Process-centered design

Process-centered design (PCD) is a design methodology, which proposes a business centric approach for designing user interfaces. Because of the multi-stage business analysis steps involved right from the beginning of the PCD life cycle, it is believed to achieve the highest levels of business-IT alignment that is possible through UI.
Purpose.
This method is aimed at enterprise applications where there is a business process involved. Unlike content oriented systems such as websites or portals, enterprise applications are built to enable a company's business processes. Enterprise applications often have a clear business goal and a set of specific objectives like- improve employee productivity, increase business performance by a certain percent, etc.
Comparison between other popular UI design methods.
Although there are proven UI design methodologies (like the most popular "user-centered design", which helps design highly Usable Interfaces), PCD differentiates itself by precisely catering to business process intensive software which has not been the case with other UI design methodologies.
Process-UI alignment.
Process-UI alignment is a component of PCD, which ensures tight alignment between the business process and the enterprise application being developed. UI design activities are affected by PCD.
For example: A call center software used by a customer support agent, if designed for high process-UI alignment will achieve tremendous agent productivity improvement and call center performance; which is not likely to be seen if it were designed only for user satisfaction, ease of use, etc.


Built up edge

In machining, specifically cutting operations, a built-up edge (BUE) is an accumulation of material against the rake face that seizes to the tool tip, separating it from the chip.
Formation.
Because shear is strongest at the initial contact surface with the cutting tool, the first layer of metal impacting and seizing on it work-hardens more than the rest of the volume of metal. As a consequence of this work hardening, this first layer of metal is stronger than the adjacent metal moving away from the workpiece. Effectively, said first layer becomes part of the tool. The process repeats itself and, after some time, a built up edge (which could be several hundred micrometres thick) forms.
The conditions necessary for a noticeable edge to build up are that:
Effects on the cutting process.
The built up edge effectively changes tool geometry and rake steepness. It also reduces the contact area between the chip and the cutting tool, leading to:
However, the formation of BUEs have negative effects on the quality of the workpiece, specifically:


Book trimming

Book trimming is the stage of the book production process in which the page edges of a book are trimmed so that all pages will stack with perfect edge alignment within the finished book jacket.
The step before book trimming is the binding of the folded printing sheets. Trimming is performed either with a hydraulic book trimmer that is able to cut a whole book in one or two passes or, until the invention of hydraulic book trimmers, with a cutting press (or lying press) and plough.
Cutting principles.
Knife cut principle.
The book-cutting machine works with three knives and uses the knife-cut principle. The knife-cut principle operates with only one knife per edge which cuts against a rubber surface. This surface supports the cut force. The three-knife-trim is performed in one step. The block is aligned and fixed by the pressure bar. The three knives cut all edges except the spine; new machines need only one step.
Shear cut principle.
The shear cut principle works with two knives – upper and bottom knife. The bottom knife is fixed and the upper knife works against the fixed one. Example of the shear cut principle is the cut of the paper web in the web offset machine and this is realized by a circular blade. To cut simple brochures (booklets) is used by a trimmer which works in two steps.
Burst cut.
The third principle is the burst cut. This knife does not need a counter-acting tool. The required cut force is generated by the clamping force of the clamped paper.


DAR 4

The DAR 4 was a prototype airliner built in Bulgaria in 1930.
Design and development.
The DAR 4 was a conventional biplane design, with unstaggered wings of unequal span braced with Warren trusses. The fuselage offered fully enclosed accommodation for the two pilots and four passengers. A curious feature of the design was that the top wing was not attached directly to the top of the fuselage as is common in cabin biplanes, but was mounted above it with cabane struts. Power was provided by three radial engines; one in the nose, and one mounted on each lower wing where the struts met. Performance was disappointing, and in particular, the narrow track of the undercarriage created difficulties. After the single prototype, no further examples were built.


Form, fit and function

Form, Fit, and Function (F3) is the identification and description of characteristics of a part or assembly. Each defines a specific aspect of the part to help engineers match parts to needs. The F3 framework increases design change flexibility by allowing changes to the part with minimal documentation and design cost as long as the fit, form and function of the product are maintained. It is a step in creating any physical product.
Definitions.
Fit refers to the ability of the part or feature to connect to, mate with, or join to another feature or part within an assembly. The “fit” allows the part to meet the required assembly tolerances to be useful.
Form refers to such characteristics as external dimensions, weight, size, and visual appearance of a part or assembly. This is the element of F3 that is most affected by an engineer's aesthetic choices, including enclosure, chassis, and control panel, that become the outward "face" of the product.
Function is a criterion that is met when the part performs its stated purpose effectively and reliably. In an electronics product, for example, function can depend on the solid-state components used, the software or firmware, and quite often on the features of the electronics enclosure selected. Poorly placed or sized ports and misleading or missing labeling are two of the most common ways in which an enclosure can fail the function criterion.


Slicer (3D printing)

A slicer is toolpath generation software used in the majority of 3D printing processes for the conversion of a 3D object model to specific instructions for the printer. In particular, the conversion from a model in STL format to printer commands in g-code format in fused filament fabrication and other similar processes.
The slicer first divides the object as a stack of flat layers, followed by describing these layers as linear movements of the 3D printer extruder, fixation laser or equivalent. All these movements, together with some specific printer commands like the ones to control the extruder temperature or bed temperature, are finally written in the g-code file, that can afterwards be transferred to the printer.
Additional features of the slicer.
Nearly all slicers have some additional features, like:
List of slicer software.
There's a wide collection of slicer applications, some of them free and open-source. Some of the most used ones are:


Swarm 3D printing

Swarm 3D printing or cooperative 3D printing or swarm manufacturing is a digital manufacturing platform that employs a swarm of mobile robots with different functionalities to work together to print and assemble products based on digital designs. A digital design is first divided into smaller chunks and components based on its geometry and functions, which are then assigned to different specialized robots for printing and assembly in parallel and in sequence based on the dependency of the tasks. The robots typically move freely on an open factory floor, or through the air, and could carry different tool heads. Some common tool heads include material deposition tool heads (e.g., filament extruder, inkjet printhead), pick and place tool head for embedding of pre-manufactured components, laser cutter, welding tool, etc. In some cases, operations are managed by artificial intelligence algorithms, increasingly prevalent with larger swarms or more complex robots, which require elements of autonomy to work together effectively. While in its early stage of development, swarm 3D printing is currently being commercialized by startup companies. According to Additive Manufacturing Magazine, AMBOTS is credited with creating the first end-to-end solution for cooperative 3D printing. Using the Rapid Induction Printing metal additive manufacturing process, Rosotics was the first company to demonstrate swarm 3D printing using a metallic payload, and the only to achieve metallic 3D printing from an airborne platform.


Undercut (molding)

In molding, an undercut is an indentation or protrusion in a shape that will prevent its withdrawal from a one-piece mold.
Undercuts on molded parts are features that prevent the part from being directly ejected from an injection molding machine. They are categorized into "internal" and "external" undercuts, where external undercuts are on the exterior of the part and interior undercuts are on the inside of the part. Undercuts can still be molded, but require a "side action" or "side pull". This is an extra part of the mold that moves separately from the two halves. These can increase the cost of the molded part due to an added 15 to 30% cost of the mold itself and added complexity of the molding machine.
If the size of the undercut is small enough and the material is flexible enough a side action is not always required. In these cases the undercut is stripped or snapped out of the mold. When this is done usually a stripping plate or ring is used instead of ejector pins so that the part is not damaged. This technique can be used on internal and external undercuts.


Forming limit diagram

A forming limit diagram, also known as a forming limit curve, is used in sheet metal forming for predicting forming behavior of sheet metal. The diagram attempts to provide a graphical description of material failure tests, such as a punched dome test.
In order to determine whether a given region has failed, a mechanical test is performed. The mechanical test is performed by placing a circular mark on the work piece prior to deformation, and then measuring the post-deformation ellipse that is generated from the action on this circle. By repeating the mechanical test to generate a range of stress states, the formability limit diagram can be generated as a line at which failure is onset (see also formability).
Description.
The semi-axes of the ellipse formed in this circle allow for the measurement of relative strain in two primary directions, known as the major and minor directions, which correspond to the major and minor semi-axes of the ellipse. Under the assumption of path independent strain, the relative strains will reach a critical value at which deformations occur. Through repeated measurements, the shape of the curve can be obtained experimentally. Alternately, a formability limit diagram can be generated by mapping the shape of a failure criterion into the formability limit domain.
How ever the diagram is obtained, the resultant diagram provides a tool for the determination as to whether a given cold forming process will result in failure or not. Such information is critical in the design of forming processes, and is therefore fundamental to the design of sheet metal forming processes. Through the establishment of forming limit diagrams for a range of alloys, the forming process and alloy behavior can be matched at the metalworking design time by the process engineer.
Modern determination.
With the availability and use of optical strain measurement system in combination with digital data processing forming limit curves can be acquired in a more automatic and productive way compared to the classic way as described above. This procedure has been standardized and is contained in an ISO document (12004).
In order to obtain a full forming limit curve, test pieces with different geometries are drawn by a punch (e. g. with a diameter of 100 mm) until fracture occurs. Friction is almost zero by using a complex tribo-system with foils and grease between sheet and tool. By use of an optical strain measurement system spatial strain paths are
evaluated immediately before failure of the test piece. Using an interpolation method for the strain variation between the severely deformed and necked area – the limits of this area are computed by a sign change of the second derivative of the strain distribution – the major and minor strain values are obtained. Using an averaged value for several cross-section evaluations and 3 test samples for the same geometry a strain pair (one point in the forming limit diagram) as forming limit is identified.
It is recognized by some authors that the nature of fracture and formability is intrinsically non-deterministic, since large variations might be observed even within a single experimental campaign. Therefore, the concepts of Forming Limit Bands and Forming Limit Maps have been introduced.
Influence parameters.
Forming limit curves (FLC) for four steel sheet grades are displayed in the attached figure. All forming limit curves have essentially the same shape. A minimum of the curve exists at the intercept with the major strain axis or close thereby, the plane strain forming limit. With the definition of the onset of local necking (e. g. membrane force reaches an extreme value) and the assumption of a hardening law according to Hollomon (σ = K εn) it can be shown that the corresponding theoretical plane strain forming limit is identical with the strain hardening coefficient, n. There is no thickness effect. Taking into account the strain rate sensitivity of the material, which is obvious in steel, along with the sheet thickness, the fact can be explained that practical forming limits, obtained by the use of the above described method, lie well above theoretical forming limits. Thus the basic influence parameters for the forming limits are, the strain hardening exponent, n, the initial sheet thickness, t0 and the strain rate hardening coefficient, m. The lankford coefficient, r, which defines the plastic anisotropy of the material, has two effects on the forming limit curve. On the left side there is no influence except that the curve extends to larger values, on the right hand side increasing r values reduce the forming limits.
M-K method.
There is a widely used method for computation of FLCs, introduced by Marciniak in 1967. It assumes an inclined band in the investigated plane sheet piece with smaller thickness which denotes an imperfection. With this model limit strains can be calculated numerically. The advantage of this method is that any material model can be used and limits can also be obtained for nonproportional forming. However there is one drawback. Calculated forming limits are sensitive to the imperfection value. With the assumption of a strain rate sensitive material model realistic forming limits may be obtained which lie above theoretical limit strains. Basically with this calculation method smooth forming limit curves are generated for materials for which only one experimental value exists. A good overview of state of the art about FLC calculation methods is given in the proceedings of a conference held in Zurich in 2006 and the Numisheet conference in 2008.
Use of FLCs.
For many years forming limit curves have been used in order to assess the sheet material formability. They have been applied in the design stage of tools using the finite element method as a simulation tool which is widely used in a production environment.


SECS/GEM

The SECS/GEM is the semiconductor's equipment interface protocol for equipment-to-host data communications. In an automated fab, the interface can start and stop equipment processing, collect measurement data, change variables and select recipes for products. The SECS (SEMI Equipment Communications Standard)/GEM (Generic Equipment Model) standards do all this in a defined way.
Developed by the SEMI (Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International) organization, the standards define a common set of equipment behaviour and communications capabilities.
The Generic Model for Communications and Control Of Manufacturing Equipment (GEM) standard is maintained and published by the non-profit organization Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI). Generally speaking, the SECS/GEM standard defines messages, state machines and scenarios to enable factory software to control and monitor manufacturing equipment. The GEM standard is formally designated and referred to as SEMI standard E30, but frequently simply referred to as the GEM or SECS/GEM standard. GEM intends "to produce economic benefits for both device manufacturers and equipment suppliers..." by defining "... a common set of equipment behavior and communications capabilities that provide the functionality and flexibility to support the manufacturing automation programs of semiconductor device manufacturers" [SEMI E30, 1.3]. GEM is a standard implementation of the SECS-II standard, SEMI standard E5. Many equipment in semiconductor (front end and back end), surface mount technology, electronics assembly, photovoltaic, flat panel display and other manufacturing industries worldwide provide a SECS/GEM interface on the manufacturing equipment so that the factory host software can communicate with the machine for monitoring and/or controlling purposes. Because the GEM standard was written with very few semiconductor-specific features, it can be applied to virtually any automated manufacturing equipment in any industry.
All GEM compliant manufacturing equipment share a consistent interface and certain consistent behavior. GEM equipment can communicate with a GEM capable host using either TCP/IP (using the HSMS standard, SEMI E37) or RS-232 based protocol (using the SECS-I standard, SEMI E4). Often both protocols are supported. Each equipment can be monitored and controlled using a common set of SECS-II messages specified by GEM.
There are many additional SEMI standards and factory specifications that reference the GEM standard its features. These additional standards are either industry-specific or equipment-type specific. Following are a few examples.


Edison Manufacturing Company

The Edison Manufacturing Company, originally registered as the United Edison Manufacturing Company and often known as simply the Edison Company, was organized by inventor and entrepreneur Thomas Edison and incorporated in New York City in May 1889. It succeeded the Edison United Manufacturing Company, founded in 1886 as a sales agency for the Edison Lamp Company, Edison Machine Works, and Bergmann & Company, which made electric lighting fixtures, sockets, and other accessories. In April 1894, the Edison laboratory's Kinetoscope operation, which was about to be commercialized, was brought under the Edison Company umbrella. In 1900, the United Edison Manufacturing Company was evidently succeeded by the New Jersey–incorporated Edison Manufacturing Company. The company's assets and operations were transferred to Thomas A. Edison, Inc. in 1911.
History.
The Edison United Manufacturing Company was incorporated in July 1886 to consolidate the sales operations of the various Edison manufacturing concerns. The company went into liquidation—finalized October 31, 1889—and was succeeded by the United Edison Manufacturing Company, incorporated in New York City under New York State law in May 1889. On May 4, 1900, the Edison Manufacturing Company—evidently the successor to the United Edison Manufacturing Company—was incorporated in Newark, New Jersey, with its headquarters located in West Orange.
From April 1894 to June 1908, William E. Gilmore was vice-president and general manager of the Edison Manufacturing Company. He took over from Alfred O. Tate and was succeeded by patent lawyer Frank Dyer. Edison's films were made by the Kinetograph Department of the Edison Manufacturing Company.
Edison's first moviemaking studio—and the world's first—was the Black Maria in West Orange, New Jersey, where production of Kinetoscope films began in early 1893. The Edison Studios productions moved to a Manhattan facility after the turn of the century, and a few years later to a studio in the Bronx. Filming locations around the United States and abroad were used.
The company had the same senior executives as the more profitable National Phonograph Company, to which Edison paid more attention. Edison was also distracted by other enterprises including storage batteries, iron ore and cement, which competed for finance and led to loss of focus.
In February 1911 the company's assets were assigned to Thomas A. Edison, Inc. The Edison Manufacturing Company was formally dissolved on 9 November 1926.


Heading (metalworking)

Heading is a metalworking process which incorporates the forging, extruding and upsetting process. It is often performed in the cold state, resulting in cold working. This process typically produces a near net shape workpiece, which means the final product is almost finished although it can sometimes create the final product less plating or heat treating.
An important consideration in heading is the tendency for the wire to buckle if its unsupported length to diameter ratio is too high. This ratio usually is limited to less than 3:1 but with appropriate dies, it can be higher.
There are a variety of cold heading machines but typically for fastener manufacturing you will see one die two blow up to five die six blow and beyond. Multi-die headers allow for more complex parts to be formed as part of one process due to the above limitations of diameter ratio reductions.
Some advantages of cold heading a part over using a CNC lathe or Swiss screw machine include reduced part cost both through production speed (60-400 parts per minute) and the minimal scrap generated from a cold headed part. Also, because the part is formed rather than cut, the grain flow stays intact and creates a much stronger part for its size.


Hot working

In metallurgy, hot working refers to processes where metals are plastically deformed above their recrystallization temperature. Being above the recrystallization temperature allows the material to recrystallize during deformation. This is important because recrystallization keeps the materials from strain hardening, which ultimately keeps the yield strength and hardness low and ductility high. This contrasts with cold working.
Many kinds of working, including rolling, forging, extrusion, and drawing, can be done with hot metal.
Temperature.
The lower limit of the hot working temperature is determined by its recrystallization temperature. As a guideline, the lower limit of the hot working temperature of a material is 60% its melting temperature (on an absolute temperature scale). The upper limit for hot working is determined by various factors, such as: excessive oxidation, grain growth, or an undesirable phase transformation. In practice materials are usually heated to the upper limit first to keep forming forces as low as possible and to maximize the amount of time available to hot work the workpiece.
The most important aspect of any hot working process is controlling the temperature of the workpiece. 90% of the energy imparted into the workpiece is converted into heat. Therefore, if the deformation process is quick enough the temperature of the workpiece should rise, however, this does not usually happen in practice. Most of the heat is lost through the surface of the workpiece into the cooler tooling. This causes temperature gradients in the workpiece, usually due to non-uniform cross-sections where the thinner sections are cooler than the thicker sections. Ultimately, this can lead to cracking in the cooler, less ductile surfaces. One way to minimize the problem is to heat the tooling. The hotter the tooling the less heat lost to it, but as the tooling temperature rises, the tool life decreases. Therefore the tooling temperature must be compromised; commonly, hot working tooling is heated to 500–850 °F (325–450 °C).
Advantages and disadvantages.
The advantages are:
Usually the initial workpiece that is hot worked was originally cast. The microstructure of cast items does not optimize the engineering properties, from a microstructure standpoint. Hot working improves the engineering properties of the workpiece because it replaces the microstructure with one that has fine spherical shaped grains. These grains increase the strength, ductility, and toughness of the material.
The engineering properties can also be improved by reorienting the inclusions (impurities). In the cast state the inclusions are randomly oriented, which, when intersecting the surface, can be a propagation point for cracks. When the material is hot worked the inclusions tend to flow with the contour of the surface, creating "stringers". As a whole the strings create a "flow structure", where the properties are anisotropic (different based on direction). With the stringers oriented parallel to the surface it strengthens the workpiece, especially with respect to fracturing. The stringers act as "crack-arrestors" because the crack will want to propagate through the stringer and not along it.
The disadvantages are:


Logistics engineering

Logistics engineering is a field of engineering dedicated to the scientific organization of the purchase, transport, storage, distribution, and warehousing of materials and finished goods. Logistics engineering is a complex science that considers trade-offs in component/system design, repair capability, training, spares inventory, demand history, storage and distribution points, transportation methods, etc., to ensure the "thing" is where it's needed, when it's needed, and operating the way it's needed all at an acceptable cost.
Overview.
Logistics is generally concerned with cost centre service activities, but provides value via improved efficiency and customer satisfaction. It can quickly lose that value if the customer becomes dissatisfied. The end customer can include another process or work center inside of the manufacturing facility, a warehouse where items are stocked or the final customer who will use the product. Another approach which has appeared in recent years is the supply chain management. The supply chain also looks at an efficient chaining of the supply / purchase and distribution sides of an organization. While logistics looks at single echelons with the immediate supply and distribution linked up, supply chain looks at multiple echelons/stages, right from procurement of the raw materials to the final distribution of finished goods up to the customer. It is based on the basic premise that the supply and distribution activities if integrated with the manufacturing / logistic activities, can result in better profitability for the organization. The local minimum of total cost of the manufacturing operation is getting replaced by the global minimum of total cost of the whole chain, resulting in better profitability for the chain members and hence lower costs for the products.
Logistics engineering as a discipline is a very important aspect of systems engineering that also includes reliability engineering. It is the science and process whereby reliability, maintainability, and availability are designed into products or systems. It includes the supply and physical distribution considerations above as well as more fundamental engineering considerations. Logistics engineers work with complex mathematical models that consider elements such as mean time between failures (MTBF), mean time to failure (MTTF), mean time to repair (MTTR), failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA), statistical distributions, queueing theory, and a host of other considerations. For example, if we want to produce a system that is 95% reliable (or improve a system to achieve 95% reliability), a logistics engineer understands that total system reliability can be no greater than the least reliable subsystem or component. Therefore, our logistics engineer must consider the reliability of all subcomponents or subsystems and modify system design accordingly. If a subsystem is only 50% reliable, one can concentrate on improving the reliability of that subsystem, design in multiple subsystems in parallel (5 in this case would achieve approximately 97% reliability of that subsystem), purchase and store spare subsystems for rapid change out, establish repair capability that would get a failed subsystem back in operation in the required amount of time, and/or choose any combination of those approaches to achieve the optimal cost vs. reliability solution. Then the engineer moves onto the next subsystem.
Terminology.
There are few differences between the terms business logistics and logistics engineering. Logistics engineering is more focused on the mathematical or scientific application of logistics.
Fields and topics.
The various fields and topics that logistics engineers are involved with include:
Performance metrics.
Different performance metrics (measures of performance) are used to examine the efficiency of an organization's logistics. The most popular and widely used performance metric is the landed cost. The landed cost is the total cost of purchasing, transporting, warehousing and distributing raw materials, semi-finished and finished goods.
Another performance metric equally important is the end customer fill rate. It is the percentage of customer demand which is satisfied immediately off-the-shelf (from on-site inventory). An alternative to fill rate, is system availability.
In recent years, the United States Department of Defense (DoD) has advocated the use of performance-based logistics (PBL) contracts to manage costs for support of weapon systems.
Education.
Many top universities offer Logistics engineering programs at undergraduate and graduate levels. These programs generally combine strategy, operations, facility design, technology and management. The following institutions provide Logistics engineering programs around the world:


Supply chain

A supply chain, sometimes expressed as a "supply-chain", is a complex logistics system that consists of facilities that convert raw materials into finished products and distribute them to end consumers or end customers. Meanwhile, supply chain management deals with the flow of goods within the supply chain in the most efficient manner.
In sophisticated supply chain systems, used products may re-enter the supply chain at any point where residual value is recyclable. Supply chains link value chains. Suppliers in a supply chain are often ranked by "tier", with first-tier suppliers supplying directly to the client, second-tier suppliers supplying to the first tier, and so on.
Overview.
A typical supply chain can be divided into two stages namely, production and distribution stages. In the production stage, components and semi-finished parts are produced in manufacturing centres. The components are then put together in an assembly plant. The distribution stage consists of central and regional distribution centres that transport products to end-consumers.
At the end of the supply chain, materials and finished products only flow there because of the customer behaviour at the end of the chain; academics Alan Harrison and Janet Godsell argue that "supply chain processes should be co-ordinated in order to focus on end customer buying behaviour", and look for "customer responsiveness" as an indicator confirming that materials are able to flow "through a sequence of supply chain processes in order to meet end customer buying behaviour".
Many of the exchanges encountered in the supply chain take place between varied companies that seek to maximize their revenue within their sphere of interest but may have little or no knowledge or interest in the remaining players in the supply chain. More recently, the loosely coupled, self-organizing network of businesses who cooperate in providing product and service offerings has been called the "extended enterprise", and the use of the term "chain" and the linear structure it appears to represent have been criticised as "harder to relate ... to the way supply networks really operate. A chain is actually a complex and dynamic supply and demand network.
As part of their efforts to demonstrate ethical practices, many large companies and global brands are integrating codes of conduct and guidelines into their corporate cultures and management systems. Through these, corporations are making demands on their suppliers (facilities, farms, subcontracted services such as cleaning, canteen, security etc.) and verifying, through social audits, that they are complying with the required standard. A lack of transparency in the supply chain can bar consumers from knowledge of where their purchases originated and facilitate socially irresponsible practices. In 2018, the Loyola University Chicago's Supply and Value Chain Center found in a survey that 53% of supply chain professionals considered ethics to be "extremely" important to their organization.
Typologies.
Marshall L. Fisher (1977) asks the question in a key article, "Which is the right supply chain for your product?" Fisher, and also Naylor, Naim and Berry (1999), identify two matching characteristics of supply chain strategy: a combination of "functional" and "efficient", or a combination of "responsive" and "innovative" (Harrison and Godsell).
Brown "et al." refer to supply chains as either "loosely coupled" or "tightly coupled": These ideas refer to two polar models of collaboration: tightly coupled, or "hard-wired", also known as "linked", collaboration represents a close relationship between a buyer and supplier within the chain, whereas a loosely-coupled link relates to low interdependency between buyer and seller and therefore greater flexibility. The Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply's professional guidance suggests that the aim of a tightly coupled relationship is to reduce inventory and avoid stock-outs.
Modeling.
 There are a variety of supply-chain models, which address both the upstream and downstream elements of supply-chain management (SCM). The SCOR (Supply-Chain Operations Reference) model, developed by a consortium of industry and the non-profit Supply Chain Council (now part of APICS) became the cross-industry "de facto" standard defining the scope of supply-chain management. SCOR measures total supply-chain performance. It is a process reference model for supply-chain management, extending "from the supplier's supplier to the customer's customer". It includes delivery and order fulfillment performance, production flexibility, warranty and returns processing costs, inventory and asset turns, and other factors in evaluating the overall effective performance of a supply chain.
A supply chain can often be split into different segments: the earlier stages of a supply chain, such as raw material processing and manufacturing, determine their break-even point by considering production costs relative to market price. The later stages of a supply chain, such as wholesale and retail determine their break-even point by considering transaction costs, relative to market price. Additionally, there are financial costs associated with all the stages of a supply chain model.
The Global Supply Chain Forum has introduced an alternative supply chain model. This framework is built on eight key business processes that are both cross-functional and cross-firm in nature. Each process is managed by a cross-functional team including representatives from logistics, production, purchasing, finance, marketing, and research and development. While each process interfaces with key customers and suppliers, the processes of customer relationship management and supplier relationship management form the critical linkages in the supply chain.
The American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC) Process Classification Framework (PCF) SM is a high-level, industry-neutral enterprise process model that allows organizations to see their business processes from a cross-industry viewpoint. The PCF was developed by APQC and its member organizations as an open standard to facilitate improvement through process management and benchmarking, regardless of industry, size, or geography. The PCF organizes operating and management processes into 12 enterprise-level categories, including process groups, and over 1,000 processes and associated activities.
In the developing country public health setting, John Snow, Inc. has developed the JSI Framework for Integrated Supply Chain Management in Public Health, which draws from commercial sector best practices to solve problems in public health supply chains.
Mapping.
Similarly, supply chain mapping involves documenting information regarding all participants in an organisation's supply chain and assembling the information as a global map of the organisation's supply network.
Management.
In the 1980s, the term supply-chain management (SCM) was developed to express the need to integrate the key business processes, from end user through original suppliers. Original suppliers are those that provide products, services, and information that add value for customers and other stakeholders. The basic idea behind SCM is that companies and corporations involve themselves in a supply chain by exchanging information about market demand, distribution capacity and production capabilities. Keith Oliver, a consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton, is credited with the term's invention after using it in an interview for the "Financial Times" in 1982. The term was used earlier by Alizamir et al. in 1981, and Burns and Sivazlian in 1978.
If all relevant information is accessible to any relevant company, every company in the supply chain has the ability to help optimize the entire supply chain rather than to sub-optimize based on local optimization. This will lead to better-planned overall production and distribution, which can cut costs and give a more attractive final product, leading to better sales and better overall results for the companies involved. This is one form of vertical integration. Yet, it has been shown that the motives for and performance efficacy of vertical integration differ by global region.
Incorporating SCM successfully leads to a new kind of competition on the global market, where competition is no longer of the company-versus-company form but rather takes on a supply-chain-versus-supply-chain form.
The primary objective of SCM is to fulfill customer demands through the most efficient use of resources, including distribution capacity, inventory, and labor. In theory, a supply chain seeks to match demand with supply and do so with minimal inventory. Various aspects of optimizing the supply chain include liaising with suppliers to eliminate bottlenecks; sourcing strategically to strike a balance between lowest material cost and transportation, implementing just-in-time techniques to optimize manufacturing flow; maintaining the right mix and location of factories and warehouses to serve customer markets; and using location allocation, vehicle routing analysis, dynamic programming, and traditional logistics optimization to maximize the efficiency of distribution.
The term "logistics" applies to activities within one company or organization involving product distribution, whereas "supply chain" additionally encompasses manufacturing and procurement, and therefore has a much broader focus as it involves multiple enterprises (including suppliers, manufacturers, and retailers) working together to meet a customer need for a product or service.
Starting in the 1990s, several companies chose to outsource the logistics aspect of supply-chain management by partnering with a third-party logistics provider (3PL). Companies also outsource production to contract manufacturers. Technology companies have risen to meet the demand to help manage these complex systems. Cloud-based SCM technologies are at the forefront of next-generation supply chains due to their impact on optimization of time, resources, and inventory visibility. Cloud technologies facilitate work being processed offline from a mobile app which solves the common issue of inventory residing in areas with no online coverage or connectivity.
Performance.
Supply chain managers are under constant scrutiny to secure the best pricing for their resources, which becomes a difficult task when faced with the inherent lack of transparency. Cost benchmarking helps to identify competitive pricing within the industry but benchmarking across a range of supply chain performance factors has been recommended as best practice. The SCOR model contains more than 150 key indicators which measure the performance of supply chain operations: see also Supply chain operations reference#Performance measurements. Debra Hofman has noted that "measuring supply chain performance is not a new practice. Most companies today measure at least some aspect of their supply chain and understand the need for a more comprehensive measurement program." However, the abundance of options for potential performance metrics to use is seen as a challenge for supply chain managers. One approach is to relate multiple measures in a hierarchical structure so that interdependencies and the contribution of multiple indicators to the "key" or most significant imetrics can be more easily seen. Hofman suggests that the three key indicators of a well-functioning supply chain are:
A Cranfield University boardroom survey in 2010 found evidence that many organisations recognised the importance of the supply chain contribution to their business success, with a focus on cost, customer lead-time and customer quality being the primary performance indicators.
Resilience.
Supply chain resilience is "the capacity of a supply chain to persist, adapt, or transform in the face of change". For a long time, the interpretation of resilience in the sense of engineering resilience (or robustness) prevailed in supply chain management, leading to the notion of "persistence". A popular implementation of this idea is given by measuring the "time-to-survive" and the "time-to-recover" of the supply chain, allowing identification of weak points in the system. More recently, the interpretations of resilience in the sense of ecological resilience and social–ecological resilience have led to the notions of "adaptation" and "transformation", respectively. A supply chain is thus interpreted as a social-ecological system which – similar to an ecosystem (e.g. forest) – is able to constantly adapt to external environmental conditions and – through the presence of social actors and their ability to foresight – also to transform itself into a fundamentally new system. This leads to a panarchical interpretation of a supply chain, embedding it into a system of systems, allowing to analyze the interactions of the supply chain with systems that operate at other levels (e.g. society, political economy, planet Earth). For example, these three components of resilience can be identified in relation to the 2021 Suez Canal obstruction, when a ship blocked the canal for several days. Persistence means to "bounce back"; in our example it is about removing the ship as quickly as possible to allow "normal" operations. Adaptation means to accept that the system has reached to a "new normal" state and to act accordingly; here, this can be implemented by redirecting ships around the African cape or use alternative modes of transport. Finally, transformation means to question the assumptions of globalization, outsourcing, and linear supply chains and to envision alternatives; in this example this could lead to local and circular supply chains.
Supply chain resilience has been identified as an important business issue. The United Kingdom's Confederation of British Industry reported in 2014 that a significant number of businesses had reshored parts of their supply chain to European locations, with many identifying supply chain resilience as "a key factor in their decision to do so".
Social responsibility.
Incidents like the 2013 Savar building collapse with more than 1,100 victims have led to widespread discussions about corporate social responsibility across global supply chains. Wieland and Handfield (2013) suggest that companies need to audit products and suppliers and that supplier auditing needs to go beyond direct relationships with first-tier suppliers (those who supply the main customer directly). They also demonstrate that visibility needs to be improved if the supply cannot be directly controlled and that smart and electronic technologies play a key role to improve visibility. Finally, they highlight that collaboration with local partners, across the industry and with universities is crucial to successfully manage social responsibility in supply chains. This incident also highlights the need to improve workers safety standards in organizations. Hoi and Lin (2012) note that corporate social responsibility can influence the enacting of policies that can improve occupational safety and health management in organizations. In fact, international organizations with presence in other nations have a responsibility to ensure that workers are well protected by policies in an organization to avoid safety related incidents.
Food supply chains.
Many agribusinesses and food processors source raw materials from smallholder farmers. This is particularly true in certain sectors, such as coffee, cocoa and sugar. Over the past 20 years, there has been a shift towards more traceable supply chains. Rather than purchasing crops that have passed through several layers of collectors, firms are now sourcing directly from farmers or trusted aggregators. The drivers for this change include concerns about food safety, child labor and environmental sustainability as well as a desire to increase productivity and improve crop quality.
In October 2009, the European Commission issued a "Communication" concerning "a better functioning food supply chain in Europe", addressing the three sectors of the European economy which comprise the food supply chain: agriculture, food processing industries, and the distribution sectors. An earlier interim report on food prices (published in December 2008) had already raised concerns about the food supply chain. Arising out of the two reports, the Commission established a "European Food Prices Monitoring Tool", an initiative developed by Eurostat and intended to "increase transparency in the food supply chain".
In March 2022 the Commission noted "the need for EU agriculture and food supply chains to become more resilient and sustainable".
Regulation.
Supply chain security has become particularly important in recent years. As a result, supply chains are often subject to global and local regulations. In the United States, several major regulations emerged in 2010 that have had a lasting impact on how global supply chains operate. These new regulations include the Importer Security Filing (ISF) and additional provisions of the Certified Cargo Screening Program. EU's draft supply chain law are due diligence requirements to protect human rights and the environment in the supply chain.
Trends affecting supply chains.
With the increasing globalization and easier access to different kinds of alternative products in today's markets, the contribution of product design to generating demand is more significant than ever. In addition, as supply, and therefore competition, among companies for the limited market demand increases and as pricing and other marketing elements become less distinguishing factors, product design likewise plays a different role by providing attractive features to generate demand. In this context, demand generation is used to define how attractive a product design is in terms of creating demand. In other words, it is the ability of a product's design to generate demand by satisfying customer expectations. But product design affects not only demand generation but also manufacturing processes, cost, quality, and lead time. The product design affects the associated supply chain and its requirements directly, including manufacturing, transportation, quality, quantity, production schedule, material selection, production technologies, production policies, regulations, and laws. Broadly, the success of the supply chain depends on the product design and the capabilities of the supply chain, but the reverse is also true: the success of the product depends on the supply chain that produces it.
According to an industrial engineering study which looked at a process for "Design for Supply Chain" (DFSC), since the product design imposes multiple requirements on the supply chain, then once a product design is completed, it drives the structure of the supply chain, limiting the flexibility of engineers to generate and evaluate different (and potentially more cost-effective) supply-chain alternatives. Design for Supply Chain is described as
Supply chain consultant Anthony Tarantino has identified a number of best practices affecting the resilience and operation of supply chains, including the formation of multi-disciplinary centres of excellence, hybrid supply chain organizations which optimise the balance between centralisation and de-centralisation, and more extensive use of both structured and unstructured data.
Big Data is increasingly being utilized in supply chain management , especially in the strategic purchasing and supply management sector. Effective application of Big Data can improve the performance of supply chain activities through improved decision-making capabilities.
With the increased complexity and b2b activity associated with economic growth, actors often seek to view supply chain collaboration as a part of the value adding activities in a value chain.


Turned, ground, and polished

Turned, ground, and polished (TGP) is a classification of finishing processes often used for metal shafting. Turning (on a lathe) creates straight round bars without the strain induced by cold drawing, while grinding and polishing improves the surface finish and roundness for high dimensional accuracy. Extreme straightness is critical in high-speed applications to prevent vibration and reduce wear on bearings.


Rapid tooling

Rapid tooling (RT) denotes manufacturing on a slim timeline. Some of the main advantages to rapid tooling trades is that it decreases the time and cost of the product. With rapid tools being fast and easily reproducible, it requires less stock for finished tools. These tools will be produced on demand and are available almost immediately. Special tools or tools where no supplier is existing on the market any more can be reproduced without bigger design and production efforts. However, the disadvantages are that it is not as accurate and also shortens the lifespan of the product.
Rapid tooling is mainly used for specific needs including prototyping and troubleshooting existing problems. Rapid prototyping is not often used for large scale and long term operations for a part. Nevertheless, rapid tooling is starting to be used to create molds for commercial operations because the time lag is so short between start to finish and since a CAD file is the only thing needed for the design stage. Since alternate methods require precious time and resources, rapid tooling provides a way to quickly provide molds for the required products. This allows companies to quickly make commercial products with the advances of rapid prototyping.
In addition, rapid tooling provides the customization necessary for personal applications. Instead of tedious trial and error measurements, rapid prototyping processes allow scientists and doctors the ability to scan and digitize the item or patient. Then by putting it through a CAD program, a personal custom mold can be created to fix the problem. An example of this procedure is for dental patients. Originally to fabricate an oral application, an alginate impression or a wax registration is used to fit the teeth with the mold. With new advances, doctors can take a scan of the dental arches to correctly and quickly make a mold out of silicone for the patient. This allows for better accuracy and more acute customization of the mold in the future.


Stafa Industrier

Stafa Industrier AS, headquartered in Grimstad, Norway, is the parent company of a group of companies primarily offering manufacturing services and products from sheet-metal: Stansefabrikken Products AS, Stansefabrikken Fredrikstad AS, UAB Stansefabrikken Automotive Lithuania, UAB Stansefabrikken Lithuania and UAB Pramones Parkas Lithuania.
History.
The Stafa Group originates from the company Den Norske Stansefabrik first established in Oslo, Norway in 1932 and transferred to Lillesand in 1947. In 1985, after Den Norske Stansefabrik went bankrupt, the current main owners took over the operations and formed "Stansefabrikken Lillesand AS". Since then, through acquisitions and forming of new companies, the business has grown into a company group with a parent company, Stafa Industrier AS.
Description.
Stafa Industrier AS operates in five main areas of business: Sheet metal subcontracting, Automotive, Products (electrical cabinets, fuse cabinets, house-centrals, shop fitting equipment and post boxes out of sheet metal), product development, renting of premises (industrial park in Ukmergė, Lithuania). Stafa Industrier AS manages of 7 subsidiaries with a total number of approximately 375 employees:


Pocket-hole joinery

Pocket-hole joinery, or pocket-screw joinery, involves drilling a hole at an angle — usually 15 degrees — into one work piece, and then joining it to a second work piece with a self-tapping screw.
Pocket hole machines.
Modern pocket hole machines are capable of routing low-angle pockets - as low as 3 degrees - creating more flush, stronger joints by minimizing the joint shift or “creep” that occurs when creating pockets and joints by using a pocket hole jig or by hand. Max Durney, founder of Castle USA, invented the very first pocket hole machine and was awarded the first pocket hole machine patent. Castle USA continues to manufacturer 3 degree and 6 degree pocket hole machinery at its headquarters in Petaluma, CA.
Pocket hole jigs.
Pocket holes can be formed by drilling a series of holes until a pocket hole is created, but pocket hole jigs make the process much quicker and easier. Pocket hole jigs allow the user to drill a hole at an accurate angle to get a good joint. Using a pocket hole jig also makes for a cleaner and neater appearance as opposed to creating a pocket hole without the help of a jig. A pocket hole jig is generally made of plastic and has a metal insert that the drill bit is inserted through to drill the hole. A jig can be a stationary device that the wooden pieces are clamped into, or a portable device that is clamped onto the wooden pieces.
Technique.
When joining boards at a right angle, it is important that the cuts are precise and square to prevent gaps or un-perpendicular joints between the boards. Some woodworkers lay out their project before drilling their pocket holes and mark the face of the board that they want to drill to ensure the hole is in the correct location. Most pocket joints are made by screwing into the face or the edge of the board rather than the end grain because the screw will grab better.
Pocket hole joint screws.
Self-tapping pocket screws are used for pocket hole joints. Pocket screws are generally more expensive, but they are needed for a tight, strong joint. Pocket screws have a wide washer head to spread the load for a firm bond, and prevent screwing too far into the joint and cracking the wood. The self tapping screws will grip any type of wood, but coarse threads are needed for softer wood and fine threads are needed for harder.
Pocket hole joint screws will vary in length depending on the thicknesses of the 2 pieces of material being joined. This is an important factor in correctly laying out a pocket hole joint, and a common cause for error.


Pultrusion

Pultrusion is a continuous process for manufacture of fibre-reinforced plastics with constant cross-section. The term is a portmanteau word, combining "pull" and "extrusion". As opposed to extrusion, which pushes the material, pultrusion pulls the material.
A very early pultrusions type patent was filed by J.H. Watson in 1944. This was followed by M.J. Meek's filing of 1950. The first commercial pultrusions were provided by Glastic Company of Cleveland, Ohio under the patent filed in 1952 by Rodger B. White. The patent issued to W. B. Goldsworthy in 1959 helped initiate the promotion and knowledge spread within the industry. W. Brandt Goldsworthy is widely regarded as the inventor of pultrusion.
Parallel to the work of Goldsworthy, who concentrated his work on unsaturated polyester resins, Ernst Kühne in Germany developed a quite similar process in 1954 based on epoxy resin.
Invention, development and the issuance of patents continue in the pultrusion field through today. A later innovation in this field has been developed and patented by Thomas GmbH + Co. Technik + Innovation KG in Germany 2008 and is described below.
Process.
In the standard pultrusion process the reinforcement materials like fibers or woven or braided strands are impregnated with resin, possibly followed by a separate preforming system, and pulled through a heated stationary die where the resin undergoes polymerization. The impregnation is either done by pulling the reinforcement through a bath or by injecting the resin into an injection chamber which typically is connected to the die. Many resin types may be used in pultrusion including polyester, polyurethane, vinylester and epoxy. Resin provides the resistance to the environment, (i.e., the corrosion resistance, the UV resistance, the impact resistance, etc.) and the glass provides strength, in addition to safety from fire.
A surface veil can also be added to protect against erosion or “fiber bloom” and provide corrosion resistance and ultraviolet resistance.
The technology is not limited to thermosetting polymers. More recently, pultrusion has been successfully used with thermoplastic matrices such as polybutylene terephthalate (PBT), polyethylene terephthalate (PET) either by powder impregnation of the glass fiber or by surrounding it with sheet material of the thermoplastic matrix, which is then heated.
Ecological cleanness of manufactured products, in contrast to composites on thermosetting resins base, as well as practically unlimited possibilities of recycling (processing) after the resource depletion appear to be forcible arguments in favor of reinforced thermoplastics. For these reasons the industrial output and use of the given materials in highly industrialized countries have increased by 8–10% per year in recent decades. New developments (see process modifications) which enable the manufacturing not only of straight but also curved profiles are actually pushing the demand for this technology, especially in the automotive sector.
Pultrusion technology of manufacturing of fiber composites with polymer matrix appears to be energy-efficient and resource-saving.
Economic and environmental factors favor use of a thermoplastic matrix but due to the high viscosity of melts it is difficult to achieve high productivity and high quality of fiberfills impregnation with this type of matrix.
Products manufactured under this technology are widely used in the following industries:
Process modifications.
As the materials are pulled through a die in the standard pultrusion process the process is only suited to manufacture straight profiles.
In a recently developed modification of the process, developed and patented by Thomas GmbH + Co. Technik + Innovation KG, the die is no longer stationary but moving back and forth along the profile to be manufactured. This modified process, known as "Radius-Pultrusion" allows also to manufacture two- and three-dimensional curved profiles. It also is beneficiary for a number of tasks in the linear process especially if quite complex textile reinforcements with a low rate of distortion are needed.
Equipment.
The design of pultrusion machines varies. Two often used types are reciprocating (hand-over-hand) and continuous (cat-track).
For the radius pultrusion process the layout of the machines has two moving stages similar to the hand over hand pulling unit, but as the process is intermittent with only one puller and the mould mounted on the stage of other one. Whether the stages are moving linear or circular depends on the type of profiles to be manufactured. The minimum radius for a linear machine with rotating stages is approx. 2 m. For smaller radii a circular movement of the mould and gripper stage is necessary.


Centrifugal casting (industrial)

Centrifugal casting or rotocasting is a casting technique that is typically used to cast thin-walled cylinders. It is typically used to cast materials such as metals, glass, and concrete. A high quality is attainable by control of metallurgy and crystal structure. Unlike most other casting techniques, centrifugal casting is chiefly used to manufacture rotationally symmetric stock materials in standard sizes for further machining, rather than shaped parts tailored to a particular end-use.
Materials.
Typical materials that can be centrifugal cast are metals, cements, concretes, glass, and pottery materials. Typical metals cast are iron, steel, stainless steels, and alloys of nickel, aluminum, and copper, magnesium.
Two materials can be combined by introducing a second material during the process. A common example is cast iron pipe coated on the interior with cement.
Process for casting metal.
In centrifugal casting, a permanent mold is rotated continuously at high speeds (300 to 3000 rpm) as the molten metal is poured. The molten metal spreads along the inside mold wall, where it solidifies after cooling. The casting is usually a fine-grained casting with an especially fine-grained outer diameter, due to the rapid cooling at the surface of the mold. Lighter impurities and inclusions move towards the inside diameter and can be machined away following the casting.
Casting machines may be either horizontal or vertical-axis. Horizontal axis machines are preferred for long, thin cylinders, vertical machines for rings and bearings.
Castings usually solidify from the outside in. This directional solidification improves some metallurgical properties. Often the inner and outermost layers are removed and only the intermediary "columnar zone" is used.
Centrifugal casting was the invention of Alfred Krupp, who used it to manufacture railway tyres (cast steel tyres for railway wheels) starting in 1852.
Applications.
Typical parts made by this process are pipes, flywheels, cylinder liners, and other parts that are axi-symmetric. It is notably used to cast cylinder liners and sleeve valves for piston engines, parts which could not be reliably manufactured otherwise.
Glass.
The technique is known in the glass industry as "spinning". The centrifugal force pushes the molten glass against the mold wall, where it solidifies. The cooling process often takes between 16 and 72 hours depending on the impurities or volume of material. Typical products made using this process are television tubes and missile nose cones.
Spin casting is also used to manufacture large telescope mirrors, where the natural curve followed by the molten glass greatly reduces the amount of grinding required. Rather than pouring glass into a mold an entire turntable containing the peripheral mold and the back pattern (a honeycomb pattern to reduce the mass of the finished product) is contained within a furnace and charged with the glass material used. The assembly is then heated and spun at slow speed until the glass is liquid, then gradually cooled over a period of months.
Centrifugal casting is also commonly used to shape glass into spherical objects such as marbles.
Benefits.
Cylinders and shapes with rotational symmetry are most commonly cast by this technique. Long castings are often produced with the long axis parallel to the ground rather than standing up in order to distribute the effect of gravity evenly.
Thin-walled cylinders are difficult to cast by other means. Centrifugal casting is particularly suited as they behave in the manner of shallow flat castings relative to the direction of the centrifugal force.
Centrifugal casting is also used to manufacture disk and cylinder shaped objects such as railway carriage wheels or machine fittings where grain, flow, and balance are important to the durability and utility of the finished product.
Noncircular shapes may also be cast providing the shape is relatively constant in radius.
External links.
Centrifugal Casting Ductile Iron Pipe


Maslow CNC

Maslow CNC is an open-source CNC router project. It is the only commercially available vertical CNC router and is notable for its low cost of US$500.
Although the kit is advertised at $500, like many tools, additional initial material and hardware costs are required. The kits are now sold by three re-sellers range in price from $400 to $500. Lumber and plywood are required to make the machine's frame along with an appropriate and compatible router. Lastly, a personal computer or tablet is needed with Windows, Mac OSX or Linux as its operating system. Overall initial material material costs approximately $800.
The unique vertical design mimics a hanging plotter allowing it to have a 4' x 8' cutting area with a footprint 10' wide x 19" deep. Maslow CNC uses geared motors with encoders (8148 counts/rev) and a closed loop feedback system to achieve a resolution of ±0.4mm. To reduce cost, Maslow CNC comes in kit form, uses a commercial off-the-shelf handheld router provided by the user for the router spindle, uses an Arduino Mega microprocessor, and uses a large number of common hardware items rather than custom parts.
The Maslow CNC project was created 2016 by Bar Smith, Hannah Teagle and Tom Beckett. The project was funded with preorders on Kickstarter, raising $314,000. It was featured on Tested and was shown at Maker Faire Bay Area 2017.
The original company is no longer selling the kits.


Drawer slides roll forming machine

A drawer slide roll forming machine is a cold roll forming machine used to manufacture drawer slides. They have similarities with roofing roll formed products, but require a higher performance and skills in profile forming.
These machines are also known under various names such as slide rail making machine, slide make machine and telescopic channel roll forming equipment.
Process of slide roll forming.
The basic production flow of drawer slide machine is roll forming, punching, and cut off to length.
Processes of drawer slides roll forming is a continuous cold rolled steel strip passing through a plurality set of upper and lower shaped rollers, and then punching, embossing, straightening, and cut off to length. Straightening is an important part to avoid material twisting or curling. A roll forming line is often provided with straightening mechanism to make sure the material is nicely formed in a predetermined shape to meet the original design.
Every slide rail varies in some detailed design, which requires a customized production line to meet the expected profile. This means that the manufacture of a different types of roll slides may require a different machine or reconfiguration of the setup. The development takes time and costs, especially for undermount drawer slides. The profile is not as easy as contoured profile like roofing; in other words, slides roll forming requires advanced technology in manufacturing.
One disadvantage of drawer slides roll forming equipment is rollers can be only used to roll form one kind of profile design, which rollers must be changed when making different types or model of drawer slides profile. Complicated designs can incur large costs.
Types of drawer slides.
A drawer slide or drawer runner is the part of a drawer which allows the sliding movement. Examples of uses are in home furniture hardware, office appliance, and industrial equipment, including kitchen cabinets, oven slides, rails for sliding doors, fridge slides (used for coolers, etc.
There are various types of drawer slide in the market to apply for different usages, price points and features. A good slide rail defined by smoothness, tight tolerance, and loading capacity.
Features which may be incorporated in a drawer slide include:


Duplex scanning

Duplex scanning is a feature of some computer scanners, and multifunction printers (MFPs) that support duplex printing. A duplex scanner can automatically scan a sheet of paper on both sides. Scanners without this capability can only scan both sides of a sheet of paper by reinserting it manually the other way up.
Duplex scanning is usually implemented on multifunction printers using a "Reversing Automatic Document Feeder" (RADF), which removes, reverses, and re-feeds the document after scanning one side. Duplex scanning is achieved on scanners by either RADF or by single pass duplex scanning using two cameras, one for each side of document; two-camera scanners scan twice as fast as a similar two-pass scanner.
Typical duplex scanners.
The following table compares features for a number of duplex scanners, mostly discontinued as of 2015:


Thermal copper pillar bump

The thermal copper pillar bump, also known as the "thermal bump", is a thermoelectric device made from thin-film thermoelectric material embedded in flip chip interconnects (in particular copper pillar solder bumps) for use in electronics and optoelectronic packaging, including: flip chip packaging of CPU and GPU integrated circuits (chips), laser diodes, and semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA). Unlike conventional solder bumps that provide an electrical path and a mechanical connection to the package, thermal bumps act as solid-state heat pumps and add thermal management functionality locally on the surface of a chip or to another electrical component. The diameter of a thermal bump is 238 μm and 60 μm high.
The thermal bump uses the thermoelectric effect, which is the direct conversion of temperature differences to electric voltage and vice versa. Simply put, a thermoelectric device creates a voltage when there is a different temperature on each side, or when a voltage is applied to it, it creates a temperature difference. This effect can be used to generate electricity, to measure temperature, to cool objects, or to heat them.
For each bump, thermoelectric cooling (TEC) occurs when a current is passed through the bump. The thermal bump pulls heat from one side of the device and transfers it to the other as current is passed through the material. This is known as the Peltier effect. The direction of heating and cooling is determined by the direction of current flow and the sign of the majority electrical carrier in the thermoelectric material. Thermoelectric power generation (TEG) on the other hand occurs when the thermal bump is subjected to a temperature gradient (i.e., the top is hotter than the bottom). In this instance, the device generates current, converting heat into electrical power. This is termed the Seebeck effect.
The thermal bump was developed by Nextreme Thermal Solutions as a method for integrating active thermal management functionality at the chip level in the same manner that transistors, resistors and capacitors are integrated in conventional circuit designs today. Nextreme chose the copper pillar bump as an integration strategy due to its widespread acceptance by Intel, Amkor and other industry leaders as the method for connecting microprocessors and other advanced electronics devices to various surfaces during a process referred to as “flip-chip” packaging. The thermal bump can be integrated as a part of the standard flip-chip process (Figure 1) or integrated as discrete devices.
The efficiency of a thermoelectric device is measured by the heat moved (or pumped) divided by the amount of electrical power supplied to move this heat. This ratio is termed the coefficient of performance or COP and is a measured characteristic of a thermoelectric device. The COP is inversely related to the temperature difference that the device produces. As you move a cooling device further away from the heat source, parasitic losses between the cooler and the heat source necessitate additional cooling power: the further the distance between source and cooler, the more cooling is required. For this reason, the cooling of electronic devices is most efficient when it occurs closest to the source of the heat generation.
Use of the thermal bump does not displace system level cooling, which is still needed to move heat out of the system; rather it introduces a fundamentally new methodology for achieving temperature uniformity at the chip and board level. In this manner, overall thermal management of the system becomes more efficient. In addition, while conventional cooling solutions scale with the size of the system (bigger fans for bigger systems, etc.), the thermal bump can scale at the chip level by using more thermal bumps in the overall design.
A brief history of solder and flip chip/chip scale packaging.
Solder bumping technology (the process of joining a chip to a substrate without shorting using solder) was first conceived and implemented by IBM in the early 1960s. Three versions of this type of solder joining were developed. The first was to embed copper balls in the solder bumps to provide a positive stand-off. The second solution, developed by Delco Electronics (General Motors) in the late 1960s, was similar to embedding copper balls except that the design employed a rigid silver bump. The bump provided a positive stand-off and was attached to the substrate by means of solder that was screen-printed onto the substrate. The third solution was to use a screened glass dam near the electrode tips to act as a ‘‘stop-off’’ to prevent the ball solder from flowing down the electrode. By then the Ball Limiting Metallurgy (BLM) with a high-lead (Pb) solder system and a copper ball had proven to work well. Therefore, the ball was simply removed and the solder evaporation process extended to form pure solder bumps that were approximately 125μm high. This system became known as the controlled collapse chip connection (C3 or C4).
Until the mid-1990s, this type of flip-chip assembly was practiced almost exclusively by IBM and Delco. Around this time, Delco sought to commercialize its technology and formed Flip Chip Technologies with Kulicke & Soffa Industries as a partner. At the same time, MCNC (which had developed a plated version of IBM’s C4 process) received funding from DARPA to commercialize its technology. These two organizations, along with APTOS (Advanced Plating Technologies on Silicon), formed the nascent out-sourcing market.
During this same time, companies began to look at reducing or streamlining their packaging, from the earlier multi-chip-on-ceramic packages that IBM had originally developed C4 to support, to what were referred to as Chip Scale Packages (CSP). There were a number of companies developing products in this area. These products could usually be put into one of two camps: either they were scaled down versions of the multi-chip on ceramic package (of which the Tessera package would be one example); or they were the streamlined versions developed by Unitive Electronics, et al. (where the package wiring had been transferred to the chip, and after bumping, they were ready to be placed).
One of the issues with the CSP type of package (which was intended to be soldered directly to an FR4 or flex circuit) was that for high-density interconnects, the soft solder bump provided less of a stand-off as the solder bump diameter and pitch were decreased. Different solutions were employed including one developed by Focus Interconnect Technology (former APTOS engineers), which used a high aspect ratio plated copper post to provide a larger fixed standoff than was possible for a soft solder collapse joint.
Today, flip chip is a well established technology and collapsed soft solder connections are used in the vast majority of assemblies. The copper post stand-off developed for the CSP market has found a home in high-density interconnects for advanced micro-processors and is used today by IBM for its CPU packaging.
Copper pillar solder bumping.
Recent trends in high-density interconnects have led to the use of copper pillar solder bumps (CPB) for CPU and GPU packaging. CPBs are an attractive replacement for traditional solder bumps because they provide a fixed stand-off independent of pitch. This is extremely important as most of the high-end products are underfilled and a smaller standoff may create difficulties in getting the underfill adhesive to flow under the die.
Figure 2 shows an example of a CPB fabricated by Intel and incorporated into their Presler line of microprocessors among others. The cross section shows copper and a copper pillar (approximately 60 um high) electrically connected through an opening (or via) in the chip passivation layer at the top of the picture. At the bottom is another copper trace on the package substrate with solder between the two copper layers.
Thin-film thermoelectric technology.
Thin films are thin material layers ranging from fractions of a nanometer to several micrometers in thickness. Thin-film thermoelectric materials are grown by conventional semiconductor deposition methods and fabricated using conventional semiconductor micro-fabrication techniques.
Thin-film thermoelectrics have been demonstrated to provide high heat pumping capacity that far exceeds the capacities provided by traditional bulk pellet TE products. The benefit of thin-films versus bulk materials for thermoelectric manufacturing is expressed in Equation 1. Here the Qmax (maximum heat pumped by a module) is shown to be inversely proportional to the thickness of the film, L.
formula_1         Eq. 1
As such, TE coolers manufactured with thin-films can easily have 10x – 20x higher Qmax values for a given active area A. This makes thin-film TECs ideally suited for applications involving high heat-flux flows. In addition to the increased heat pumping capability, the use of thin films allows for truly novel implementation of TE devices. Instead of a bulk module that is 1–3 mm in thickness, a thin-film TEC can be fabricated less than 100 um in thickness.
In its simplest form, the P or N leg of a TE couple (the basic building block of all thin-film TE devices) is a layer of thin-film TE material with a solder layer above and below, providing electrical and thermal functionality.
Thermal copper pillar bump.
The thermal bump is compatible with the existing flip-chip manufacturing infrastructure, extending the use of conventional solder bumped interconnects to provide active, integrated cooling of a flip-chipped component using the widely accepted copper pillar bumping process. The result is higher performance and efficiency within the existing semiconductor manufacturing paradigm. The thermal bump also enables power generating capabilities within copper pillar bumps for energy recycling applications.
Thermal bumps have been shown to achieve a temperature differential of 60 °C between the top and bottom headers; demonstrated power pumping capabilities exceeding 150 W/cm2; and when subjected to heat, have demonstrated the capability to generate up to 10 mW of power per bump.
Thermal copper pillar bump structure.
Figure 3 shows an SEM cross-section of a TE leg. Here it is demonstrated that the thermal bump is structurally identical to a CPB with an extra layer, the TE layer, incorporated into the stack-up. The addition of the TE layer transforms a standard copper pillar bump into a thermal bump. This element, when properly configured electrically and thermally, provides active thermoelectric heat transfer from one side of the bump to the other side. The direction of heat transfer is dictated by the doping type of the thermoelectric material (either a P-type or N-type semiconductor) and the direction of electric current passing through the material. This type of thermoelectric heat transfer is known as the Peltier effect. Conversely, if heat is allowed to pass from one side of the thermoelectric material to the other, a current will be generated in the material in a phenomenon known as the Seebeck effect. The Seebeck effect is essentially the reverse of the Peltier effect. In this mode, electrical power is generated from the flow of heat in the TE element. The structure shown in Figure 3 is capable of operating in both the Peltier and Seebeck modes, though not simultaneously.
Figure 4 shows a schematic of a typical CPB and a thermal bump for comparison. These structures are similar, with both having copper pillars and solder connections. The primary difference between the two is the introduction of either a P- or N-type thermoelectric layer between two solder layers. The solders used with CPBs and thermal bumps can be any one of a number of commonly used solders including, but not limited to, Sn, SnPb eutectic, SnAg or AuSn.
Figure 5 shows a device equipped with a thermal bump. The thermal flow is shown by the arrows labeled “heat.” Metal traces, which can be several micrometres high, can be stacked or interdigitated to provide highly conductive pathways for collecting heat from the underlying circuit and funneling that heat to the thermal bump.
The metal traces shown in the figure for conducting electric current into the thermal bump may or may not be directly connected to the circuitry of the chip. In the case where there are electrical connections to the chip circuitry, on-board temperature sensors and driver circuitry can be used to control the thermal bump in a closed loop fashion to maintain optimal performance. Second, the heat that is pumped by the thermal bump and the additional heat created by the thermal bump in the course of pumping that heat will need to be rejected into the substrate or board. Since the performance of the thermal bump can be improved by providing a good thermal path for the rejected heat, it is beneficial to provide high thermally conductive pathways on the backside of the thermal bump. The substrate could be a highly conductive ceramic substrate like AlN or a metal (e.g., Cu, CuW, CuMo, etc.) with a dielectric. In this case, the high thermal conductance of the substrate will act as a natural pathway for the rejected heat. The substrate might also be a multilayer substrate like a printed wiring board (PWB) designed to provide a high-density interconnect. In this case, the thermal conductivity of the PWB may be relatively poor, so adding thermal vias (e.g. metal plugs) can provide excellent pathways for the rejected heat.
Applications.
Thermal bumps can be used in a number of different ways to provide chip cooling and power generation.
General cooling.
Thermal bumps can be evenly distributed across the surface of a chip to provide a uniform cooling effect. In this case, the thermal bumps may be interspersed with standard bumps that are used for signal, power and ground. This allows the thermal bumps to be placed directly under the active circuitry of the chip for maximum effectiveness. The number and density of thermal bumps are based on the heat load from the chip. Each P/N couple can provide a specific heat pumping (Q) at a specific temperature differential (ΔT) at a given electric current. Temperature sensors on the chip (“on board” sensors) can provide direct measurement of the thermal bump performance and provide feedback to the driver circuit.
Precision temperature control.
Since thermal bumps can either cool or heat the chip depending on the current direction, they can be used to provide precision control of temperature for chips that must operate within specific temperature ranges irrespective of ambient conditions. For example, this is a common problem for many optoelectronic components.
Hotspot cooling.
In microprocessors, graphics processors and other high-end chips, hotspots can occur as power densities vary significantly across a chip. These hotspots can severely limit the performance of the devices. Because of the small size of the thermal bumps and the relatively high density at which they can be placed on the active surface of the chip, these structures are ideally suited for cooling hotspots. In such a case, the distribution of the thermal bumps may not need to be even. Rather, the thermal bumps would be concentrated in the area of the hotspot while areas of lower heat density would have fewer thermal bumps per unit area. In this way, cooling from the thermal bumps is applied only where needed, thereby reducing the added power necessary to drive the cooling and reducing the general thermal overhead on the system.
Power generation.
In addition to chip cooling, thermal bumps can also be applied to high heat-flux interconnects to provide a constant, steady source of power for energy scavenging applications. Such a source of power, typically in the mW range, can trickle charge batteries for wireless sensor networks and other battery operated systems.


Process Window Index

Process Window Index (PWI) is a statistical measure that quantifies the robustness of a manufacturing process, e.g. one which involves heating and cooling, known as a thermal process. In manufacturing industry, PWI values are used to calibrate the heating and cooling of soldering jobs (known as a thermal profile) while baked in a reflow oven.
PWI measures how well a process fits into a user-defined process limit known as the specification limit. The specification limit is the tolerance allowed for the process and may be statistically determined. Industrially, these specification limits are known as the "process window", and values that a plotted inside or outside this window are known as the process window index.
Using PWI values, processes can be accurately measured, analyzed, compared, and tracked at the same level of statistical process control and quality control available to other manufacturing processes.
Statistical process control.
Process capability is the ability of a process to produce output within specified limits. To help determine whether a manufacturing or business process is in a state of statistical control, process engineers use control charts, which help to predict the future performance of the process based on the current process.
To help determine the capability of a process, statistically determined upper and lower limits are drawn on either side of a process mean on the control chart. The control limits are set at three standard deviations on either side of the process mean, and are known as the upper control limit (UCL) and lower control limit (LCL) respectively. If the process data plotted on the control chart remains within the control limits over an extended period, then the process is said to be stable.
The tolerance values specified by the end-user are known as specification limits – the upper specification limit (USL) and lower specification limit (LSL) respectively. If the process data plotted on a control chart remains within these specification limits, then the process is considered a capable process, denoted by formula_1.
Manufacturing industry has developed customized specification limits known as Process Windows. Within this process window, values are plotted. The values relative to the process mean of the window are known as the Process Window Index. By using PWI values, processes can be accurately measured, analyzed, compared, and tracked at the same level of statistical process control and quality control available to other manufacturing processes.
Control limits.
Control limits, also known as natural process limits, are horizontal lines drawn on a statistical process control chart, usually at a distance of ±3 standard deviations of the plotted statistic's mean, used to judge the stability of a process.
Control limits should not be confused with "tolerance limits" or "specifications," which are completely independent of the distribution of the plotted sample statistic. Control limits describe what a process is capable of producing (sometimes referred to as the “voice of the process”), while tolerances and specifications describe how the product should perform to meet the customer's expectations (referred to as the “voice of the customer”).
Use.
Control limits are used to detect signals in process data that indicate that a process is not in control and, therefore, not operating predictably. A value in excess of the control limit indicates a special cause is affecting the process.
To detect signals one of several rule sets may be used . One specification outlines that a signal is defined as any single point outside of the control limits. A process is also considered out of control if there are seven consecutive points, still inside the control limits but on one single side of the mean.
For normally distributed statistics, the area bracketed by the control limits will on average contain 99.73% of all the plot points on the chart, as long as the process is and remains in statistical control. A false-detection rate of at least 0.27% is therefore expected.
It is often not known whether a particular process generates data that conform to particular distributions, but the Chebyshev's inequality and the Vysochanskij–Petunin inequality allow the inference that for any unimodal distribution at least 95% of the data will be encapsulated by limits placed at 3 sigma.
PWI in electronics manufacturing.
An example of a process to which the PWI concept may be applied is soldering. In soldering, a thermal profile is the set of time-temperature values for a variety of processes such as slope, thermal soak, reflow, and peak.
Each thermal profile is ranked on how it fits in a process window (the specification or tolerance limit). Raw temperature values are normalized in terms of a percentage relative to both the process mean and the window limits. The center of the process window is defined as zero, and the extreme edges of the process window are ±99%. A PWI greater than or equal to 100% indicates that the profile does not process the product within specification. A PWI of 99% indicates that the profile runs at the edge of the process window. For example, if the process mean is set at 200 °C, with the process window calibrated at 180 °C and 220 °C respectively; then a measured value of 188 °C translates to a process window index of −60%. A lower PWI value indicates a more robust profile. For maximum efficiency, separate PWI values are computed for peak, slope, reflow, and soak processes of a thermal profile.
To avoid thermal shock affecting production, the steepest slope in the thermal profile is determined and leveled. Manufacturers use custom-built software to accurately determine and decrease the steepness of the slope. In addition, the software also automatically recalibrates the PWI values for the peak, slope, reflow, and soak processes. By setting PWI values, engineers can ensure that the reflow soldering work does not overheat or cool too quickly.
Formula.
The Process Window Index is calculated as the worst case (i.e. highest number) in the set of thermal profile data. For each profile statistic the percentage used of the respective process window is calculated, and the worst case (i.e. highest percentage) is the PWI.
For example, a thermal profile with three thermocouples, with four profile statistics logged for each thermocouple, would have a set of twelve statistics for that thermal profile. In this case, the PWI would be the highest value among the twelve percentages of the respective process windows.
The formula to calculate PWI is:
where:


Bumpless Build-up Layer

Bumpless Build-up Layer or BBUL is a processor packaging technology developed by Intel. It is bumpless, because it does not use the usual tiny solder bumps to attach the silicon die to the processor package wires. It has build-up layers, because is grown or built up around the silicon die. The usual way is to manufacture them separately and bond them together.
It was presented in October 2001. It should have been a key component in the 8 GHz and 15 GHz processors that should have been in the market by 2005 and 2007 respectively. Also 20 GHz should have been possible before the year 2010. The BBUL is not needed yet because there is no longer the clock-frequency competition.