Continuous improvement is one of five principles in General Motors – Global Manufacturing System (GM-GMS). GM-GMS has been used by Saab Automobile AB since 2003 and is a central component for realisation of GM’s vision. Internal audits have discovered problems with one of the tools, practical problem solving (PPS), which needs to be improved. The department manufacturing of press and body (PK) wants to survey the problems and initiate a process of improvement. The purpose of this thesis work is to develop a foundation for future re-designs of the PPS process. Employees have been interviewed and observed in order to explore possible difference theoretical and practical problem solving with PPS. The result of the investigation shows 4 different and interrelated problem categories. 1. Information transfer, PPS hand over to product quality engineers (PQE) department cause problem when general assemblies (GA) are excluded from the improvement work. General assemblies do not get any feedback information from (PQE) about planed countermeasures. 2. Problem solving, team leaders has difficulties with identifying the true problem. Using “five-why” during the analysis work causes problem, since team leaders do not have the knowledge of how to use the tool in a proper way. 3. Documentation of PPS, the content in the PPS-form is a problem according to team leaders. Lack of knowledge and understanding of how to use the PPS-document leads to incomplete and incorrect analysis. 4. Coordination of involved people, support and help are missing from the management and quality engineer according team leaders. PPS from Global Costumer Audit are imposing time stress according to team leaders. Recommendations for further work is to investigate the opportunities with a web based PPS and process to improve information transfer and documentation of PPS. A second recommendation is to train and coach team leaders in problem solving and improve coordination of involved people and skills in problem solving.

The objective of this project is to improve productivity and efficiency for the inbound material handling operations in the warehouse of DC Älmhult. After three weeks pre-study in place of the distribution center, the authors have observed several problems existing in the current production, among which three types of wastes are found and analyzed by using VSM that are pick and drop, operator waiting time and inefficient transport. Two typical cases chosen from the inbound production are analyzed to reflect the current process and address problems. Fish-bone tool is used to identify wastes and roots. To eliminate or reduce the wastes, recommendations and solutions are developed by creating continuous flow combining with internal transport optimization. Future-state VSMs are drawn based on the suggested changes in line with continuous flow. Different productions models are simulated by elaborately developed excel sheets. A „distance table‟ is developed by using Microsoft Excel to help the loading or unloading leaders with the gate steering function so as to minimize internal transport distance. A new layout of the conveyor system is also suggested to lower the idle transport rate.

Quality management and continuous improvement are well known and many successful implementations of improvements regarding quality has been made over the recent dec-ades by many organizations. This means that there are lots of different tools, strategies and implementation techniques available for organizations today. However, globalism have made this area an interesting aspect for researching cultural impacts in quality management and continuous improvement for organizations operating in many differ-ent countries. The purpose behind this thesis is therefore to study how a multinational company han-dles international quality management and how national culture impacts quality man-agement and continuous improvement efforts in a multinational company. Initially, a frame of reference was developed to examine current available research of quality man-agement and continuous improvements, as well as cultural aspects regarding differences in national culture and how this impacts an organizational culture that operates in sever-al countries world-wide. We used a qualitative research approach and within that performed a case study of Vol-vo Trucks. Primary data was collected from interviews and other material acquired from Volvo Trucks. The results showed that power distance was a value that impacted improvement work the most. This was seen in different stages of improvement efforts.

Trust region subproblems arise within a class of unconstrained methods called trust region methods. The subproblems consist of minimizing a quadratic function subject to a norm constraint. This thesis is a survey of different methods developed to find an approximate solution to the subproblem. We study the well-known method of More and Sorensen and two recent methods for large sparse subproblems: the so-called Lanczos method of Gould et al. and the Rendland Wolkowicz algorithm. The common ground to explore these methods will be semidefinite programming. This approach has been used by Rendl and Wolkowicz to explain their method and the More and Sorensen algorithm; we extend this work to the Lanczos method. The last chapter of this thesis is dedicated to some improvements done to the Rendl and Wolkowicz algorithm and to comparisons between the Lanczos method and the Rendl and Wolkowicz algorithm. In particular, we show some weakness of the Lanczos method and show that the Rendl and Wolkowicz algorithm is more robust.

The safety of pipelines distributed in the infrastructure of many industries has become very important since the industrial revolution. The guided ultrasonic wave technique can provide the possibility for rapid screening in long pipelines with corrosion. Especially the torsional mode T(0,1) of guided waves has been used in the cases of the pipe in the hidden region substantially. The ability of evaluating the inaccessible areas of the pipe makes the guided ultrasonic wave technique sit high on the roster of non-destructive testing tool for pipe inspection. However, the problem arises when attempting to detect the corrosions at the welded support bracket or under the bitumen coating on the pipe. The signal reflected from the corrosion will be covered by a large signal induced by the welded support or attenuated by the bitumen coating seriously. Therefore, the effects of welded support and bitumen coating on the T(0,1) mode are investigated by the experimental and the simulative methods. The continuous wavelet transform analysis is the signal processing method to extract the hidden signal of corrosion in this dissertation. There are five test pipes in the experiments. The response of the normal welded support is studied on the #1 test pipe. The #2 test pipe is used for attenuation investigation. The reflected signals of the features on the #3, #4, and #5 test pipes are measured and processed by continuous wavelet transform during defect detection process. In addition, the linear hexahedron elements are used to build the finite element models of the 6-inch steel pipe with support bracket and the pipe with bitumen coating. It is found that the effects of support bracket on the reflection comprise mode conversion, delayed appearance, trailing echoes, and frequency dependent behavior. When the T(0,1) mode impinges on to the support bracket, it will convert into the A0 mode inside the support due to the circumferential disturbance on the pipe surface. The reflection of the support bracket is identified as three parts formed by the direct echo, delayed echo and the trailing echo. The constructive interference of the A0 mode reflecting from the boundaries inside the support causes that the reflection spectrum shows two maxima peak at around 20-22 kHz (frequency regime of 0.0) and 32-34 kHz (frequency regime of 4.0) from both the experimental and simulated results. For the bitumen coating, the data collected from the welds and defects under the bitumen coating on the #2 test pipe show the attenuation effect on guided wave propagation and the difficulty of minor corrosion detection. In the finite element model of coated pipe, the results of predicted attenuation curves of T(0,1) mode indicate that the attenuation effect on guided wave propagation is aggravated with the increased value of the thickness, density or damping factor of the coated layer. Especially, in the case of 5-mm, the predicted attenuation curve shows a maximum point. Before this point, the attenuation increases with the operating frequency. For long range pipe inspection, it is the best way to avoid choosing the operating frequency around the corresponding frequency of the point. The measured data of corrosion affected by the welded support or the coated bitumen layer was processed by continuous wavelet transform to form a time-frequency analysis. The corrosion signals were identified in the contour map of the wavelet coefficient successfully. The understanding of the guided wave propagation on the pipe welded with support or pipe coated with bitumen is helpful to interpret the reflected signals. The use of continuous wavelet transform on signal processing techniques can improve the ability of defect detection on pipe with complex geometries.

The thesis proposes a third order continuous-time sigma delta modulator used in GSM. We used a special 1.5bit quantizer, and to use its three different states to reach a differential feedback path. That can improve the resolution of our circuit. Oversampling and noise shaping are two keys of sigma delta modulator. In structure, the continuous-time features can reduce power consumption. The proposed sigma delta modulator uses TSMC 0.35 m CMOS process and its sampling frequency is 10.8MHz, bandwidth is200KHz and oversampling ratio is 32.

Quantile is a basic and an important quantity of a random variable. In some distributions, their quantiles have closed-form expressions. However, for many continuous distributions, the closed-form expressions of their quantiles do not exist. Yu and Zelterman (2011) and Chang (2004) have proposed an approximation of quantiles. In this paper, we propose an improved method which is combined the Taylor expansion with Newton¡¦s method. Some examples are given to compare the computing time of the method we proposed with the methods in Yu and Zelterman (2011) and Chang (2004).

The emergence of bandwidth-intensive services has created a need for high speed and high resolution data converters. Towards this end, system level design of a continuous-time sigma-delta modulator achieving 11 bits resolution over 100 MHz signal bandwidth by using a feed-forward topology is presented. The system is first built in the Simulink environment in MATLAB. The building blocks in the loop filter are modeled with non-idealities, and specifications for these blocks are obtained by simulations. An operational transconductor amplifier (OTA) with 100 mS transconductance, 70 dB linearity, and 34.2 mW power dissipation is designed to be used in the loop filter. Simulation results indicate that the 5th order loop filter implemented in the feed-forward architecture in transistor level shows lower power consumption, 105 mW, compared to the loop filter implemented by feedback architecture, 152 mW.

In the study, the effects of the machining conditions, ex, machining positions, loads and rotating speed ratio on machining mechanism of wafer are investigated by using the continuous composite electroplated polisher and find the best machining conditions of the polisher. Experimental results show that when the wafer and polisher are full contact, the operating of machinery is most smooth and the flatness is better. When the load is increased, the reducing rate of average roughness¡]Ra¡^and maximum roughness¡]Rmax¡^, removal rate, and the speed of mirror degree are increased. The machining mechanism and the stability of machinery is depended on the value of rotating speed ratio. In the different rotating speed ratio, the flatness of wafer is difference. For example, the rotating speed ratio is 1, the flatness is 1.5 £gm/38 mm. The rotating speed ratio is 2, the flatness is 2.3 £gm/38 mm. Finally, choose the rotating speed ratio, which the values of rotating speed are close and complex on the range of rotating speed which machinery can be operating most stable in machining process. Because of the machining mechanism are similar and the grinding locus are finer. Hence, the flatness of wafer becomes better. When the rotating speed ratio is 1.1, the flatness is 1.46£gm/38 mm. The rotating speed ratio is 1.11, the flatness is 1.45£gm/38 mm. The effect of the rotating speed ratio of the wafer and polisher on the grinding locus type of grinding surface is theoretically analyzed. Results show that when the rotating speed ratio is irregular, the distribution of grinding locus becomes finer. The analyzable results of locus and provable results of experiment are the same.

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