UBGVRI photometry for the open cluster NGC 2506 is presented. From comparison of the observed colour-magnitude diagrams with simulations based on stellar evolutionary models we derive in a self consistent way reddening, distance, and age of the cluster: E(B−V)=0-0.07, (m-M)0 = 12.6±0.1, τ = 1.5-2.2 Gyr. The cluster shows a well definite secondary sequence, suggesting that binary systems constit...

This paper initiates a framework for improving product development processes. The starting point is the present gap between the theory of product and process models and their actual industrial application in practice. A case study of a multidisciplinary development process that has been processed in a simulation game is presented to concretize the needs for improvement. The case revealed that t...

Side-curtain airbags have demonstrated the ability to help reduce the possibility of ejection and serious injury during automotive collisions. Engineers developing these new types of airbags are aided by Virtual Product Development tools (VPD), which allow the engineer to more fully analyze the airbag mechanism and dynamic inflation. Autoliv, the world’s largest manufacturer of automotive safet...

In today’s highly competitive environment, addressing product management throughout its lifecycle in a more comprehensive way has become a necessity. A lot of attention has been paid to the decisions taken within the early stages of product development, which can have a great effect on the entire product life. Knowledge provides a firm with valuable and unique capabilities essential for the suc...

A new class of local mixture models called local scale mixture models is introduced here. This class is particularly suitable for the analysis of mixtures of the negative exponential distribution. The affine structure revealed by specific asymptotic expansions is the motivation for the construction of these models. They are shown to have very nice statistical properties which are exploited to m...

The project being introduced is a simulation of an industrial Product Development project as a large scale student project in a university setting. The scientific goal with the project is to develop and test different management, design and engineering simulations, the practical goal however is to provide a real-like project environment for the students, which fit to academic conditions most pe...

efforts on both sides. The European part is based on the SIMDAT project (Data Grids for Process and Product Development using Numerical Simulation and Knowledge Discovery), which joins forces for product development and production process design using Grid services. CN Grid, a similar project with comparable objectives, was launched in China in 2002. While SIMDAT uses GRIA (GRID Resources for I...

Prior research into the link between new product development and market segmentation has focused on two main approaches: (1) design, segment, and do limited competitive evaluation; and (2) segment first, design second. This paper proposes a third approach, which is to simultaneously design, perform segmentation according to benefit and to evaluate against competitive designs. This research uses...

The evolution of the economic world leads to a new type of competitiveness in industry. Companies try to achieve the goal of satisfying customers’ needs through partnership. Consequently, changes appear in customer-supplier relationships: a strong partner relationship evolution has occurred since a few years in order to obtain better internal management of each partner and improved overall perf...