this paper, we cope with the formalization of the link between customer needs and the customized product variant that can be configured starting from them. The aim is to propose a way to build this link for formalizing the product variety in the customer domain. This paper is based on industrial cases of Trane, a multinational company that develops, manufactures and commercializes air-handling systems.

Produção enxuta e teoria das restrições: proposta de um método para implantação conjunta na Indústria de Bens de Capital sob Encomenda

Ao longo do tempo, a tarefa de desenvolver e gerir sistemas de produção tem se tornado mais complexa e, atualmente, para enfrentar as mudanças de demanda dos clientes e a competição global, os gestores têm a difícil tarefa de combinar a eficiência da produção em massa com a customização da era da produção artesanal pré-industrial. Nesse contexto, as empresas da Indústria de Bens de Capital sob Encomenda (IBCE), expostas a condições de mercado muito adversas, têm buscado estratégias modernas de gestão da produção para melhorar o fluxo de produção e minimizar inconveniências inerentes a seus sistemas de produção. Este artigo estuda a IBCE, em especial os bens de capital de grande porte, também conhecidas como sistemas de produção de grandes montagens, com o objetivo de propor um método de implantação conjunta dos princípios da produção enxuta e da teoria das restrições, com a utilização dos Sistemas de Coordenação de Ordens adequados, para reduzir o lead time de produção e melhorar a pontualidade de entrega.

Controllable fabrication of periodic arrays of high-aspect-ratio micro-nano hierarchical structures and their superhydrophobicity

This paper demonstrates a flexible and controllable fabrication of vertically aligned and high-aspect-ratio (HAR) micro-nano hierarchical structures using conventional micro-technologies. We first masked the nanopatterns on a photoresist mold by shifting the same photomask, which could be performed using conventional contact microlithography. Thereby replicating nanopatterns onto an aluminium mold and successfully fabricating silicon nanopillar arrays about 300 nm in diameter and 5 µm in height via the deep reactive etching (DRIE) process. We also fabricated micro-nano hierarchical structures with variable aspect ratios using the proposed nanopattern technology and DRIE process without using any special nanopatterning equipment or techniques. The proposed method not only simplified the fabrication process but also produced HAR (higher than 15) structures. We also investigate the replica molding steps from the fabricated silicon stamp to a UV-curable polymer replica using a PDMS mold and conventional nano-imprinting, where each nanopillar diameter was 320 nm with 95% fidelity. As a result, the hierarchical structure arrays show stable superhydrophobic surface properties with a contact angle of approximately 160°. Owing to the cost efficiency of mass production and the fidelity of the strategy, the methodology could provide a general approach for fabricating complex three-dimensional periodic hierarchical structures onto a single chip and can be applied to various fields of multifunctional applications.

Multi-stage diagnostic system for reciprocating compressor using DTW technique

The reciprocating compressor has widely been used in the industry because of low cost to mass production and high efficiency of performance. If an abnormal compressor is produced, high service cost occurs due to the increased service claim rate (SCR). A great deal of research has been conducted for real-time diagnosis of the compressor while it is being made in the manufacturing line. However, since the compressor structure is quite complicated, it is still difficult to find the cause of the compressor fault. Even with outstanding diagnostic tools, it is hard to screen an abnormal compressor at one time. We have developed a multi-stage diagnosis scheme to monitor the abnormal compressor. In this diagnosis scheme, the dynamic time warping (DTW) technique is employed to diagnose the fault compressor. The LAN based network is applied for connecting from first diagnosis PC to second diagnosis PC. The multi-stage diagnosis manufacturing line is established and the DTW technique has been successfully implemented in the diagnostic system. The multi-stage DTW system screens most of the abnormal compressor. The gage R&R is conducted to secure the reliability of the system.

An implementation framework for seru production

AbstractSeru production, which merges the flexibility of job shops, efficiency of mass production, and environment friendly characteristics of sustainable manufacturing, largely for electronics assembly, is the latest manufacturing mode developed in Japan. It is receiving attention from Japanese practitioners and researchers. However, some attempts to implement seru production are unsuccessful, especially outside Japan. This is because of lack of knowledge of the specific means to implement seru production. The purpose of this paper is to provide a general framework and some basic principles that should be followed while implementing seru production for practitioners from a practical perspective. This work is based on a systematic analysis of many implementation experiences of seru production in Japanese manufacturing factories as well as a broad investigation of the popular literature information. The proposed framework can serve as a concise guide to help implement seru production in the manufacturing industry. In addition, constructive information is provided for researchers who would like to know and study the advanced manufacturing mode of seru production but do not understand the Japanese language.

Mass customization design of engineer-to-order products using Benders’ decomposition and bi-level stochastic programming

Leveraging product differentiation and mass production efficiency in mass customization basically entails a configure-to-order paradigm. In the engineer-to-order (ETO) business, however, companies build unique products in response to `foreseeable' customer specifications. The key challenge of ETO mass customization lies in the complexity of accommodating future design changes when customers are involved in customizing design specifications. This paper proposes a two-stage, bi-level stochastic programming framework to tackle ETO mass customization. At the first stage, product platform configuration is integrated with production reconfiguration, which is formulated as a shortest path problem with resource constraints (SPPRC) to optimize production delays within the capabilities of the process platform. Benders' decomposition algorithm is applied to solve this optimal configuration problem owing to its high computational efficiency. The second stage scrutinizes the optimal configuration resulting from the first stage for scaling optimization of design parameters (DPs) for each module. All DPs are differentiated by standard or customizable DPs. A bi-level stochastic program is implemented to leverage conflicting goals between the producer (leader) and consumer (follower) surpluses. As a result, ETO customization design is anchored with optimal values of standard DPs and optimal value ranges of customizable DPs. A case study of ship engine and power generator ETO design is presented, demonstrating the feasibility and potential of the ETO mass customization framework.

In Situ Conversion of ZnO Microsphere from ZnS Complex Microstructure and Photocatalytic Study

Precursor ZnS complex microstructure, synthesized under concentrated NaOH solution, was annealed at different temperatures to fabricate self-supported ZnO microstructure with large-scale yield. The crystal structure, morphology and chemical compositions of the as-prepared ZnO nanoparticles were examined by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller specific surface area (BET). The experimental results show that the obtained ZnO microsphere keeps an intact self-supported structure even after high temperature annealing and the XRD observation indicates that the crystal lattice becomes more integrated along with the elevation of annealing temperature. We further investigated the photocatalytic property towards eosin B and found that the photocatalytic property seems to be closely related to crystallinity of the lattice. As the crystallinity enhances, the photocatalytic performance of the ZnO self-supported microsphere becomes significantly better. Overall, the investigation indicates that we have prepared a novel kind of self-supported ZnO microsphere photocatalyst with the merit of mass production and high catalytic efficiency.

3C Product Design by Customers Based on Geek Net Groups

Individuation is the inevitable trend of product design, especially 3C product. So the further can the clients participate in the product design, the more product individuation is. Confronted with the increasing individual demands of customers, manufacturers should think it more important to increase the individuation of their products by doing their best to enable the clients take part fart- hest in the 3C products design with the efficiency of mass production. The characteristics of 3C product design and the customers - "Geek" network groups are summarized at first. Then, as an example of MEIZU M9 mobile phone, design by customers-Geek to the innovation design of 3C product is analyzed. Finally, based on these questions, the methods and problems for the production innovation of 3C manufacturers are described. It provides theoretic basic for studying customers how to participate in design and the system development of design by customers.

A two-phase methodology for modular product customisation

Mass customisation is known as producing customised products while entailing the efficiency of mass production. The proposed model is based on manufacturing features and entails the concept of modular design. That is manufacturing features are identified and analysed in a way that enables the generation of what is called ‘manufacturing core’. Manufacturing cores are generated through two phases of optimisation. The first phase is known as product’s manufacturing features analysis which includes starting features identification. The second phase is known as manufacturing cores formation that ends with generation of manufacturing cores. A case study is proposed as an implantation of the model on real products (flanges). This approach comes as intermediate production strategy between make to stock and make to order strategies. It provides a decision tool for managers to better identify which strategy is better to use. The model proposes an integrated manufacturing cores and modular design approach Therefore, lower inventory of sub-assemblies and components are planned for a more efficient production operation.

Laboratory of Flexible Manufacturing System

The main advantage of the flexible manufacturing system is its high flexibility in management of production facilities and resources (time, machines and their utilization, etc.). The largest application of these systems is in the area of small batch production where its efficiency is getting near to the mass production efficiency. Its disadvantage is the high implementation price.

Study on Formability of Micro-Feature in the Coining Process

In micro-manufacture field, micro-forming is paid much attention due to its efficiency for mass production. However, owing to the particularity of deformation, mass researches for specialized micro-forming processes to direct the industrial production are of great urgency. As a similar process with the micro-forming, the forming property of micro-feature forming in coining process was investigated by the experimental research and numerical analysis. Firstly, utilizing the workpieces with different thicknesses and micro-feature sizes, the coining processes were numerically simulated to study the forming property of micro-feature. The height of micro-feature was selected as the evaluation criteria for the deformation behavior. Then, the pure copper specimens with different thicknesses were coined experimentally, using a die with a micro-hole by the universal testing machine to verify the simulation results. Finally, a modified scheme was successful to be proposed which could improve the manufacturability of the processes. The research results could provide technical references for manufacturing micro-parts and those with micro-features.

Efficiency improved by acid texturization for multi-crystalline silicon solar cells

In this paper, we will show that efficiency of multi-crystalline silicon (mc-Si) solar cells may be improved by acid texturization. In order to enhance overall efficiency of mc-Si for solar-cell applications, the surface treatment of texturization with wet etching using appropriate solutions can improve incident light into the cell. Alkali etchant cannot produce uniformly textured surface to generate enough open circuit voltage ( V OC) and high efficiency of the mc-Si due to the unavoidable grain randomly oriented with higher steps formed during etching process. Optimized acid etching conditions can be obtained by decreasing the reflectance ( R) for mc-Si substrate below levels generated by alkali etching. Short-circuit current ( I SC) measurements on acid textured cells reveal that current gain can be significantly enhanced by reducing reflection. The optimal acid etching ratio HF:HNO 3:H 2O = 15:1:2.5 with etching time of 60 s and lowering 42.7% of the R value can improve 112.4% of the conversion efficiency ( η) of the developed solar cell. In order to obtain more detailed information of different defect region, high-resolution light beam induced current (LBIC) is applied to measure the internal quantum efficiency (IQE) and the lifetime of minority carriers. Thus, the acid texturing approach is instrumental to achieve high efficiency in mass production using relatively low-cost mc-Si as starting material with proper optimization of the fabrication steps.

A general surface-treatment-free approach to fabrication of alignment layers using a super-aligned carbon nanotube film template

We develop a general approach to the fabrication of films with unidirectional grooves, such as silicon nitride, silicon dioxide and aluminium oxide, in which the surface is not required to be treated. Super-aligned carbon nanotube (SACNT) film may be used as a template and as sacrificial layer, which is subsequently removed by heating in an atmosphere of air. The unidirectional morphology of the SACNT film turns into a desired film, which is found to possess the ability to align liquid crystal molecules. This approach also features high efficiency, low cost and easy scaling-up for mass production.

Designs and Architectures for the Next Generation of Organic Solar Cells

Organic solar cells show great promise as an economically and environmentally friendly technology to utilize solar energy because of their simple fabrication processes and minimal material usage. However, new innovations and breakthroughs are needed for organic solar cell technology to become competitive in the future. This article reviews research efforts and accomplishments focusing on three issues: power conversion efficiency, device stability and processability for mass production, followed by an outlook for optimizing OSC performance through device engineering and new architecture designs to realize next generation organic solar cells.

FePBNbCr soft-magnetic glassy alloys with low loss characteristics for inductor cores

Fe-based glassy alloys with both high saturation magnetization and low magnetic anisotropy have attracted interest in recent study on Mr. Inoue, 2004, and we have succeeded in developing novel glassy Fe 97− x− y P x B y Nb 2Cr 1 ( x = 5–13, y = 7–15) alloys for an inductor material. The glassy alloy series of Fe 97− x− y P x B y Nb 2Cr 1 ( x = 5–13, y = 7–15) have high glass-forming ability with the large critical thickness of 110–150 μm and low coercivity of 2.5–3.1 A/m caused by the structural homogeneity. The Fe 77P 7B 13Nb 2Cr 1 glassy alloy exhibits the largest critical thickness of 150 μm related to the wide super cooled liquid region and the high saturation magnetic flux density ( B s ) of 1.3 T, both of which are higher than those of the conventional amorphous Fe 75Si 10B 12Cr 3 alloy. Hence, Fe–P–B–Nb–Cr powder/resin composite core has much lower core loss of 650 kW/m 3 which is approximately 1/3 lower than the conventional amorphous Fe–Si–B–Cr powder/resin composite core that are annealed at 623 K. In addition, the optimum annealing temperature of 623 K for these glassy alloys was lower than that (723 K) for the ordinary Fe–Si–B–Cr amorphous alloy, which is a significant advantage for the efficiency in mass production of inductor core using soft-magnetic glassy alloy powder.

Novel ${\hbox {Fe}}_{(97-{\rm x-y})}{\hbox {P}}_{\rm x}{\hbox {B}}_{\rm y}{\hbox {Nb}}_{2}{\hbox {Cr}}_{1}$ Glassy Alloys With High Magnetization and Low Loss Characteristics for Inductor Core Materials

Fe-based glassy alloys with both high saturation magnetization and low magnetic anisotropy have attracted interest recently , and we have succeeded in developing novel glassy Fe <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">(97-x-y)</sub> P <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">x</sub> B <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">y</sub> Nb <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> Cr <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sub> (x=5 -13, y=7-15) alloys for an inductor material with high corrosion resistance by added Cr is 1 at%. The glassy alloy series of Fe <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">(97-x-y)</sub> P <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">x</sub> B <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">y</sub> Nb <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> Cr (x=5-13, y=7-15) have high glass-forming ability with wide range super-cooled liquid region of 29-37 K, large critical thickness of 110-150 ¿m, and low coercivity of 2.5-3.1 A/m caused by the structural homogeneity. The Fe <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">77</sub> P <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">7</sub> B <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">13</sub> Nb <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> Cr <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sub> glassy alloy exhibits the largest critical thickness of 150 ¿m related to the wide super-cooled liquid region of 36 K and the high saturation magnetic flux density (Bs) of 1.3 T, both of which are higher than those of the conventional amorphous Fe <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">75</sub> Si <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">10</sub> B <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">12</sub> Cr <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sub> alloy. The Fe-P-B-Nb-Cr powder/resin composite core has much lower core loss of 650 kW/m <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup> which is approximately 1/3 lower than the conventional amorphous Fe-Si-B-Cr powder/resin composite core annealed at 623 K. Additionally, The Fe-P-B-Nb-Cr glassy alloy has higher corrosion resistance than other system glassy metal of Fe-Si-B-Nb-Cr by having a thick chromium passivation layer. the optimum annealing temperature of 623 K for these glassy alloys is lower than that (723 K) for the ordinary Fe-Si-B-Cr amorphous alloy, which is a significant advantage for the efficiency in mass production of inductor core using soft magnetic glassy alloy powder.

Investigation of Low-Cost Surface Processing Techniques for Large-Size Multicrystalline Silicon Solar Cells

The subject of the present work is to develop a simple and effective method of enhancing conversion efficiency in large-size solar cells using multicrystalline silicon (mc-Si) wafer. In this work, industrial-type mc-Si solar cells with area of125×125 mm2were acid etched to produce simultaneouslyPOCl3emitters and silicon nitride deposition by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposited (PECVD). The study of surface morphology and reflectivity of different mc-Si etched surfaces has also been discussed in this research. Using our optimal acid etching solution ratio, we are able to fabricate mc-Si solar cells of 16.34% conversion efficiency with double layers silicon nitride (Si3N4) coating. From our experiment, we find that depositing double layers silicon nitride coating on mc-Si solar cells can get the optimal performance parameters. Open circuit (Voc) is 616 mV, short circuit current (Jsc) is 34.1 mA/cm2, and minority carrier diffusion length is 474.16 μm. The isotropic texturing and silicon nitride layers coating approach contribute to lowering cost and achieving high efficiency in mass production.