Flexible Design offers an extended and detailed treatment of the gradual shift that took place in Blake's poetics during the composition, transcription, and revision of Vala or The Four Zoas. Pierce traces how, in the process of revision, Blake experimented with characterization, increased the importance of Christian symbolism, and developed a mode of narrative presentation controlled less by chronological sequence than by the use of thematic juxtaposition and typology.
Strategies for building large systems that can be easily adapted for new situations with only minor programming modifications. Time pressures encourage programmers to write code that works well for a narrow purpose, with no room to grow. But the best systems are evolvable; they can be adapted for new situations by adding code, rather than changing the existing code. The authors describe techniques they have found effective--over their combined 100-plus years of programming experience--that will help programmers avoid programming themselves into corners. The authors explore ways to enhance flexibility by: Organizing systems using combinators to compose mix-and-match parts, ranging from small functions to whole arithmetics, with standardized interfaces Augmenting data with independent annotation layers, such as units of measurement or provenance Combining independent pieces of partial information using unification or propagation Separating control structure from problem domain with domain models, rule systems and pattern matching, propagation, and dependency-directed backtracking Extending the programming language, using dynamically extensible evaluators
Liquid or fluid layouts change width based on the user's unique device viewing size. These types of layouts have always been possible with tables but offer new design challenges as well as opportunities when built with CSS. This book, for experienced Web designers with some CSS experience, outlines how to do this successfully. Designers will learn the benefits of flexible layouts and when to choose a liquid, elastic, or hybrid design. They will learn not only how to build a liquid layout from scratch using standards-compliant and cross-browser compatible (X)HTML and CSS, but will also learn how to design and slice their graphic comps in a way that makes flexible design achievable. This book will show designers that flexible layouts do not have to be visually boring or difficult to build when planned and built correctly. Even those who do not intend to build liquid layouts can use the concepts and techniques taught in this book to improve their fixed-width CSS designs, because they will learn how to design for the inherent flexibility of the web medium, instead of the rigid qualities of print media or table grid-based layouts.
A guide to using the power of design flexibility to improve the performance of complex technological projects, for designers, managers, users, and analysts. Project teams can improve results by recognizing that the future is inevitably uncertain and that by creating flexible designs they can adapt to eventualities. This approach enables them to take advantage of new opportunities and avoid harmful losses. Designers of complex, long-lasting projects—such as communication networks, power plants, or hospitals—must learn to abandon fixed specifications and narrow forecasts. They need to avoid the “flaw of averages,” the conceptual pitfall that traps so many designs in underperformance. Failure to allow for changing circumstances risks leaving significant value untapped. This book is a guide for creating and implementing value-enhancing flexibility in design. It will be an essential resource for all participants in the development and operation of technological systems: designers, managers, financial analysts, investors, regulators, and academics. The book provides a high-level overview of why flexibility in design is needed to deliver significantly increased value. It describes in detail methods to identify, select, and implement useful flexibility. The book is unique in that it explicitly recognizes that future outcomes are uncertain. It thus presents forecasting, analysis, and evaluation tools especially suited to this reality. Appendixes provide expanded explanations of concepts and analytic tools.
This handy resource defines an effective set of design patterns and rules you should know when applying the widely used ISA-88 industry standards to batch manufacturing (called the S88 design pattern) and continuous and discrete manufacturing (called the NS88 design pattern for non-stop production). This book clearly identifies what elements are defined in the batch series and what elements make up the S88 and NS88 design patterns for flexible manufacturing. The book defines design patterns for control system programming, providing patterns for the organization of programmable logic controller (PLC), digital control system (DCS), and other control system application codes. Whether you are in a batch, continuous, or discrete manufacturing environment, these design patterns can be applied to a wide range of production systems, making systems easier to design and implement.
In the last decade, the production of mechanical components to be assembled in final products produced in high volumes (e.g. cars, mopeds, industrial vehicles, etc.) has undergone deep changes due to the overall modifications in the way companies compete. Companies must consider competitive factors such as short lead times, tight product tolerances, frequent market changes and cost reduction. Anyway, companies often have to define production objectives as trade-offs among these critical factors since it can be difficult to improve all of them. Even if system flexibility is often considered a fundamental requirement for firms, it is not always a desirable characteristic of a system because it requires relevant investment cost which can jeopardize the profitability of the firm. Dedicated systems are not able to adapt to changes of the product characteristics while flexible systems offer more flexibility than what is needed, thus increasing investment and operative costs. Production contexts characterized by mid to high demand volume of well identified families of products in continuous evolution do not require the highest level of flexibility; therefore, manufacturing system flexibility must be rationalized and it is necessary to find out the best trade-off between productivity and flexibility by designing manufacturing systems endowed with the right level of flexibility required by the production problem. This new class of production systems can be named Focused Flexibility Manufacturing Systems-FFMSs. The flexibility degree in FFMSs is related to their ability to cope with volume, mix and technological changes, and it must take into account both present and future changes. The required level of system flexibility impacts on the architecture of the system and the explicit design of flexibility often leads to hybrid systems, i.e. automated integrated systems in which parts can be processed by both general purpose and dedicated machines. This is a key issue of FFMSs and results from the matching of flexibility and productivity that respectively characterize FMSs and Dedicated Manufacturing Systems (DMSs). The market share of the EU in the machine tool sector is 44%; the introduction of focused flexibility would be particularly important for machine tool builders whose competitive advantage is based on the ability of customizing their systems on the basis of needs of their customers. In fact, even if current production contexts frequently present situations which would fit well with the FFMS approach, tradition and know-how of machine tool builders play a crucial role. Firms often agree with the focused flexibility vision, nevertheless they decide not to pay the risk and efforts related to the design of this new system architecture. This is due also to the lack of well-structured design approaches which can help machine tool builders to configure innovative systems. Therefore, the FFMS topic is studied through the book chapters following a shared mission: "To define methodologies and tools to design production systems with a minimum level of flexibility needed to face, during their lifecycle, the product and process evolution both in the technological and demand aspects. The goal is to find out the optimal trade-off between flexibility and productivity". The book framework follows the architecture which has been developed to address the FFMS Design problem. This architecture is both broad and detailed, since it pays attention to all the relevant levels in a firm hierarchy which are involved in the system design. Moreover, the architecture is innovative because it models both the point of view of the machine tool builder and the point of view of the system user. The architecture starts analyzing Manufacturing Strategy issues and generating the possible demand scenario to be faced. Technological aspects play a key role while solving process plan problems for the products in the part family. Strategic and technological data becomes input when a machine tool builder performs system configuration. The resulting system configurations are possible solutions that a system user considers when planning its system capacity. All the steps of the architecture are deeply studied, developing methods and tools to address each subproblem. Particular attention is paid to the methodologies adopted to face the different subproblems: mathematical programming, stochastic programming, simulation techniques and inverse kinematics have been used. The whole architecture provides a general approach to implement the right degree of flexibility and it allows to study how different aspects and decisions taken in a firm impact on each other. The work presented in the book is innovative because it gives links among different research fields, such as Manufacturing Strategy, Process Plan, System Design, Capacity Planning and Performance Evaluation; moreover, it helps to formalize and rationalize a critical area such as manufacturing system flexibility. The addressed problem is relevant at an academic level but, also, at an industrial level. A great deal of industrial sectors need to address the problem of designing systems with the right degree of flexibility; for instance, automotive, white goods, electrical and electronic goods industries, etc. Attention to industrial issues is confirmed by empirical studies and real case analyses which are presented within the book chapters.
Bang & Olufsen, the famous Danish producer of high-end home electronics, is well known as an early exponent of value-based management: the idea that there should be consistency in what the organisation does, a certain continuity between what the company develops and sells, and the beliefs and practices of the employees. This study investigates how company values are communicated and the collective identity is articulated through the use of such concepts as 'culture', 'fundamental values', and 'corporate religion', as well as how employees negotiate these ideas in their daily working lives. As this book reveals, the identification of values, meant to create cohesion and solidarity among employees, came to symbolise and engender a split between the staff and the other parts of the company. By examining the rise and fall of the value-based management approach, this volume offers the indispensible insight of anthropological enquiry to expose how social realities challenge conventional management strategies and therefore must be considered in the development of new management techniques.
This is billed as the only book that puts all the features of the UML notation system into the context of a fully developed example--an order processing system. Contains the unique insights of an experienced consultant who has coached companies on object-oriented design and programming.
Now, this comprehensive and systematic overview of both the design models and quantitative solution methods for FMS support, configuration, and operation rectifies that problem. Students, production managers/planners, and FMS installation planners can now find everything they need in one authoritative and up-to-date source.
