Press shop machine analysis and trending

Historically downtime data collection and reporting systems in many automotive body panel press shops has been somewhat adhoc. The impetus for this study stems from frustration in respect of how this data is collected, assessed for trends and presented. Ideally this data should be used to identify costly repetitious faults for actioning of maintenance work and for feedback to tool design for consideration when designing new parts.Presently this data is stored largely in the form of tacit knowledge by press shop operators; the encumbrance of transferring such information being that there is very often only limited channels to quantify it into something more tangible. Findings show that there tend to be two related obstacles to plant data recording. The first is that automation of down time data collection alone cannot determine fault causes as the majority of press shop events are initiated primarily from operator observation. The second is that excessive subjective operator input can often result in confusion and end up taking greater time in recording than remedying the actual fault.This Paper presents the development of a system that through press mounted touchscreens encourages basic subjective operator input and relates this with basic objective data such as timekeeping. In this way all responses for a given press line become valuable and can be trended and placed in a hierarchy based on their percentage contribution to downtime or statistical importance. This then is capable of statistically alerting maintenance, line flow and/or toolbuild areas as to what issues require their most urgent attention.<br /

Development of a new integration algorithm for parallel implementation of the finite element elasto-plastic analysis

The accurate integration of stress-strain relations is an important factor in element analysis for elasto-plastic problems. The conventional method for this problem is the Euler algorithm which divides the whole integration process into a number of smaller substeps of equal size. It is difficult to control the errors in such integration scheme. In this paper, we will present a new algorithm for integrating strain-stress relations. It is based on the third and the fourth order Runge-Kutta method. This substepping scheme controls the errors in the integration process by adjusting the substep size automatically. In order to implement the substepping scheme on parallel systems, a parallel preconditioned conjugate gradient method is developed. The resulting algorithms have been implemented on a parallel environment defined by a cluster of workstation and their performance will be presented

Resolving taxonomic confusion : establishing the genus Phytobacter on the list of clinically relevant Enterobacteriaceae

Although many clinically significant strains belonging to the family Enterobacteriaceae fall into a restricted number of genera and species, there is still a substantial number of isolates that elude this classification and for which proper identification remains challenging. With the current improvements in the field of genomics, it is not only possible to generate high-quality data to accurately identify individual nosocomial isolates at the species level and understand their pathogenic potential but also to analyse retrospectively the genome sequence databases to identify past recurrences of a specific organism, particularly those originally published under an incorrect or outdated taxonomy. We propose a general use of this approach to classify further clinically relevant taxa, i.e., Phytobacter spp., that have so far gone unrecognised due to unsatisfactory identification procedures in clinical diagnostics. Here, we present a genomics and literature-based approach to establish the importance of the genus Phytobacter as a clinically relevant member of the Enterobacteriaceae family

Master planned estates : parish or panacea?

Master planned estates in Australia emerge from two major directions: one aims to address the inadequacies of 1970s suburbanisation and the other comes from governments and developers seeking to realise alternatives. The very idea of master planning has a longer history, one that arguably dates back to 19th-century Utopian Socialism and Baron Haussmann\u27s redesign of Paris, which involved a large-scale, comprehensive alternative vision realised by a sanctioned authority. Master planning thereby partakes of both utopianism and authoritarianism. These associations have infused the discussion and construction of Australian master planned estates rendering them both pariah and panacea. But research and my own experience suggests that they are far more panaceas than pariahs

Pregnancy screening strategies for potentially challenging patients before diagnostic nuclear medicine procedures: qualitative survey analysis

Because of the ionizing radiation used in diagnostic nuclear medicine procedures, it is recommended that all female patients of childbearing age be questioned about their pregnancy status before the procedure begins. Several patient groups have been identified as potentially difficult to question: teenagers, unconscious or sedated patients, patients with language or cultural barriers, and patients with mental disability. Our aim was to capture the thoughts and opinions of nuclear medicine personnel in Australia and New Zealand regarding pregnancy screening strategies before diagnostic imaging procedures. Methods: Members of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Nuclear Medicine were invited to complete an online survey. Section 4 consisted of open-response questions asking participants to describe the strategies they use to question a patient about pregnancy status in 4 potentially difficult clinical scenarios. The content of the responses was analyzed. Results: For each question, 232 responses were recorded. The most commonly used strategies included questioning teenage girls away from their parents, referring to medical notes for unconscious patients, using an interpreter and visual aids for patients with language barriers, and asking a caregiver or relative of mentally disabled patients. Pregnancy testing was used when there was doubt about the patient's pregnancy status. Personal questions about menstrual and sexual history were often asked to determine the risk of pregnancy. Conclusion: The study revealed that a variety of strategies are used by nuclear medicine personnel in Australia and New Zealand to determine the pregnancy status of patients. A standardized practice guideline may be useful to ensure a consistent approach to questioning that would optimize the accuracy of pregnancy assessment and reduce the possibility of fetal irradiation