Kenya has started to rely significantly on technologies developed in developing countries particularly China rather than those from advanced countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan. Using data from furniture manufacturing firms in Kenya, the paper compares the investment cost and the scale characteristics of the technologies (machines and equipment) from China with those from ad...

As the increasing use of RFID technology in manufacturing companies, the real-time production data collection is inadequate. Companies especially small and medium-sized manufacturing entities, contemplate to implement advanced planning and scheduling (APS) so as to achieve real-time production. This paper, motivated by a reallife case, proposes a real-time planning and scheduling model to reali...

This paper presents problems and issues that are within the broad scope of the IFAC Manufacturing and Instrumentation Coordinating Committee. These issues include from the technologies involved in the components to the methods used in enterprise integration. Information processing and communications are considered as key topics in all the involved technological fields. Also, the paper deals wit...

Automatic generation of manufacturing information from design has been the research focus in advanced CAD/CAM applications, i.e. feature-based applications for design, process planning and other automated manufacturing applications. However, our current development mode has seriously troubled research in these application fields. For example, with our current development mode, the functionality...

The literature on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has recently analyzed the nature of the firm’s entry mode choice in a foreign market, particularly the choice between a joint venture and a wholly owned subsidiary. Foreign-based companies are defined as having one or more overseas manufacturing subsidiaries or joint venture relationship. Foreign-based companies can be divided into following thr...

The concept of an "intelligent manufacturing system" (IMS) is a very broad one that has come to playa major role in manufacturing research in recent years. It is a concept that defies precise definition because one major research objective is to couple almost human levels of intelligence with advanced manufacturing technology in order to develop new generations of manufacturing systems that are...

Surface size, geometry and texture are some of the most influential subjects in the fields of precision and ultra-precision engineering, defining the functional interface through which emerging products operate. Next-generation products demand super-smooth surfaces, freeform geometries or even deterministically introduced microstructures to provide functional performance. Technological progress...

In order to make the enterprise assessment system become more intelligent and efficient for the application and realization technology of advanced manufacturing technology, the enterprise alliance and its business reconfiguration model for Holonic Manufacturing System(HMS) are processed. The enterprise alliance with dynamic reconfiguration and Holon feature is established by constructing the in...