The Role Of Proximity In Automotive Technology Supply Chain

Working Draft, 1995This essay is divided into the following sections: in section 1.1, we briefly argue that the auto industry is a compelling case for studying regional economic development and economic geography precisely because it generates large numbers of high-quality jobs, and forges tight linkages to production and jobs in upstream and downstream sectors. In section 2, we present the issues of production and place more systematically. Having established the importance of the issue of production and place in this introduction, we move on to frame the debate by defining two types of space over which public and private authorities have jurisdiction, and across which production and its attendant jobs are (re)located. We further define four types of proximity: geographic, organizational, cultural, and electronic, that plausibly contribute to the success of economic development. These kinds of proximity offer varied incentives and disincentives for industrial agglomeration, and therefore inspire competition between nations, states and regions for the location of production and jobs. Also in section 2, we introduce two issues that have remained largely unexplored in the literature on regional economic development and economic geography: the strategic interaction between and among firms and public authorities, and the question of production technology development and sourcing.MIT -- Leaders for Manufacturing, the International Motor Vehicle Program, the Industrial Performance Center, the International Center for Research on the Management of Technology, and the Japan Program -- as well as from Chrysler, Intel, Sematech, and Texas Instruments, is gratefully acknowledged

Technology Suuply Chains: An Introductory Essay

This essay addresses strategic technology sourcing -- the determination of what technologies are strategic to a firm (or nation) and the management of the policy options that follow from this determination. This work is certainly not the first word on this subject, nor will it be the last. In fact, we hope that it will stimulate significant discussion about strategic technology sourcing especially in those organizations where such discussion has been absent, naive, or just shouted down by the manage-by-the-numbers types. In the business press today, outsourcing is the rage. "Restructure and downsize your organization; outsource as many functions as possible" seems to be the message from many of the world's most profitable corporations -- large and small -- as well as their consultant-armies.MIT: Leaders for Manufacturing, the International Motor Vehicle Program, the Industrial Performance Center, the International Center for Research on the Management of Technology, and the Japan Program; Chrysler; Intel; Sematech; and Texas Instruments

La Formació Pedagògica en els Docents Universitaris

La formació permanent és, des de totes les perspectives professionals un element clau de desenvolupament. Ningú discuteix que la Universitat, i més concretament els docents universitaris, també n'ha de ser partícips. La qüestió està en saber quins són els continguts que han d'ocupar aquesta formació. Per a que una formació sigui efectiva i eficient cal que aporti respostes a les necessitats actuals. Uns dels qui millor coneixen aquestes necessitats són els propis docents que seran alhora receptors de la formació. Si la formació es dissenya tenint present aquestes necessitats les probabilitats d'èxit augmenten

Technology Supply Chains: An Introductory Essay

This working paper was originally printed in the Working Paper Series of the MIT International Motor Vehicle Progra

Working memory, attention and compositionality

Es una práctica habitual en Psicología desarrollar microteorías para explicar datos muy concretos obtenidos en un conjunto limitado de tareas. Cuando todo el peso de la elaboración teórica recae en unos datos empíricos específicos sin tener en cuenta otras restricciones teóricas más generales, los grados de libertad para elaborar un modelo son en general muchos y esto hace que la proliferación de modelos sea considerable sin que se disponga de las suficientes restricciones para descartar cuáles son inadecuados. Las discusiones sobre qué modelos son los adecuados se enquistan en polémicas interminables. Teorías más generales permitirían integrar un mayor número de datos (empíricos y computacionales) en un todo con sentido y así se podrían descartar, de forma más simple y efectiva, los modelos que no se ajustan a estas restricciones. En este trabajo hemos intentado integrar en una todo con sentido algunas de las teorías existentes sobre un conjunto amplio de procesos (memoria de trabajo, razonamiento, procesamiento visual, procesamiento de lenguaje) y una amplia variedad de datos psicológicos, neurofisiológicos y computacionales. Como resultado se obtiene una teoría más general que, de forma razonable, permite imponer un amplio conjunto de restricciones a la hora de elaborar modelos sobre ciertos fenómenos y permite entre otras cosas descartar como inadecuados modelos actuales que gozan de cierto prestigio.It is standard practice in Psychology to develop microtheories to explain very specific data obtained from a reduced set of tasks. If more general theoretical constraints are disregarded, the results may be an uncontrolled proliferation of models. Discussions of which models are appropiate and which are not cause end less controversy. With a more general theory, one could put together a larger body of data (both empirical and computational) into a meaningful whole and could reject, simply and affectively, the models that do not meet the theory’s constraints. In this paper we bring together some of the existing theories on a set of processes (working memory, reasoning, visual and language processing) and a large variety of psychological, neurophysiological and computational data. We thus formulate a more general theory which, in a reasonable way, imposes a larger set of constraints on the preparation of models and challenges the validity of some inappropiate models that currently enjoy a certain prestige

Upstream Volatility in the Supply Chain: The Machine Tool Industry as a Case Study

Working Draft, May 1995Cyclicality is a well known and accepted fact of life in market-driven economies. Less well known or understood, however, is the phenomenon of amplification as one looks "upstream" in the industrial supply chain. This paper discusses and explains the amplification phenomenon and its implications through the lens of one "upstream" industry that is notorious for the intensity of the business cycles it faces: the machine tool industry. Using a sparse simulation model, we have replicated much of the behavior seen in the industrial world in which machine tool companies operate. This model has allowed us to test and confirm many of our hypotheses. Two results stand out. Even though machine tool builders can do little to reduce their production volatility through choice of forecast rule, a longer view of the future leads companies to retain more of their skilled workforce. This is often cited as one of the advantages that European and Japanese companies have enjoyed: lower skilled employee turnover. The second, and most important result is that machine tool customers can do a great deal to reduce the volatility for machine tool builders through their choice of order forecast rule. Companies which use a longer horizon over which to forecast orders tend to impose less of their own volatility upon their supply base.MIT -- Leaders for Manufacturing, the International Motor Vehicle Program, the Industrial Performance Center, the International Center for Research on the Management of Technology, and the Japan Program; Chrysler, Intel, Sematech, and Texas Instruments

Monte Carlo studies of a novel X-ray tube anode design

When energetic electrons are incident on high atomic number absorbers, a substantial fraction is back-scattered. This phenomenon is responsible for several undesirable effects in X-ray tubes, in particular a reduction in the X-ray output. The extent of this shortfall has been estimated by using Monte Carlo simulation to start electrons at increasing depth inside the anode, the results indicating that an output enhancement of nearly 50% could be achieved in principle if the electrons wasted in back-scatter events could be trapped inside a tungsten anode. To test this idea a further set of simulations were done for a novel anode geometry. Results showed that X-ray tube efficiencies might be substantially enhanced by this approach.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6TVT-43P41Y7-30/1/526566f6ea15332c302cdad2886e583

Sobre la modularidad de la mente y su vigencia

Aunque la idea de organización modular de la mente se remonta a la propuesta de facultades mentales innatas ya presente en la filosofia de la escuela escocesa y en la de Kant, y probablemente podemos encontrar antecedentes en épocas anteriores, la concepción moderna de la modularidad se desarrolla de forma independiente a esta tradición filosófica y también a la idea de organización modular del cerebro central en la frenologia de Gall. La concepción moderna sobre la modularidad se inicia en 10s años cincuenta con la aparición de 10s primeros ordenadores y 10s primeros trabajos en el kea de la inteligencia artificial (IA) y la psicologia cognitiva. En esta forma de entender la modularidad el concepto de módulo va ligado claramente a la concepción computacional de la inteligencia y posee un estatus científic0 que no poseia la concepción modular de tradición filosófica o frenológica

The use of cosmic muons in detecting heterogeneities in large volumes

The muon intensity attenuation method to detect heterogeneities in large matter volumes is analyzed. Approximate analytical expressions to estimate the collection time and the signal to noise ratio, are proposed and validated by Monte Carlo simulations. Important parameters, including point spread function and coordinate reconstruction uncertainty are also estimated using Monte Carlo simulations.Comment: 8 pages, 11 figures, submetted to NIM