Sequence Of Processing Steps Research Articles

Dynamic Adaptation of Processing Steps For Financial Messaging

In the business-to-business area of financial services firms, financial messaging is the backbone for processing financial transactions such as currency payments. Firms implementing these solutions require high levels of straight-through-processing (STP) and flexible processing configurations. Experience shows that decisions about the processing steps are dependent on various parameters, which can change during the processing life cycle of a financial message. This could be due to something like a missed deadline where special agreements for important customers need to be considered. To handle these situations, externalise the processing behaviour and to allow dynamic updating of the sequence of processing steps, the author invented the dynamic adaptation of electronic routing slips. The dynamic adaptation is based on financial message control information, processing status of the message and environment variables that direct the processing of the financial message. The financial message control information is derived from the sender, receiver, message type, clearing system and currency. The processing status of the message is determined at each step of the process. Environment variables are based on conditions that can change, or processing timeframes.

Quantitative microstructural characterization of a near beta Ti alloy, Ti-5553 under different processing conditions

Ti-5553 (Ti–5Al–5Mo–5V–3Cr) is a near beta Ti alloy with potential applications in structural components of aircrafts. In near beta Ti alloys, microstructural features can be varied over a wide range of length scales by changing different heat treatment parameters. Quantitative characterization of different microstructural features of each of those differently heat treated material is of considerable importance to eventually develop a model relating quantitatively, processing, microstructure and mechanical properties. In the present work, quantitative microstructure characterization, using stereological methods, has been performed on various microstructures developed through variations in separate heat treatment variables, as well as variation in each of the different individual variables of a set of sequential combined thermo-mechanical processing steps to obtain beta annealed microstructure. Quantitative effect of processing on microstructure is discussed and a TTT diagram is constructed for alpha precipitation in Ti-5553 alloy.

A Collaborative Approach to Lean Laboratory Workstation Design Reduces Wasted Technologist Travel

Lean methodologies have been applied in many industries to reduce waste. We applied Lean techniques to redesign laboratory workstations with the aim of reducing the number of times employees must leave their workstations to complete their tasks. At baseline in 68 workflows (aggregates or sequence of process steps) studied, 251 (38%) of 664 tasks required workers to walk away from their workstations. After analysis and redesign, only 59 (9%) of the 664 tasks required technologists to leave their workstations to complete these tasks. On average, 3.4 travel events were removed for each workstation. Time studies in a single laboratory section demonstrated that workers spend 8 to 70 seconds in travel each time they step away from the workstation. The redesigned workstations will allow employees to spend less time travelling around the laboratory. Additional benefits include employee training in waste identification, improved overall laboratory layout, and identification of other process improvement opportunities in our laboratory.

Estimating the sustainable capacity of semiconductor fab workstations

The cost of a semiconductor wafer fabrication facility (i.e. ‘fab’) may be as much as five or more billion US dollars. As such it is essential to determine the capacity (e.g. in terms of ‘wafer starts per week’) of such facilities. An accurate estimate of capacity – under real world conditions – is, however, difficult to achieve. Furthermore, the method for the computation of the capacity of a semiconductor fab is significantly different from that for the capacity of workstations in more conventional, less complex factories. This is due in part to the reentrant nature of the workstations (a.k.a. ‘toolsets’) that comprise a fab's production line as well as the ubiquitous employment of operation-to-machine dedications (a.k.a. layer-to-tool qualifications) – plus the need to consider multiple products employing, perhaps, a different sequence of processing steps. In this article, the matter of workstation capacity, in general, and semiconductor fabs, in particular, is examined. A means to quickly and effectively determine the maximum theoretical capacity of a workstation is developed and illustrated – followed by a way in which the more practical maximum sustainable capacity may be estimated.

Methodology to Predict Substrate Warpage and Different Techniques to Achieve Substrate Warpage Targets

With the continued demand for fine features, enhanced assembly yield, and improved reliability in the microelectronic packaging industry, there is a need to reduce substrate warpage. Factors such as coefficient of thermal expansion mismatch among several materials in the packaging substrate, modulus of different materials, thickness of different layers, orientation of features in each layer, thermal and mechanical loading conditions influence the substrate warpage, and any effort to reduce substrate warpage needs to address one or more of these factors. One technique to reduce warpage will be through the viscoelastic relaxation of the dielectric material, when other factors cannot be changed for performance, processing, or cost reasons. Thus, it is important to accurately model the viscoelastic relaxation of the dielectric material, and study how the warpage can be reduced either by changing dwell times at different temperatures and/or by introducing appropriate mechanical loads in combination with thermal loads. In this paper, we present two approaches to reduce substrate warpage: 1) by modifying the temperature-time profile of the sequential processing steps, and 2) by using an external mold to reduce the substrate warpage. Based on the simulation results, it appears that significant warpage reduction is achievable through the proposed techniques.

Effects of Material Properties and Thickness of Die Attach on Warpage and Stresses of TSOP

The assembly of plastic electronic package requires a sequence of process steps. Every process step induces thermal residual deformation and stresses on the assembled components, which cause mechanical effects on the subsequent process step. Processing model with considering the effect of chemical shrinkage on molding compound is built to simulate the package warpage and stresses in assembly. The processing model, a nonlinear model with element birth and death used to activate and deactivate the processing materials, can more realistically simulate a series of assembly processes in a plastic package. The stresses in package components are primary factor for the damage of package. The induced package stresses can cause the delamination between die/die attach interface or die attach/die pad interface. In this study, effects of material properties as well thickness of die attach on warpage and stresses of TSOP (Thin Small Outline Package) during assembly are discussed.

Automated prescreening of pigmented skin lesions using standard cameras

Abstract This paper describes a new method for classifying pigmented skin lesions as benign or malignant. The skin lesion images are acquired with standard cameras, and our method can be used in telemedicine by non-specialists. Each acquired image undergoes a sequence of processing steps, namely: (1) preprocessing, where shading effects are attenuated; (2) segmentation, where a 3-channel image representation is generated and later used to distinguish between lesion and healthy skin areas; (3) feature extraction, where a quantitative representation for the lesion area is generated; and (4) lesion classification, producing an estimate if the lesion is benign or malignant (melanoma). Our method was tested on two publicly available datasets of pigmented skin lesion images. The preliminary experimental results are promising, and suggest that our method can achieve a classification accuracy of 96.71%, which is significantly better than the accuracy of comparable methods available in the literature.

An image processing software applied to oral pathology

This study presents the development and evaluation of an image processing software for computer-assisted cellular structure counting. The proposed software consists of a set of processing and analytical tools which allows its use in several applications of cell and cellular structure counting. A particular application in AgNOR quantitative analysis is presented. The knowledge obtained from experienced pathologists has been codified in a sequence of processing steps in order to allow automatic estimation of the mean number of AgNORs per cell in ameloblastomas. The performance of the presented software in such application was verified by comparing the data provided by visual analysis, by two observers previously calibrated and under supervision of two experienced specialists (Group 1) and by the computer program (Group 2). No statistical difference was observed ( p < 0.05) between the two groups. The use of the proposed method in AgNOR applications permitted attainment of accurate and precise data without the difficulties frequently found in the traditional visual analysis method (time, training and subjectivity). The developed software is an interesting tool as an aid in the study (estimation of the number of cells and cellular structures) of malignant and benign neoplasms.

Morphology-Based Approach to Detection of Free Form Line Objects in Grayscale Images

A method for detection of free form line objects in grayscale images is proposed, based on several sequential processing steps, partly using operations of mathematical morphology. The steps include background compensation, thresholding to obtain binary images, gluing breaches in binary images of objects, skeletonisation, calculation of object length, and making decision about the presence of the object on the basis of its length. The method can be used e.g. in X-ray systems for detection of contaminants in food packages if the images of contaminant objects take the form of a line object with any shape, e.g. fishbones, small metal wires etc. The paper describes application task, ideas behind the method, processing steps and results obtained by processing real X-ray images obtained by food control systems.

Using partition designs to enhance purification process understanding

Characterization of purification processes by identifying significant input parameters and establishing predictive models is vital to developing robust processes. Current experimental design approaches restrict analysis to one process step at a time, which can severely limit the ability to identify interactions between process steps. This can be overcome by the use of partition designs which can model multiple, sequential process steps simultaneously. This paper presents the application of partition designs to a monoclonal antibody purification process. Three sequential purification steps were modeled using both traditional experimental designs and partition designs and the results compared as a proof of concept study. The partition and traditional design approaches identified the same input parameters within each process step that significantly affected the product quality output examined. The partition design also identified significant interactions between input parameters across process steps that could not be uncovered by the traditional approach.

To carry or not to carry — Is this the question? Disentangling the carry effect in multi-digit addition

Recent research has suggested addition performance to be determined by both the need for a carry operation and problem size. Nevertheless, it has remained debatable, how these two factors are interrelated. In the current study, this question was pursued by orthogonally manipulating carry and problem size in two-digit addition verification. As the two factors interacted reliably, our results indicate that the carry effect is moderated by number magnitude processing rather than representing a purely procedural, asemantic sequence of processing steps. Moreover, it was found that the carry effect may not be a purely categorical effect but may be driven by continuous characteristics of the sum of the unit digits as well. Since the correct result of a carry problem can only be derived by integrating and updating the magnitudes of tens and units within the place-value structure of the Arabic number system, the present study provides evidence for the idea that decomposed processing of tens and units also transfers to mental arithmetic.

Parallelizing XML data-streaming workflows via MapReduce

In prior work it has been shown that the design of scientific workflows can benefit from a collection-oriented modeling paradigm which views scientific workflows as pipelines of XML stream processors. In this paper, we present approaches for exploiting data parallelism in XML processing pipelines through novel compilation strategies to the MapReduce framework. Pipelines in our approach consist of sequences of processing steps that receive XML-structured data and produce, often through calls to “black-box” (scientific) functions, modified (i.e., updated) XML structures. Our main contributions are (i) the development of a set of strategies for compiling scientific workflows, modeled as XML processing pipelines, into parallel MapReduce networks, and (ii) a discussion of their advantages and trade-offs, based on a thorough experimental evaluation of the various translation strategies. Our evaluation uses the Hadoop MapReduce system as an implementation platform. Our results show that execution times of XML workflow pipelines can be significantly reduced using our compilation strategies. These efficiency gains, together with the benefits of MapReduce (e.g., fault tolerance) make our approach ideal for executing large-scale, compute-intensive XML-based scientific workflows.

Newborn Seizure Detection Based on Heart Rate Variability

In this paper, we investigate the use of heart rate variability (HRV) for automatic newborn seizure detection. The proposed method consists of a sequence of processing steps, namely, obtaining HRV from the ECG, extracting a discriminating HRV feature set, selecting an optimal subset from the full feature set, and, finally, classifying the HRV into seizure/nonseizure using a supervised statistical classifier. Due to the fact that HRV signals are nonstationary, a set of time-frequency features from the newborn HRV is proposed and extracted. In order to achieve efficient HRV-based automatic newborn seizure detection, a two-phase wrapper-based feature selection technique is used to select the feature subset with minimum redundancy and maximum class discriminability. Tested on ECG recordings obtained from eight newborns with identified EEG seizure, the proposed HRV-based neonatal seizure detection algorithm achieved 85.7% sensitivity and 84.6% specificity. These results suggest that the HRV is sensitive to changes in the cardioregulatory system induced by the seizure, and therefore, can be used as a basis for an automatic seizure detection.

Subject-specific, multiscale simulation of electrophysiology: a software pipeline for image-based models and application examples

Many simulation studies in biomedicine are based on a similar sequence of processing steps, starting from images and running through geometric model generation, assignment of tissue properties, numerical simulation and visualization of the results—a process known as image-based geometric modelling and simulation. We present an overview of software systems for implementing such a sequence both within highly integrated problem-solving environments and in the form of loosely integrated pipelines. Loose integration in this case indicates that individual programs function largely independently but communicate through files of a common format and support simple scripting, so as to automate multiple executions wherever possible. We then describe three specific applications of such pipelines to translational biomedical research in electrophysiology.

Trabecular Bone Structure Analysis in the Limited Spatial Resolution Regime of In Vivo MRI

To develop a method for processing and visualization of trabecular bone networks on the basis of magnetic resonance (MR) images acquired in the limited spatial resolution regime of in vivo imaging at which trabecular thickness is comparable to voxel size. A sequence of processing steps for analyzing the topologic structure of trabecular bone networks is presented and evaluated using three types of datasets: images of synthetic structures with various levels of superimposed Gaussian noise, micro-computed tomographic images of human trabecular bone downsampled to in vivo resolution, and in vivo micro-MR images from a prior longitudinal study investigating the structural implications of testosterone treatment of hypogonadal men. The simulated images were analyzed at a voxel size of 150 microm(3), the clinical MR image data had been acquired with 137 x 137 x 410 microm(3) voxel size. The technique is a modification to the virtual bone biopsy processing chain that involves a sinc convolution step immediately preceding binarization, and employs the Manzanera-Bernard thinning algorithm for obtaining the three-dimensional skeleton before topologic classification. The detectability of plate and rod bone elements was also analyzed theoretically. As compared with previously published techniques, the approach produced a more accurate bone skeleton in the micro-computed tomographic and simulation experiments, with clear improvement in preservation of rod and plate elements. Simulations suggest that rods are detectable down to a diameter of approximately 50% of the MR image voxel length, whereas plates can be detected at thicknesses of 20% or more of voxel length. For in vivo studies, it was shown that the method could recover the treatment response in terms of the ensuing topologic changes in patients undergoing antiresorptive treatment. The algorithm for processing of in vivo micro-MR images of trabecular bone is superior to prior approaches in preserving the topology of the network in the presence of noise.

Moving average PLS soft sensor for online product quality estimation in an industrial batch polymerization process

This paper considers the development of multivariate statistical soft sensors for the online estimation of product quality in a real-world industrial batch polymerization process. The batches are characterized by uneven length, non-reproducible sequence of processing steps, and scarce number of measurements for the quality indicators with uneven sampling of (and lag on) these variables. It is shown that, for the purpose of quality estimation, the complex series of operating steps characterizing a batch can be simplified to a sequence of three estimation phases. The switching from one phase to the other one can be triggered by easily detectable events occurring in the batch. For each estimation phase, PLS software sensors are designed, and their performance is evaluated against plant data. The estimation accuracy can be substantially improved if some form of dynamic information is included into the models, either by augmenting the process data matrix with lagged measurements, or by averaging the process measurements values on a moving window of fixed length. In particular, the moving average three-phase PLS estimator shows the best overall performance, providing accurate estimations also during estimation Phase 2, which is characterized by a very large variability between batches.

Package Warpage and Stress Evaluation for a Plastic Electronic Package

The assembly of plastic electronic package requires a sequence of process steps. Every process step induces thermal residual deformation and stresses on the assembled components, which cause mechanical effects on the subsequent process step. In this study, both processing and non-processing models with and without considering the effect of chemical shrinkage on molding compound are built to simulate the package warpage and stresses in assembly. The processing model, a nonlinear model with element birth and death used to activate and deactivate the processing materials, can more realistically simulate a series of assembly processes in a plastic package. Due to negligence of the intermediate step, the package warpage and stresses predicted by non-processing model are in significant error.

Core-shell and other multiphase latex particles—confirming their morphologies and relating those to synthesis variables

Composite latex particles made from sequential processing steps may have a wide range of morphologies. The particular structure achieved is the result of a number of complex interactions between the chemical and physical aspects of the emulsion polymerization process. The intention is often to produce a core-shell particle structure, but in reality this is often a nontrivial task. In addition, it is challenging to develop confident conclusions about the detailed morphology of such particles, even when the two-component polymers are well phase-separated. This paper reports on an inter-laboratory study of acrylic-styrene copolymer latices in which the two-component polymers were not well phase-separated—a common result when attempting to make core-shell latex particles. Six different organizations each performed a number of analytical measurements to characterize two different latex systems. Their collective results were presented at a workshop in which the group strived to reach consensus on the detailed structures of the particles. Their conclusions were that multiple, complementary analytical results are required to reach a sound decision. While electron microscope results were always judged to be necessary, considered by themselves, it is often found that one can be led to false conclusions, especially for systems that are not well phase-separated. Given the results of this study it is clearly inappropriate to assume that the polymer formed in the second stage of a semibatch latex polymerization process forms a shell, giving rise to a core-shell morphology.

SIMS Study of C, O and N Impurity Contamination for Multi-Crystalline Si Solar Cells

AbstractThis paper is a case study of using SIMS to quantitatively measure C, O and N impurity contamination at two sequential commercial process steps: (1) Si feedstock: 7N (modified Siemens) and 5N feedstock (UMG-Si); and (2) multi-crystalline (mc-Si) solar wafers: cut and etched, from directional solidification bricks grown from 7N and 7N/5N (80:20) feedstock. The conclusion of this study is twofold: (a) the primary opportunity to reduce C, O and N contamination in mc-Si solar cells is at the directional solidification process, and (b) the costly specification of highly pure Si feedstock is unnecessary from a C, O and N perspective if a directional solidification process is used.

Experimental design and interpretation of functional neuroimaging studies of cognitive processes.

This article discusses how the relation between experimental and baseline conditions in functional neuroimaging studies affects the conclusions that can be drawn from a study about the neural correlates of components of the cognitive system and about the nature and organization of those components. I argue that certain designs in common use--in particular the contrast of qualitatively different representations that are processed at parallel stages of a functional architecture--can never identify the neural basis of a cognitive operation and have limited use in providing information about the nature of cognitive systems. Other types of designs-such as ones that contrast representations that are computed in immediately sequential processing steps and ones that contrast qualitatively similar representations that are parametrically related within a single processing stage-are more easily interpreted.