STEP for e-manufacturing: Concepts and applications

The ISO standard, STandard for the Exchange Product Data Model or STEP is known as a standard data exchange format for design and manufacturing.STEP is intended to provide a complete representation of a product throughout the product lifecycle. More recently, with the idea of e-manufacturing is being put into great emphasis; this brings the consideration of implementing STEP into that new idea.This paper presents the concepts, applications, and perspectives of STEP in the e-manufacturing environment.The objective is to provide guidelines and references for future research and implementation related to this area

Knowledge management strategic context in technological trajectories of firm influences their innovation strategy: Looking at Malaysian multinational firm

The paper study on the knowledge management strategic context in technological trajectories of firm influences their innovation strategy. Thus, to make use of technology as a competitive weapon; managers must manage it as a part of the business system. Failure to develop and integrate technology strategy and business is a major contributing factor in the decline of a firm's competitiveness In a turbulent and rapidly changing environment, every organization faces the challenge of how to best manage its knowledge assets to generate value for the market place and obtain competitive advantage Such advantage derives from special capabilities that are rare, valuable, nonsubstitutable, and costly to imitate. Historically, the focus was on capabilities involving tangible assets; now, knowledge is widely recognized as the source for competitive advantage, with the tangible assets representing the physical manifestation of but a fraction of this knowledge As companies scramble to develop strategies for more proactively and strategically managing their knowledge, the field of knowledge management (KM) receives increasing attention from trade organizations and academic journals. From this study it was found that to improve the chances of conclusively demonstrating value to the K-Economy, a new KM implementation in an innovation organization should address issues such as organization's goals and strategies, access tacit knowledge, provide search tools, promote creativity, capture new learning and build a supportive culture,insufficient communication, failure to integrate knowledge, lack of time to learn, lack of training a senses there was little personal benefit in knowledge management

The Effect of Thermal Treatment on the Resistance of 7075 Aluminum Alloy in Aggressive Alkaline Solution

Aluminum has attractive properties in which when properly engineered can be used in wider areas of applications. Due to its reactive abilities and strong affinity for oxygen, aluminum can resist rough environments and overall durable to various chemical agents. This work highlighted the behaviour of 7075 aluminum alloy in an aggressive alkaline environment. Two tempers of T6 and T73 were produced through solution heat treatment procedure; the T6 temper was subjected to solution heat treatment at 470°C for 60 min, quenched for 60 sec and followed by precipitation heat treatment or artificial ageing at 138°C for 960 min whereas the T73 was subjected to solution heat treatment at 470°C for 60 min quenched for 60 sec and followed by two precipitation heat treatment processes at 113°C for 480 min and 182°C for 720 min respectively.  The as received and the tempered materials are immersed in an aggressive alkaline medium consisting sodium chloride and hydrogen peroxide. The samples obtained were characterized by assessing weight loss and subjected to surface morphology analysis using scanning electron microscope. The morphology of the heat treated samples shows the type of localized form of corrosion present is pitting form of corrosion, and the weight analysis shows significant weight loss when the samples are exposed to the aggressive alkaline environment. The weight loss for the as received sample was observed to be more than the T73 and the T6 samples

Roles of eco-friendly non-edible vegetable oils in drilling inconel 718 through minimum quantity lubrication

Metal cutting fluids (MCFs) have played a principal role as coolants and lubricants in the machining industry. However, the wide use of mineral-based oil MCFs has contributed to an adverse effect on humans and the environment. Thus, to overcome the adverse effects of mineral-based oil MCFs, eco-friendly vegetable oil, which is non-edible oil, has been implemented to overcome the issues related to edible oil such as manufacturing costs and food shortages. This study investigated the performance of three different types of non-edible oil, namely castor, neem, and rice bran oils in drilling Inconel 718 using a coated titanium aluminum nitride (TiAlN) carbide drill towards tool life, tool wear, surface integrity, dimensional accuracy, and chip thickness. The MCFs were implemented under the minimum quantity lubrication (MQL) condition at a 50 mL/h flow rate using different cutting speeds (10, 20 m/min) and a constant feed (0.015 mm/rev). The results showed that castor oil minimizes the rapid growth of tool wear and prolongs the tool life by 50% at 10 m/min as compared to rice bran oil. At 20 m/min, castor oil obtained the lowest values of average surface roughness (1.455 µm) and chip thickness (0.220 mm). It was also found that different cutting speeds did not contribute to any significant trend towards hole diameter and roundness for all MCFs. The outstanding performance of castor oil proved that the oil is a potential alternative as an eco-friendly MCF for a cleaner machining environment. Castor oil was determined to be optimum in terms of tool life, tool wear, surface roughness, and chip thickness

Feature extraction from step AP224 file sets

Feature technology transforms the low-level geometrical definition of a 3D model into high level product definition, aiming for full automation of downstream manufacturing activities. Today, feature has been implemented in Standard for Exchange of Product Model specifically in Application Protocol 224 (STEP AP224) which utilizes manufacturing feature definition based on prismatic and turning parts. Hence, this research is carried out to study how STEP AP data is stored and how the features can be extracted. The extracted features are then used to automate the generation of the NC Code for the milling process. This work is limited to isolated milling features on 2.5D parts or prismatic parts

The sustainability performance in aviation industry: Evidence from Asia

The aviation industry in Asia is undergoing fundamental changes due to the numbers of the driven factors such as the market liberalism, stakeholder expectation, political intervention, climate changes and environmental risks. Sustainability disclosure by airline companies have become increasingly common inrecent years. Besides, the disclosure plays an important role in the formation of airlines' strategies due to the unique characteristic of the airline industry.First, the flying of the airplanes will adversely affect the global environment.Thus, the airline with a cause for environmental protection can create a favorable public image.Other than that, due to the operation in multiple countries, airline companies are expected to fulfill their responsibilities as a corporate citizen to meet the expectations of various stakeholders and customers.In response to the global trends towards sustainability disclosure, this study aims is to present an exploration of the sustainability issues being addressed and reported by 27 major Asian airline companies.This research is exploratory in nature and based on the sustainability information published by the selected airlines on the company annual report.The annual report was downloaded from the corporate website starting from the year 2007 until 2011.Initially, the indicator was drawn together from the GRI reporting framework and supplemented with additional indicators of particular relevance lo the airline industry.The content analysis methodology is used in order to analyze the level of extensiveness in the disclosure regarding their environmental, social and sustainability performance

Effects of minimal quantity lubricants reinforced with nano-particles on the performance of carbide drills for drilling nickel-titanium alloys

Drilling of NiTi alloys under two lubricant-coolant strategies; namely flood and minimal quantity nanolubricant; two types of carbides drills, and three cutting speeds was investigated. Progressive tool wear, tool-life, drilling thrust force, surface finish quality, and dimensional accuracy were considered. Experimental results suggest that the application of minimal quantity nanolubrications with coated carbide drills outperformed the flood lubrications with uncoated carbide drills. These results were pronounced for cutting speed of 10?20 m/min, whereas, accelerated tool wear, high thrust force, and low tool life were experienced for 30 m/min cutting speed. Despite of some promising results obtained from the supply of minimal quantity nanolubricants, this approach was found to be ineffective towards improving surface roughness and hole diameter accuracy

Effects of submerged convective cooling on turning of AZ31 magnesium alloy: Tool temperature and wear improvements

© 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature. This is the accepted manuscript version of an article which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-022-08985-9 ​​​​​​​Low melting point and material adhesion are associated challenges of magnesium alloy, leading to extreme built-up edge (BUE) and built-up layer (BUL) formations during machining process. Dry machining is favorable for machining magnesium alloy. However, this strategy inflicts excessive adhesive wear on the cutting tool. Therefore, this current work focuses on application of an innovative cooling technique, known as submerged convective cooling (SCC) for the turning of AZ31 magnesium alloy. Prior to cutting experiment, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation was conducted to evaluate internal structure of cooling module. Based on the CFD simulation, a small inlet/outlet diameter of 3 mm significantly contributed to the reduction of the tool temperature, due to high heat transfer coefficient of cooling fluid in the SCC. From the experimental results obtained, it was evident that SCC at high cooling water flow rate of 130 mL/min effectively reduced the tool temperature, chip temperature, and tool-chip contact length by approximately 50, 8, and 28%, respectively. Consequently, it improved the surface roughness by 37%, when compared with the dry cutting condition. Finally, both BUE and BUL were observed in dry and SCC conditions, but the severity of these wear mechanisms improved or decreased remarkably under SCC conditions.Peer reviewe