GTTC Future of Ground Testing Meta-Analysis of 20 Documents

National research, development, test, and evaluation ground testing capabilities in the United States are at risk. There is a lack of vision and consensus on what is and will be needed, contributing to a significant threat that ground test capabilities may not be able to meet the national security and industrial needs of the future. To support future decisions, the AIAA Ground Testing Technical Committees (GTTC) Future of Ground Test (FoGT) Working Group selected and reviewed 20 seminal documents related to the application and direction of ground testing. Each document was reviewed, with the content main points collected and organized into sections in the form of a gap analysis current state, future state, major challenges/gaps, and recommendations. This paper includes key findings and selected commentary by an editing team

Guidelines for data collection and monitoring for asset management of New Zealand road bridges

Publisher PD

An application of Six Sigma to reduce waste

Six Sigma has been considered a powerful business strategy that employs a well-structured continuous improvement methodology to reduce process variability and drive out waste within the business processes using effective application of statistical tools and techniques. Although there is a wider acceptance of Six Sigma in many organizations today, there appears to be virtually no in-depth case study of Six Sigma in the existing literature. This involves how the Six Sigma methodology has been used, how Six Sigma tools and techniques have been applied and how the benefits have been generated. This paper presents a case study illustrating the effective use of Six Sigma to reduce waste in a coating process. It describes in detail how the project was selected and how the Six Sigma methodology was applied. It also shows how various tools and techniques within the Six Sigma methodology have been employed to achieve substantial financial benefits

A Path to Implement Precision Child Health Cardiovascular Medicine.

Congenital heart defects (CHDs) affect approximately 1% of live births and are a major source of childhood morbidity and mortality even in countries with advanced healthcare systems. Along with phenotypic heterogeneity, the underlying etiology of CHDs is multifactorial, involving genetic, epigenetic, and/or environmental contributors. Clear dissection of the underlying mechanism is a powerful step to establish individualized therapies. However, the majority of CHDs are yet to be clearly diagnosed for the underlying genetic and environmental factors, and even less with effective therapies. Although the survival rate for CHDs is steadily improving, there is still a significant unmet need for refining diagnostic precision and establishing targeted therapies to optimize life quality and to minimize future complications. In particular, proper identification of disease associated genetic variants in humans has been challenging, and this greatly impedes our ability to delineate gene-environment interactions that contribute to the pathogenesis of CHDs. Implementing a systematic multileveled approach can establish a continuum from phenotypic characterization in the clinic to molecular dissection using combined next-generation sequencing platforms and validation studies in suitable models at the bench. Key elements necessary to advance the field are: first, proper delineation of the phenotypic spectrum of CHDs; second, defining the molecular genotype/phenotype by combining whole-exome sequencing and transcriptome analysis; third, integration of phenotypic, genotypic, and molecular datasets to identify molecular network contributing to CHDs; fourth, generation of relevant disease models and multileveled experimental investigations. In order to achieve all these goals, access to high-quality biological specimens from well-defined patient cohorts is a crucial step. Therefore, establishing a CHD BioCore is an essential infrastructure and a critical step on the path toward precision child health cardiovascular medicine

A Dynamic Knowledge Management Framework for the High Value Manufacturing Industry

Dynamic Knowledge Management (KM) is a combination of cultural and technological factors, including the cultural factors of people and their motivations, technological factors of content and infrastructure and, where these both come together, interface factors. In this paper a Dynamic KM framework is described in the context of employees being motivated to create profit for their company through product development in high value manufacturing. It is reported how the framework was discussed during a meeting of the collaborating company’s (BAE Systems) project stakeholders. Participants agreed the framework would have most benefit at the start of the product lifecycle before key decisions were made. The framework has been designed to support organisational learning and to reward employees that improve the position of the company in the market place

ARMD Workshop on Materials and Methods for Rapid Manufacturing for Commercial and Urban Aviation

This report documents the goals, organization and outcomes of the NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorates (ARMD) Materials and Methods for Rapid Manufacturing for Commercial and Urban Aviation Workshop. The workshop began with a series of plenary presentations by leaders in the field of structures and materials, followed by concurrent symposia focused on forecasting the future of various technologies related to rapid manufacturing of metallic materials and polymeric matrix composites, referred to herein as composites. Shortly after the workshop, questionnaires were sent to key workshop participants from the aerospace industry with requests to rank the importance of a series of potential investment areas identified during the workshop. Outcomes from the workshop and subsequent questionnaires are being used as guidance for NASA investments in this important technology area

ANWB automates and improves repair men dispatching

ANWB, the Dutch automobile association, provides assistance, car repair andreplacement services to its nearly 4 million members. ANWB services around 1.3 millionrequests per year in The Netherlands. Historically, the operational planning process ofassigning requests to service men was regionally organized, and human planners solvedthe sometimes large and hectic planning situations in real time. At a national level, some50 planners were required to do the job, and the quality of the planning and operationswere largely unknown. In a large business process reengineering project, ANWBredesigned the planning processes, leveraging state of the art IT and operations researchtechniques. As a result, the 24/7 planning processes are smoothened, can be executed byas few as 14 planners who work at a national level, and the operational planning andperformance have improved. As new competitors entered the market, ANWB has beenable to sustain its extraordinary high customer ratings and market share, while adaptingits proposition to the competitive prices dictated by the market.Economics (Jel: A)

IS Human Capital: Assessing Gaps to Strengthen Skill and Competency Sourcing

Past research has mainly focused on defining information systems (IS) skills and competencies at the industry or global level; it has offered little guidance on best practices for managing IS at the organization level. And yet, a resource-based view indicates that failure to properly manage skills and competencies could lead to suboptimal outcomes such as a loss of IS process knowledge and innovation, an inability to adequately evaluate vendor performance, and a lack of critical skills and competencies needed to meet future demands. In this paper, we examine how one government agency managed its systems for testing personnel. We describe the need for a process to assess IS skills and competencies in order to analyze the gaps and ensure they are filled. A concrete understanding of existing gaps guides sourcing of skills and competencies through hiring, training, internal transfers, and work allocation. This paper presents an effective methodology for this purpose

Space Transportation Materials and Structures Technology Workshop

The Space Transportation Materials and Structures Technology Workshop was held on September 23-26, 1991, in Newport News, Virginia. The workshop, sponsored by the NASA Office of Space Flight and the NASA Office of Aeronautics and Space Technology, was held to provide a forum for communication within the space materials and structures technology developer and user communities. Workshop participants were organized into a Vehicle Technology Requirements session and three working panels: Materials and Structures Technologies for Vehicle Systems, Propulsion Systems, and Entry Systems