International Technical Standards: An Overview

The growing globalization of industry is stimulating a growing emphasis on international standards. Standards are important because they provide significant economic benefit. They are also costly and much of the benefit is broad-based, i.e. it does not accrue preferentially to those who incur the cost. Finally, there is a highly disaggregated international standards system and at least two very different basic philosophies as to how standard systems should operate. The effect of the individual cost-benefit analysis by organizations may produce a hybrid system that produces both global standards in which each country participates in the development as well as less costly technical and consortium standards.

History and Evolution of the Offshore Oil and Gas Industry in Southern Louisiana: Worker Perspectives

The history of the offshore oil and gas industry in the Gulf of Mexico is one of both progressive and punctuated development. New technologies, forms of work organization, and regulatory regimes have all combined over the past seventy years to influence the evolution of this industry. This paper reports early results of a multiyear, multi-team effort to document this history and its impacts on southern Louisiana. It focuses on the work of one team, applied anthropologists from the University of Arizona, to capture the history from the perspectives of the workers and local entrepreneurs who made this industry happen.

Managing Energy Engineering Education: The Introductory Course

Future energy engineers will need to understand a range of diverse energy initiatives. The purpose of this paper is to present a plan for developing an Energy Engineering course for undergraduates. The course will introduce students to the concepts needed to understand the 21st century energy mix, and should help tomorrow’s leaders understand their role as stewards of the earth’s natural resources.

Production Paradigms and Paradoxes

Paradigms convey notions of fixed prescribed practices and examples that offer solutions to deal with the vagaries of human organizations and behavior. To define something as a paradigm freezes a sometime evanescent concept and fixes it with a phrase that enhances popular understanding and adoption. Paradigms offer a simplicity and degree of standardization to ideas that often become cliches, and, as such, inevitably entrain paradoxes. The world of production and manufacturing consists of multiple complex enterprises, industries, organizations, processes, relationships and cultures. There are many contradictions, contrasts, and dichotomies that change with time. This paper endeavors a historic and philosophic essay on some of the origins and paradoxes that surround our currently recommended production systems practices.

And The World Came To See: New Manufacturing System Designs and Industrial Revolutions

AND THE WORLD CAME TO SEE. When a new manufacturing system design (MSD) is developed by a company or a group of companies, the rest of the world comes to those factories to learn about the new system. In the last 200 years, three new factory designs have evolved, called the job shop, the flow shop and the lean shop. Each is based on a new system design — a functional design, a product flow design and a linked cell design. New factory designs lead to new industrial leaders and even new industrial revolutions (IR’s). Two appendixes are included: One outlines the implementation strategy for the lean shop and the other is a discussion of lean manufacturing from the viewpoint of K. Hitomi, Japanese professor of manufacturing systems engineering.

Bioengineering: A History With a Future

Bioengineering is a technological miracle of health care and future health hope. From the entrepreneurial contributions of William Kolff with the original handmade dialysis machine to the application of the x-ray to medical diagnostics and treatment, biomedical pioneers brought technology to medical care, often at great personal risk. Few can conceive the magnitude of the impact of technology on our ability to return the sick and disabled to function. The “simple” steel and plastic hip implant is a technological wonder. The human is the most demanding of systems to be repaired by technology. The stress levels, cycle loading, chemical degradation and even biological rejection are without precedent in engineering application. Reliability is expected to be near 100%. Psychological and cosmetic compatibility are severe constraints. The current quality of life of many (if not most) of us is dependent upon technology, and forefront technology at that. The dentist no longer hurts and our teeth last longer. Numerous “replacements” are cosmetically acceptable. Medical diagnosties are everywhere, but have a long way to go. Emergency medicine is high-tech. The wonders of bioengineering are in our present and in our future. It is informative to review our bioengineering heritage from early orthopedics (splints, peg legs and crutches), through mobility facilitation (wheelchairs) and internal repair (aortic patches and arterial replacement) to modern diagnostics (MRI) and organ replacement (artificial hearts, kidneys, etc.). A recent renewed interest in biomedical devices paralleling the decoding of the genome and the proposed genetic future portends what Dr. Francis Fukuyama of Johns Hopkins called “Our Post Human Future.” We will explore our historical pathway to what we will call “our better human future through bioengineering.”

Strategic Alignment, Planning and Operations in the Supply Chain: A Case Study

The present work is a case study conducted on the Indian operations of a leading white goods manufacturer in the world, with a focus on the alignment and planning of the primary movements in the distribution resource planning cycle/manufacturing cycle. The present system at the company is analyzed for the three components viz. supply chain design, supply chain planning and supply chain operations. The characterization of the present system is based on high-implied demand uncertainties, high forecast errors, provisions for mixed order matching, seasonality of demands, end of month peak characterization and the irregular flow of information. The initial analysis is based on a simple queuing model that incorporates the theory of constraints to evaluate the criticality of the information flow in the system. This model is then extended to incorporate other parameters required in the strategic alignment of the system with the corporate objectives. The current initiatives in the company are then developed further into a strategic plan that incorporates considerations of new product launches, decreasing product life cycles, fragmentation of supply chain ownership, globalization and other difficulties in execution.

The Impact of Sheet Metal Stamping on Manufacturing and Economic Growth of the United States in the Early 20th Century

A vast array of manufactured articles containing metal components utilize power press methods in their production. The common aspect of these methods is the use of specialized dies and the mechanical energy of the press machine to impart the required finished shape with a minimum of time and material loss. The innovation of power press metal forming methods in conjunction with advances in sheet rolling technology can be credited with a significant portion of the United States economic growth from manufacturing between 1890 and 1940. Of the many variations of power press metal forming processes that now exist, sheet stamping is found to be the most significant to the economic development of the U.S. as a synergetic partner of the new automobile industry. Data from the 1929 Census of Manufactures is used to generate a Social Savings metric which estimates the effect of the use of sheet stamping in terms productivity gained. The estimated Social Savings of this very small sector of manufacturing represents a tenth of one percent of the total Value Added by all U.S. industries in 1929.

100 Years of Oil and Gas Development: From the Marshes to Deepwater, Louisiana Has Played a Major Role in Water-Oriented Exploration and Development

September, 2001 marked the 100th anniversary of the oil and gas business in Louisiana. Consequently, hydrocarbon exploration and development has been a vital part of Louisiana’s economy for over a century. In the latter part of the 1980s, the industry was considered dead or dying. Exploration and development had declined throughout the state. In the 1990s Louisiana’s industry was reborn in the deepwater of the northern Gulf of Mexico—a region that holds enormous potential in water depths that create unique exploration, development and production challenges. As technology changed, or was developed to meet the industry’s needs, new frontiers were explored. There was a pioneering entrepreneurial spirit that pushed the limits. Today, the frontier continues to expand and Louisiana is the beneficiary of this activity. One hundred years after the first discovery well in Louisiana, more than 250,000 oil and/or gas wells have been drilled in the state. In addition, over 4,000 structures are anchored parallel to its coast in water depths approaching two miles (3.2 km). From the uplands, to the swamps and marshes and into the deepwater of the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana has been a leader in helping meet the Nation’s energy demands.

An Assessment of the 107th U.S. Congress Energy Policy Debate in the History of Energy Use and Development in the United States

The national energy policy debate in the 107th US Congress may mark a significant milestone in the development of energy use and conversion technologies in the United States. It has been said that the result of this congressional energy policy debate was an expensive statements that, despite proposed tax breaks and subsidies for everything from solar power and hybrid cars to coal and nuclear power, may accomplish little — with not much either on the supply or the demand side that’s going to make any difference to the American public. This paper provides an insider assessment of how the debate developed, what energy policy decisions were or were not made, and what the implications are for the development of energy use and conversion technologies going forward. This debate may represent the final exhaustive struggle of long-held, but misguided, ineffectual and limited-vision policies that date to the 1970s. In combination with the September 11 events, this stalemate may open the door to new, fresh, global perspectives on meeting the energy needs of people throughout the world, including in lesser developed countries such as Afghanistan. Engineers and entrepreneurs are advised to understand the seminal implications of the 107th congressional energy policy debate on future energy use and conversion technologies.