About the Contributors to Library Trends 42 (3) Winter 1994: Library Finance: New Needs, New Models

published or submitted for publicatio

Techno-Economic Analysis of Hybrid Layered Manufacturing

Subtractive manufacturing (CNC machining) has high quality of geometric and material properties but is slow, costly and infeasible in some cases; additive manufacturing (RP) is just the opposite. Total automation and hence speed is achieved in RP by compromising on quality. Hybrid Layered Manufacturing (HLM) developed at IIT Bombay combines the best features of both these approaches. It uses arc welding for building near-net shapes which are finish machined to final dimensions. High speed of HLM surpasses all other processes for tool making by eliminating NC programming and rough machining. The techno-economic viability of HLM process has been proved through a real life case study. Time and cost of tool making using HLM promises to be substantially lower than that of CNC machining and other RP methods. Interestingly, the material cost in HLM was also found to be lower. HLM is a cheaper retrofitment to any 3 or 5 axis CNC milling machine or machining center.Mechanical Engineerin

Simplified Production of Large Prototypes using Visible Slicing

Rapid Prototyping (RP) is a totally automatic generative manufacturing technique based on a “divide-and-conquer” strategy called ‘slicing’. Simple slicing used on 2.5-axis kinematics of the existing RP machines is responsible for the staircase error. Although thinner slices will have less error, the slice thickness has practical limits. Visible Slicing overcomes these limitations. A few visible slices exactly represent the object. Each visible slice can be realized using a 3- axis kinematics machine from two opposite directions. Visible slicing is implemented on Segmented Object Manufacturing (SOM) machine under development. SOM can produce soft large prototypes faster and cheaper with accuracy comparable to that of CNC machining.Mechanical Engineerin

The Intersection of Robotic Process Automation and Lean Six Sigma Applied to Unstructured Data

While new Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies gain traction in the workplace, there seems to be more buzz around these newer advances, including Robotic Process Automation (RPA), than more established process improvement techniques such as Lean Six Sigma. This praxis research uses Lean Six Sigma as a framework for effectively deploying these emerging technologies, a challenge for 86% of companies (Ernst & Young, 2021). This research is applied to one of the legal industry’s most resource intensive processes – eDiscovery in the environment of a Big 4 accounting firm that provides services to corporations and legal professionals alike. Electronic discovery (also known as e-discovery, ediscovery, eDiscovery, or e-Discovery) is the process of identifying, collecting, producing, and presenting electronically stored information (ESI) in response to a request for production in a law suit or investigation. ESI can include any type of electronically stored file and commonly includes emails, documents, databases, media files, social media, and web sites. The lifecycle of eDiscovery has been defined by the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) as having the following phases: Information Governance, Identification, Preservation. Collection, Processing, Review, Analysis, Production, and Presentation. To move through the phases of the EDRM historically requires a significant investment in time, technology, and human resources. This project had its origins as an automation effort driven by the technical advances in RPA solutions. However, RPA became a tool for to enable the program – not the solution itself. The DMAIC framework (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) of Lean Six Sigma laid the foundation for a more wholistic analysis of the EDRM including the identification of processes that required revision prior to their automation. The Define phase identified the resource intensive strain moving through the EDRM causes corporations, vendors, and litigators. Through the measure phase, an opportunity to provide better results faster, and therefore cheaper was quickly identified. Through the analysis, several unnecessary handoffs, extraneous processes, and general bottlenecks in the process were refined. Through the Improve phase, automation played a significant part in realizing the efficiencies identified in the analyze phase. Finally, the controls phase not only put these improved processes into place but also quantified the value of ensuring these procedures were thoroughly deployed. This research is organized using the DMAIC framework to articulate the process for completing the research, the gains and efficiencies made throughout the analysis, and to measure the impact and success of the overall program enhancements. The impact of this project is measurable not only in the reduction of defects as defined by Lean Six Sigma, but also a significant improvement in time required to complete these processes. Even more satisfying, these efficiencies have a measurable, financial impact that has currently been realized north of $5 million USD in one year alone. This impact led to the solution becoming a finalist for an industry award where it was presented to over 3,000 industry professionals. Furthermore, the reduction and automation of manual, tedious tasks have also led to more enriching work for resources

Novel Locomotion Methods in Magnetic Actuation and Pipe Inspection

There is much room for improvement in tube network inspections of jet aircraft. Often, these inspections are incomplete and inconsistent. In this paper, we develop a Modular Robotic Inspection System (MoRIS) for jet aircraft tube networks and a corresponding kinematic model. MoRIS consists of a Base Station for user control and communication, and robotic Vertebrae for accessing and inspecting the network. The presented and tested design of MoRIS can travel up to 9 feet in a tube network. The Vertebrae can navigate in all orientations, including smooth vertical tubes. The design is optimized for nominal 1.5 outside diameter tubes. We developed a model of the Locomotion Vertebra in a tube. We defined the model\u27s coordinate system and its generalized coordinates. We studied the configuration space of the robot, which includes all possible orientations of the Locomotion Vertebra. We derived the expression for the elastic potential energy of the Vertebra\u27s suspensions and minimized it to find the natural settling orientation of the robot. We further explore the effect of the tractive wheel\u27s velocity constraint on locomotion dynamics. Finally, we develop a general model for aircraft tube networks and for a taut tether. Stabilizing bipedal walkers is a engineering target throughout the research community. In this paper, we develop an impulsively actuated walking robot. Through the use of magnetic actuation, for the first time, pure impulsive actuation has been achieved in bipedal walkers. In studying this locomotion technique, we built the world\u27s smallest walker: Big Foot. A dynamical model was developed for Big Foot. A Heel Strike and a Constant Pulse Wave Actuation Schemes were selected for testing. The schemes were validated through simulations and experiments. We showed that there exists two regimes for impulsive actuation. There is a regime for impact-like actuation and a regime for longer duration impulsive actuation