Decreasing the cycle time of panels in the printed circuit card manufacturing process has been a significant research topic over the past decade. The research objective in such literature has been to reduce the placement machine cycle times by finding the optimal placement sequences and component-feeder allocation for a given, fixed, panel component layout for a given machine type. Until now, no research has been found which allows the alteration of the panel configuration itself, when panelization is a part of that electronic panel design. This research will be the first effort to incorporate panelization into the cycle time reduction field. The PCB circuit design is not to be altered; rather, the panel design (i.e., the arrangement of the PCB in the panel) is altered to reduce the panel assembly time. Component placement problem models are developed for three types of machines: The automated insertion machine (AIM), the pick-and-place (PAPM) machine, and the rotary turret head machine (RTHM). Two solution procedures are developed which are based upon a genetic algorithm (GA) approach. One procedure simultaneously produces solutions for the best panel design and component placement sequence. The other procedure first selects a best panel design based upon an estimation of its worth to the minimization problem. Then that procedure uses a more traditional GA to solve for the component placement and component type allocation problem for that panel design. Experiments were conducted to discover situations where the consideration of panelization can make a significant difierence in panel assembly times. It was shown that the PAPM scenario benefits most from panelization and the RTHM the least, though all three machine types show improvements under certain conditions established in the experiments. NOTE: An updated copy of this ETD was added on 09/17/2010. / Ph. D.

In recent years, researchers have developed virtual environments, which allow more realistic human-computer interactions and have become increasingly popular for engineering applications such as computer-aided design and process evaluation. For instance, the demand for product service, remanufacture, and recycling has forced companies to consider ease of assembly and disassembly during the design phase of their products. Evaluating these processes in a virtual environment during the early stages of design not only increases the impact of design modifications on the final product, but also eliminates the time, cost, and material associated with the construction of physical prototypes. Although numerous virtual environments for assembly analysis exist or are under development, many provide only visual feedback. A real-time haptic simulation test bed for the analysis of assembly and disassembly operations has been developed, providing the designer with force and tactile feedback in addition to traditional visual feedback. The development such a simulation requires the modeling of collisions between virtual objects, which is a computationally expensive process. Also, the demands of a real-time simulation incorporating haptic feedback introduce additional complications for reliable collision detection. Therefore, the first objective of this work was to discover ways in which current collision detection libraries can be improved or supplemented to create more robust interaction between virtual objects. Using the simulation as a test bed, studies were then conducted to determine the potential usefulness of haptic feedback for analysis of assembly and disassembly operations. The following significant contributions were accomplished: (1) a simulation combining the strengths of an impulse-based simulation with a supplemental constraint maintenance scheme for modeling object interactions, (2) a toolkit of supplemental techniques to support object interactions in situations where collision detection algorithms commonly fail, (3) a haptic assembly and disassembly simulation useful for experimentation, and (4) results from a series of five experimental user studies with the focus of determining the effectiveness of haptic feedback in such a simulation. Additional contributions include knowledge of the usability and functionality of current collision detection libraries, the limitations of haptic feedback devices, and feedback from experimental subjects regarding their comfort and overall satisfaction with the simulation.

Thesis (M. Arch.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes special report study entitled: Architecture and orientation & mobility training. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.Arch.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes special report study entitled : Architecture and orientation & mobility training. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print.

This thesis presents new theories and creative techniques for exploring ‘designing for home happiness'. Set in the context of a primarily unsustainable and unhappy world, home is understood as a facilitator of current lifestyle practices that could also support long-term happiness activities, shown to promote more sustainable behaviour. It has yet to be examined extensively from a happiness perspective and many homes lack opportunities for meaningful endeavours. Service Design, an approach that supports positive interactions, shows potential in facilitating ‘designing for home happiness' but its tools are generally employed for visualising new systems/services or issues within existing ones instead of exploring related subjectivity. Art therapy techniques, historically used for expressing felt experiences, present applicable methods for investigating such subjective moments and shaping design opportunities for home happiness but have yet to be trialled in a design research context. This thesis therefore explores how Art Therapy and Service Design can be used successfully for ‘designing for home happiness'. A first study proposes photo elicitation as a creative method to explore, with participants from UK family households, several significant home happiness needs. Subsequently, art therapy techniques are proposed in Study 2 through two bespoke Happy-Home Workshops. This gives way to the Home Happiness Theory and Designing for Home Happiness Theory, which enable designers to design for home happiness. The Designing for Home Happiness Framework emerges from these studies proposing a new design creative method delivered through a workshop with specialised design tools and accompanying process for creating home happiness designs (i.e. services, product-service-systems). Through two Main Studies the framework is tested and validated with design experts in two different contexts, Loughborough (UK) and Limerick (Ireland), confirming its suitability and transferability in ‘designing for home happiness'. Resulting concepts support collective home happiness and social innovations by facilitating appropriate social contexts for their development. Overall, this research is the first to combine art therapy techniques with service design methods, offering original theories and approaches for ‘designing for home happiness' within Service Design and for social innovation. Collectively, this research delivers new creative methods for service designers, social innovators and designers more generally to investigate and support happier experiences within and outside the home for a more sustainable future.

Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) is a further development of the Six Sigma draft to carry through preventing quality measures in developing and designing of new products and processes. With increasing demands on enterprises development processes to be more safety and faster the need of DFSS arise as a product, process and service development concept in the organisations. Design for Six Sigma aims to improve and structure the development process of an organisation and consider the application of the innovation problem solving. The concept aims to leave the structure of the traditional Six Sigma concept and instead, from an innovative perspective, search for new solutions to existing problems. The concept constitute of a toolbox with a lot of quality tools that are divided into phases in a development model. Combined with the organizations project model the Design for Six Sigma concept can give rise to excellent results in the work with developing and designing of new products and processes. The condition to succeed is that the draft has been established and accepted with the organizations collaborator. This thesis work summarizes the contents of the Design for Six Sigma concept. The concentration of the performance has been the underlying theory behind the DFSS draft together with the contents of the methodology and the included tools. / Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) är en vidareutveckling av Sex Sigma-konceptet för att genomföra förebyggande kvalitetsåtgärder vid ny- och vidareutveckling av produkter och processer. Med ökade krav på säkrare och snabbare utvecklingsprocesser hos organisationer uppkommer ett behov av detta produkt-, process- och tjänsteutvecklingskoncept. Design for Six Sigma konceptet behandlar strukturering och utveckling av en verksamhets utvecklingsprocess och handlar mycket om applicerandet av det som vanligen benämns innovativ problemlösning. Konceptet syftar således till att frångå Sex Sigmas traditionella strukturerade arbetssätt och istället, utifrån ett innovativt angreppssätt, söka fastställa helt nya lösningar på ett problem. Konceptet består av en verktygslåda med kvalitetsverktyg uppdelade i faser i en utvecklingsmodell. Kombinerat med en organisations projektledningsmodell kan Design for Six Sigma medföra goda resultat vid produkt och processutvecklingsarbete under förutsättning att förståelse och acceptans hos medarbetarna etablerats. Detta examensarbete sammanfattar innehållet i Design for Six Sigma-konceptet. Fokus har legat på DFSSs bakomvarande teorier vilka utgör grunderna till konceptet samt dess innehåll och verktygslåda.

Denna kandidatuppsatts behandlar hur demonteringsbara byggnationer påverkar byggbranschen. Syftet är att ta reda på totalentreprenörernas syn på Design for Deconstruction (DfD), eller som det kallas på svenska projektering för demontering, i den svenska byggsektorn. Vidare undersöks utmaningar och problem som DfD ger upphov till och vad som krävs för att införa DfD i byggsektorn. Studien baseras på en kvalitativ metod då vi genomförde åtta semistrukturerade intervjuer med totalentreprenörer. Resultatet grundas på respondenternas svar som innehåller deras erfarenhet, uppfattningar, reflektioner om DfD. Studiens resultat visar att det råder fortfarande okunskap bland totalentreprenörer gällande ämnet men samtidigt ett växande intresse för ämnet. Det krävs större ambitioner från politiker och internationella myndigheter för att utveckla styrmedel som möjliggör projektering för demontering i byggsektorn. Respondenterna ansåg att fördelarna med DfD är möjlighet att förflytta en byggnad, flexibla planlösningar som förenklar renoveringsarbete/ombyggnation, kortare byggtider, återanvändning. Detta kan skapa en ny marknadsföringsstrategi och höja kostnadsvärde för fastighetsägare. Den ekonomiska aspekten visade sig vara det främsta hindret för införande av DfD eftersom respondenterna ansåg projektering för demontering som en icke prövad metod. Dagens byggmodell är inte lämplig för DfD och innovationer krävs. Andra utmaningar som framkom är skepticism till återanvändning av byggmaterial och svårigheter att se de ekonomiska möjligheterna som kommer efter 50–70 år. Anledningarna är bland annat estetik och lastupptagningsförmåga av element samt förvaring. Det behövs också ekonomisk vinning för att fastighetsägare ska välja DfD. De förutsättningar som behövs för att DfD ska införas är ett gemensamt standardiseringssystem, utveckling av BIM-verktyg som stödjer DfD, nya innovationer, öppna byggsystem. Informationsflöde och interaktion mellan entreprenörer och materialleverantörer behöver förbättras för att uppnå den tekniska utformningen med avseende på återanvändningen. Det krävs att staten genomför förmåner i form av subventioner och ekonomiskt stöd för att stimulera införandet av Design for Deconstruction i byggsektorn. Intervjustudien visade att totalentreprenörer utför DfD om efterfrågan och begäran finns hos beställaren. Däremot behöver entreprenörer visa engagemang visas valet av en byggmodell. / This bachelor thesis is about how deconstruction of buildings affect the Swedish construction industry. The purpose with study is to explore how turnkeys’ contractors view of Design for Deconstruction (DfD). This study examines the challenges and problems linked to DfD and what is needed to introduce DfD into the construction sector. The research approach chosen is a qualitative method with semi structured interviews where eight turnkey contractors were interviewed. The result is based on the respondents' experiences, perceptions, and reflections on DfD. The results show that there is a potential for further competence development among the turnkey contractors. More ambitions are required from the politicians and international authorities to develop instruments that enable development DfD in the construction sector. Respondents saw the possible benefits of DfD are opportunities for relocation of the buildings, flexibility that simplifies renovation work, shorter construction times, re-use. This can create a new marketing strategy and increase the value for property owners. Current building model is not suitable for DfD and new innovations are required. Other challenges that emerged is scepticism of turnkeys’ constructors for the recycling of building materials and difficulty to see financial possibilities that will be after 50-70 years. Subsidies and financial support coming from the state may be beneficial for establishment of DfD in the construction sector.

The modern manufacturing world has been driven to compete in a more international and interconnected system. This has led to increased focus upon frameworks and architectures to guarantee quality, high market acceptance, and reduce cost. Modern manufacturing design processes evolved largely from Henry Ford at Ford Motor Company, and Alfred Sloan at General Motors. Their structures embody two different focuses on quality and value engineering which have influenced many recent design frameworks. In the 1970s a heavy emphasis was placed upon Design for Manufacturing, which uses group technology, commonality of processes, and continual focus to reduce part count. Some companies have desired a design process that better accounts for new market needs and Voice of the Customer changes, allowing them to break out of the old processes by using a new framework called Design for Six Sigma. Contextual and survey analysis contrasting DFSS and DFM showed these systems have different definitions of what creates value; which causes a different focus on how to improve value. As the market frequently errs at knowing when to apply DFM or DFSS, using a simple case study of a product with high part and assembly cost, teams were challenged to create a better flashlight using both DFM for part reduction, and DFSS for function improvement. The aim was to increase value. Value has been defined by the formula: value = (performance + capability) / cost or as value = function/cost. Results from the case study combining DFM and DFSS constructs demonstrate a total value engineering construct. It was also shown that DFM indicated effectiveness for a slow-changing market with cost reduction focus, and DFSS demonstrated effectiveness for analyzing continually changing market needs. Disruptive innovations can replace a formerly lull market, for which DFM can be completely unprepared; while DFSS is not effective in slow product-change markets. Incorporating the best of DFSS and DFM creates a Total Value Engineering framework.

No description available.

While conventional test point insertions commonly used in design for testability can improve fault coverage, the test points selected may not necessarily be the best candidates to aid <em>silicon diagnosis</em>. In this thesis, test point insertions are conducted with the aim to detect more faults and also synergistically distinguish currently indistinguishable fault-pairs. We achieve this by identifying those points in the circuit, which are not only hard-to-test but also lie on distinguishable frontiers, as Testability-Diagnosability (TD) points. To this end, we propose a novel low-cost metric to identify such TD points. Further, we propose a new DFT + DFD architecture, which adds just one pin (to identify test/functional mode) and small additional combinational logic to the circuit under test. Our experiments indicate that the proposed architecture can distinguish 4x more previously indistinguishable fault-pairs than existing DFT architectures while maintaining similar fault coverages. Further, the experiments illustrate that quality results can be achieved with an area overhead of around 5%. Additional experiments conducted on hard-to-test circuits show an increase in <em>fault coverage</em> by 48% while maintaining similar diagnostic resolution. Built-in Self Test (BIST) is a technique of adding additional blocks of hardware to the circuits to allow them to perform self-testing. This enables the circuits to test themselves thereby reducing the dependency on the expensive external automated test equipment (ATE). At the end of a test session, BIST generates a signature which is a compaction of the obtained output responses of the circuit for that session. Comparison of this signature with the reference signature categorizes the circuit as error free or buggy. While BIST provides a quick and low cost alternative to check circuit's correctness, diagnosis in BIST environment remains poor because of the limited information present in the lossily compacted final signature. The signature does not give any information about the possible defect location in the circuit. To facilitate diagnosis, researchers have proposed the use of two additional on-chip embedded memories,response memory to store reference responses and fail memory to store failing responses. We propose a novel architecture in which only one additional memory is required. Experimental results conducted on benchmark circuits substantiate that the same fault coverage can be maintained using just 5% of the available test vectors. This reduces the size of memory required to store responses which in turn reduces area overhead. Further, by adding test points to the circuit using our proposed architecture, we can improve the diagnostic resolution by 60% with respect to external testing. / Master of Science