An Economic and Life Cycle Analysis of Regional Land Use and Transportation Plans, Research Report 11-25

Travel and emissions models are commonly applied to evaluate the change in passenger and commercial travel and associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from land use and transportation plans. Analyses conducted by the Sacramento Area Council of Governments predict a decline in such travel and emissions from their land use and transportation plan (the “Preferred Blueprint” or PRB scenario) relative to a “Business-As-Usual” scenario (BAU). However, the lifecycle GHG effects due to changes in production and consumption associated with transportation and land use plans are rarely, if ever, conducted. An earlier study conducted by the authors, applied a spatial economic model (Sacramento PECAS) to the PRB plan and found that lower labor, transport, and rental costs increased producer and consumer surplus and production and consumption relative to the BAU. As a result, lifecycle GHG emissions from these upstream economic activities may increase. At the same time, lifecycle GHG emissions associated with the manufacture of construction materials for housing may decline due to a shift in the plan from larger luxury homes to smaller multi-family homes in the plan. To explore the net impact of these opposing GHG impacts, the current study used the economic production and consumption data from the PRB and BAU scenarios as simulated with the Sacramento PECAS model as inputs to estimate the change in lifecycle GHG emissions. The economic input-output lifecycle assessment model is applied to evaluate effects related to changes in economic production and consumption as well as housing construction. This study also builds on the findings from two previous studies, which suggest potential economic incentives for jurisdictional non-compliance with Sustainable Communities Strategies (SCSs) under Senate Bill 375 (also known as the “anti-sprawl” bill). SB 375 does not require local governments to adopt general plans that are consistent with the land use plans included in SCSs, and thus such incentives could jeopardize implementation of SCSs and achievement of GHG goals. In this study, a set of scenarios is simulated with the Sacramento PECAS model, in which multiple jurisdictions partially pursue the BAU at differing rates. The PRB is treated as a straw or example SCS. The scenarios are evaluated to understand how non-conformity may influence the supply of housing by type, and holding other factors constant, the geographic and income distribution of rents, wages, commute costs, and consumer surplus

An improved approach for automatic process plan generation of complex borings

The authors are grateful for funding provided to this project by the French Ministry of Industry, Dassault Aviation, Dassault Systemes, and F. Vernadat for his review and recommendations.The research concerns automated generation of process plans using knowledge formalization and capitalization. Tools allowing designers to deal with issues and specifications of the machining domain are taken into account. The main objective of the current work is to prevent designers from designing solutions that would be expensive and difficult to machine. Among all available solutions to achieve this goal, two are distinguished: the generative approach and the analogy approach. The generative approach is more adapted to generate the machining plans of parts composed of numerous boring operations in interaction. However, generative systems have two major problems: proposed solutions are often too numerous and are only geometrically but not technologically relevant. In order to overcome these drawbacks, two new concepts of feature and three control algorithms are developed. The paper presents the two new features: the Machining Enabled Geometrical Feature (MEGF) and the Machinable Features (MbF). This development is the result of the separation of the geometrical and the technological data contained in one machining feature. The second objective of the paper is to improve the current Process Ascending Generation (PAG) system with control algorithms in order to limit the combinatorial explosion and disable the generation of unusable or not machinable solutions

Intelligent systems in manufacturing: current developments and future prospects

Global competition and rapidly changing customer requirements are demanding increasing changes in manufacturing environments. Enterprises are required to constantly redesign their products and continuously reconfigure their manufacturing systems. Traditional approaches to manufacturing systems do not fully satisfy this new situation. Many authors have proposed that artificial intelligence will bring the flexibility and efficiency needed by manufacturing systems. This paper is a review of artificial intelligence techniques used in manufacturing systems. The paper first defines the components of a simplified intelligent manufacturing systems (IMS), the different Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to be considered and then shows how these AI techniques are used for the components of IMS

Managing design variety, process variety and engineering change: a case study of two capital good firms

Many capital good firms deliver products that are not strictly one-off, but instead share a certain degree of similarity with other deliveries. In the delivery of the product, they aim to balance stability and variety in their product design and processes. The issue of engineering change plays an important in how they manage to do so. Our aim is to gain more understanding into how capital good firms manage engineering change, design variety and process variety, and into the role of the product delivery strategies they thereby use. Product delivery strategies are defined as the type of engineering work that is done independent of an order and the specification freedom the customer has in the remaining part of the design. Based on the within-case and cross-case analysis of two capital good firms several mechanisms for managing engineering change, design variety and process variety are distilled. It was found that there exist different ways of (1) managing generic design information, (2) isolating large engineering changes, (3) managing process variety, (4) designing and executing engineering change processes. Together with different product delivery strategies these mechanisms can be placed within an archetypes framework of engineering change management. On one side of the spectrum capital good firms operate according to open product delivery strategies, have some practices in place to investigate design reuse potential, isolate discontinuous engineering changes into the first deliveries of the product, employ ‘probe and learn’ process management principles in order to allow evolving insights to be accurately executed and have informal engineering change processes. On the other side of the spectrum capital good firms operate according to a closed product delivery strategy, focus on prevention of engineering changes based on design standards, need no isolation mechanisms for discontinuous engineering changes, have formal process management practices in place and make use of closed and formal engineering change procedures. The framework should help managers to (1) analyze existing configurations of product delivery strategies, product and process designs and engineering change management and (2) reconfigure any of these elements according to a ‘misfit’ derived from the framework. Since this is one of the few in-depth empirical studies into engineering change management in the capital good sector, our work adds to the understanding on the various ways in which engineering change can be dealt with

Cost Decision Support in Product Design

The constraints addressed in decision making during product design, process planning and production planning determine the admissible solution space for the manufacture of products. The solution space determines largely the costs that are incurred in the production process. In order to be able to make economically sound decisions, costing data support must be integrated into the decision making processes. Regarding product design, the designer must be supplied with transparent costing data, that is ready for direct application. In this paper a functional architecture for costing data support during product design, as well as a corresponding data structure are presented

The innovation process: an introduction to process models

In research as well as in practice, process models are an expatiated element of innovation management. They fulfill different tasks. In practice, for instance, process models are used as a management tool to standardize development activities. Researchers try to identify activities to be found in every product development process. The design of the different process models is as manifold as their application. It heavily depends on the intention of the practitioner or academic. Therefore, there exists no one best way. Partially, one academic uses different process models for different research designs. The aim of this working papaer is to give management scholars and practitioners a review of different fields of application and design of innovation process models. For this purpose, a brief retrospection of the emergence and advancement of process models and a selection of process models is provided. --innovation management,new product development,concurrent engineering,success factors,stage-gate-process

An empirical investigation into the use of product development in the educational furniture industry : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the Master of Technology in Product Development at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

An empirical investigation into the use of product development in the educational furniture industry is summarised in this thesis. New Zealand furniture manufacturers are facing increased competition from imported furniture and are also exporting more and more furniture. Developing new products is therefore important to the New Zealand furniture industry's growth. This research was based on a small furniture-manufacturing firm from Hastings, New Zealand called Furnware Industries Limited (Furnware). A product development process was developed to their specific needs by comparing their current product development activities with identified best practices in product development. Those parts of the current activities that worked well were amalgamated with the structured Stage-Gateœ process of Cooper (1998). This process was tested by using it to develop a Mobile Technology Education Workstation range for Furnware. The aim of the project was to develop a new product for Furnware to sell and to simultaneously test the developed process. Once the project was completed, an evaluation of the product development process used was undertaken. Several areas for improvement were identified and a revised process outlined. The use of Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software was identified as another area of improvement that would assist both product development activities and existing manufacturing processes at Furnware. Consequently, a CAD package best suited to Furnware is selected using a structured process. The three main outcomes of the research were: 1. A product development process suited to Furnware. 2. A Mobile Technology Education Workstation range of products ready for launch, pending minor adjustments and testing. 3. A CAD software package suggested for use at Furnware

Categorisation of designs according to preference values for shape rules

Shape grammars have been used to explore design spaces through design generation according to sets of shape rules with a recursive process. Although design space exploration is a persistent issue in computational design research, there have been few studies regarding the provision of more preferable and refined outcomes to designers. This paper presents an approach for the categorisation of design outcomes from shape grammar systems to support individual preferences via two customised viewpoints: (i) absolute preference values of shape rules and (ii) relative preference values of shape rules with shape rule classification levels with illustrative examples

Japanese manufacturing: strategy and practice

A striking characteristic of Japanese factories is the extent of process control: from both the technical and the social viewpoint the labour and production system is controlled down to the very last detail. The characteristics of management and organization which underlie this are closely interwoven with Japanese culture. This explains why the work content, working conditions and working relationships in the factories look so different from those in western cultures. The paper shows why factories in the West cannot and should not copy Japanese factories