An Approach to Integrated and Concurrent Product Development

A concurrent product development example is used in this paper to introduce a roadmap for integrated and concurrent product development. The roadmap covers the following steps: (1)enterprise problem specifying; (2)information integration modeling; (3)integrated products development team modeling; (4)product development process modeling; and (5) integrated information-process-organization modeling. They have been successfully applied in the major pilot project of "Concurrent Engineering" of the 863 Programme of China.

The Framework Model of Supply-Chain Process in CALS Environment

E-supply chain is the trend of the supply chain ma na gement. However, building E-supply chain depends on business process improvemen t and re-engineering, which becomes one of the important aspects in supply chai n management. However, the supply chain process re-engineering and improvement is constrained because of lack of integrating operation framework and standards based on information management. We find that the idea of CALS origins from DoD of USA can solve the problems very well. CALS is the abbreviation of "continues acquisition and life- cycle support". It is an information strategy adopted by many developed counties. The final objective of the CALS is that government a nd industry can generate, exchange, manage and use all the digital information t hroughout the lifecycle of a product in virtue of adopting the international and national standards, improving existing business process and introducing advance d technology. The Integrated Digital Environment (IDE) created by CALS provides a brand new operation mode for consumer, contractor and supplier in supply chain . Besides, a series mutual standard is involved in CALS system. These standards and the standardization technology would be applied widely in the supply chain. This study mainly focuses on supply chain process in CALS environment, and puts forward a framework model of supply chain process. Then the study analyzes the c haracteristics of the model, which includes the application of standards and inf ormation technology, and finally discusses on methods to achieve the supply chai n process in CALS environment.

面向行业的高等教育理念建言(英文)

A turbulent re-engineering of higher education and higher education institutions is underway in many countries across the world to achieve a more direct and pro-active engagement with society in general than ever before. This paper presents the authors’ suggestions on the concepts and philosophy of quality-assured industry-oriented higher education based on the close cooperation between DIT and HIT, particularly on the recently completed EU Asia-Link EMERSION project in relation to software education, as a constructive contribution to the process of re-engineering higher education.

Integrated Product and Process Design Using a Reverse Engineering System

Computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) and revers e engineering (RE) have changed drastically the concept of product re-design, pla nning and manufacture of components. However, the main problems currently facing the developers of reverse engineering system, is the time consuming digitis ation of 3D data and the conversion of large amounts of data into a concise and manageable format and linking it to a CAD/CAM system. Automated 3-D profile gen eration, measurements and inspection of manufactured component represents one of the important functions in reverse engineering and in the improvements in produ ct quality in rapid product developments. The paper presents a novel methodology for the development of a reverse enginee ring technique for use in the rapid product development in a CIM environment . The system developed provides integration, data capture and manipulation, dat a transfer between a CAD, CAM, Computer-aided inspection (CAI) and a 3-D profi le scanning system. An efficient scanning strategy has been developed for scann ing and surfaces data acquisition. The products were scanned using a laser scann ing system with a dedicated scan control card and the associated software packag es. A versatile rig was developed for the ease of data gathering of the profile scanning process. The surface data collected was then used to build a mathematic al surface model, which was then used to develop a virtual 3-D model of the pro duct. The resulting surface model provides the geometrical input to the subseque nt machining operation using either a CNC system or other manufacturing operatio n e.g. dies casting/mould casting etc. The prototypes developed were inspected u sing a state-of-the art CNC-CMM that was integrated to the CAD/CAM system. Si nce the scanning/digitised data captured by laser scanning probes requires no ma nual editing, significant time saving over most non-contact probe systems was a chieved. Since the creation of an accurate CAD model of a redesigned component o r a prototype constitute a major element of the total turnaround time; maximum r eturn can be achieved by increasing the efficiency of the redesigning process. T he paper also outlines with a case study the application of the developed system . The system developed offers the flexibility of using the concept of reverse en gineering of a variety of components with the complimentary facility of integrat ion between CAD/CAM Computer-aided Inspection (CAI) systems and a scanning syst em. The developed reverse engineering application in an integrated manufacturing system can increase the consistency, improve cost-efficiency, reduce produ ct turn around and skill levels required to redesign, reengineer and prototyping components and products.

A Decision Support Model for Predicting Avoidable Re-Hospitalization of Breast Cancer Patients in Kenyatta National Hospital

This study aimed to develop a clinical Decision Support Model (DSM) which is software that provides physicians and other healthcare stakeholders with patient-specific assessments and recommendation in aiding clinical decision-making while discharging Breast cancer patient since the diagnostics and discharge problem is often overwhelming for a clinician to process at the point of care or in urgent situations. The model incorporates Breast cancer patient-specific data that are well-structured having been attained from a prestudy’s administered questionnaires and current evidence-based guidelines. Obtained dataset of the prestudy’s questionnaires is processed via data mining techniques to generate an optimal clinical decision tree classifier model which serves physicians in enhancing their decision-making process while discharging a breast cancer patient on basic cognitive processes involved in medical thinking hence new, better-formed, and superior outcomes. The model also improves the quality of assessments by constructing predictive discharging models from code attributes enabling timely detection of deterioration in the quality of health of a breast cancer patient upon discharge. The outcome of implementing this study is a decision support model that bridges the gap occasioned by less informed clinical Breast cancer discharge that is based merely on experts’ opinions which is insufficiently reinforced for better treatment outcomes. The reinforced discharge decision for better treatment outcomes is through timely deployment of the decision support model to work hand in hand with the expertise in deriving an integrative discharge decision and has been an agreed strategy to eliminate the foreseeable deteriorating quality of health for a discharged breast cancer patients and surging rates of mortality blamed on mistrusted discharge decisions. In this paper, we will discuss breast cancer clinical knowledge, data mining techniques, the classifying model accuracy, and the Python web-based decision support model that predicts avoidable re-hospitalization of a breast cancer patient through an informed clinical discharging support model.