Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 216-229).

New product development has been considered a key success factor for today's businesses. Long term survival of many manufacturing organizations depends on how successful organizations are introducing new products to compete in existing markets or in creating new markets. Despite the importance of new product development, many manufacturing organizations face a limited understanding of the relationship between manufacturing capabilities and new product success. This study examined the relationship between manufacturing flexibility and new product performance. Eight dimensions of manufacturing flexibility and three measures of new product performance were identified and the relationships among these variables were examined. Impact of new product type, value creation mode, and manufacturing system on the relationships was also assessed. A survey of the U.S. electronic manufacturing industry was conducted. Data obtained was statistically analyzed to provide valid and reliable measures for research variables and to test the hypothesized relationships. This study supports the multidimensionality of flexibility and the existence of a hierarchy among flexibility dimensions. A suggested hierarchy of manufacturing flexibility is offered. Manufacturing flexibility was found to be more positively correlated with market success than with quality, cost or delivery. The difference between quality and cost and delivery was found to be insignificant. For more radical products, manufacturing flexibility was found to be more positively correlated with product performance. Another finding suggested that manufacturing flexibility is more positively correlated with product performance in a product focused environment than in a process focused or market focused environment. Manufacturing flexibility was found to be more positively correlated with product performance in a market focused than in a process focused environment. Another result suggested that the level of positive correlation between manufacturing flexibility and new product performance is higher in a Line Flow manufacturing system and in a Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS) than in any other manufacturing system. / Graduation date: 2004

Control of machines that exhibit flexibility becomes important when designers attempt to push the state of the art with faster, lighter machines. Three steps are necessary for the control of a flexible planet. First, a good model of the plant must exist. Second, a good controller must be designed. Third, inputs to the controller must be constructed using knowledge of the system dynamic response. There is a great deal of literature pertaining to modeling and control but little dealing with the shaping of system inputs. Chapter 2 examines two input shaping techniques based on frequency domain analysis. The first involves the use of the first deriviate of a gaussian exponential as a driving function template. The second, acasual filtering, involves removal of energy from the driving functions at the resonant frequencies of the system. Chapter 3 presents a linear programming technique for generating vibration-reducing driving functions for systems. Chapter 4 extends the results of the previous chapter by developing a direct solution to the new class of driving functions. A detailed analysis of the new technique is presented from five different perspectives and several extensions are presented. Chapter 5 verifies the theories of the previous two chapters with hardware experiments. Because the new technique resembles common signal filtering, chapter 6 compares the new approach to eleven standard filters. The new technique will be shown to result in less residual vibrations, have better robustness to system parameter uncertainty, and require less computation than other currently used shaping techniques.

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It is important for corporation to maintain ¡§flexibility¡¨ in order to enhance core competitive edge and to respond to market change quickly. So to have flexible human resource measures is an important organization strategy. Since high-tech industry is going to be the trend for Taiwan, the research will begin with the high-tech industry and explore the relations between ¡§financial performance resulted from flexible work arrangement¡¨ and ¡§overall organization performance¡¨. In addition, the research will also discuss, with different organizational characteristics and various extent of manpower allocation measures, whether the financial outcome resulted from flexible human resource measures would have an impact on the overall organization financial performance outcome. Therefore, 344 questionnaires were distributed in Hsinchu Science District and high-tech companies in greater Taipei area. 69 valid questionnaires and 3 not valid questionnaires were collected in Hsinchu while 43 valid questionnaires were collected in northern Taiwan. There were in total 112 valid questionnaires. The research will analyze organization characteristics and conditions (such as the scale of business, total month of existence of the company since it was founded, capital structure, number of departments and number of rankings) with frequency distribution, descriptive statistics, and matrix. In addition, the research will also use ¡§linear association¡¨ to examine the influence ¡§the interrelations among organization background, measures¡¦ extent of flexibility, flexible measures and the extent of flexibility¡¨ has toward ¡§organization overall finance performance¡¨. On the other hand, we use ¡§related analysis¡¨ to explore the association between ¡§flexible measures¡¦ financial performance of job capacity, quantity and salary¡¨ and ¡§overall flexible finance performance¡¨. The findings are as below: 1. In the various flexible high-tech industry human resource measures, it is correlated from both the profit performance resulted from developing multi-task staff, and the overall organization profit performance. 2. It is negatively correlated between the performance resulted from non-typical employee or the fluctuated salary, and the overall organization profit performance. It can be found in the interviews that depending on the industry characteristics, the outcome of high-tech companies to out-source non-core operation and to adopt fluctuate salary is not as good as the outcome of conventional industries. 3. The more the number of departments is, the more detailed job specification is. So, by assigning these non-core operations to the non-typical employee, the cost of time and manpower can be saved and the effectiveness and efficiency can be increased. 4. The cost of hiring a foreign employee is way lower than that of hiring a native employee with similar work experience. Therefore, it can lower the human resource cost for high-tech industry to adopt high proportion of foreign employees. 5. The human resource cost here refers to ¡§salary cost, welfare cost, training cost, dismissal fee and retirement fee¡¨. In high-tech industry, it is highly emphasized on the employees¡¦ welfare and training. Employees¡¦ salary is pretty good, too. So, it should be carefully evaluated the cost of downsizing and retaining extra employees. From this we can see the significant influence of downsizing on the decrease of human resource cost. Although downsizing might jeopardize the morale, it is still a form of warning in certain way. 6. The more the number of departments is, the larger the scale of organization is. Many training cost or welfare measures can be cost-effective under the situation of larger economic scale. 7. On the other hand, from the valid questionnaire collected, we found that most non-typical staff is in the position of non-professional operations. This is different from what we found in the literature review ¡§to react to environment with flexibility, we should simplify organization design and manpower allocation, or outsource those non-core operations¡¨. Further exploration on this is required for future researchers to explore.

In recent years, an increasing pursuit of product appearance, so the surface appearance of the product are the main arc, but if we can develop the flexible fuel cells, fuel cells will be able to scratch-type adhesive on the product curved surface, not only for product supply and portable, low pollution have great potential for portable fuel cells. Performance of the experiment found that the decision lies in the amount of carbon fiber bundles, softness and spring pressure on the uniformity imposed by such factors. The experiment that bending radius of curvature of 45.5cm, the battery around the X, Y, XY axis deflection performance and the performance is not the same, and the radius of curvature around the X-axis deflection narrow, performance is not reduced, around the XY axis deflection narrow the radius of curvature, the performance has not decreased significantly, but the radius of curvature around the Y-axis deflection reduced, performance has slightly dropped, from IV Curve that the radius of curvature smaller fiber bundles and electrode contact resistance also increases, but this performance decline in the acceptable range. This will be a torsion-type fuel cell, can be the radius of curvature 45.5 ~ 10.58cm or less within the flexural performance, this battery has the potential of portable fuel cells, advantages of low pollution, high efficiency and easy to carry.

Dissertation (Ph.D.)--University of Toledo, 2009. / Typescript. "Submitted as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy in Manufacturing and Technology Management." Bibliography: leaves 246-252.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Lehigh University, 2003. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 187-196).

The trend to integrate more and more processing cores and memory cores into a single module has increased the overall size of chips to the point where global interconnects between sub-units are becoming harder and harder to route and meet timing rules and requirements. The traditional way of routing interconnects and the use of uniform, unidirectional, point to point busses may no longer be optimal for certain designs where metal layers and chip area for interconnects are limited. The need for a more flexible routing methodology is necessary and can be achieved by using routing and calibration techniques currently being implemented at board level design. This report proposes the use of non-uniform, bidirectional, and possibly multi-point loads global interconnects within a single chip module through the use of on chip calibration techniques to compensate for less restrictive wiring rules for certain chip designs. This report will also apply a widely used digital calibration technique to simulate the implementation on a field programmable gate array. / text

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