The philosophy of group technology (GT) is an important concept in the design of flexible manufacturing systems and manufacturing cells. Group technology is a manufacturing philosophy that identifies similar parts and groups them into families. Beside assigning unique codes to these parts, group technology developers intend to take advantage of part similarities during design and manufacturing ...

Augmented and Virtual Reality technologies are increasingly being used in manufacturing processes. These use real and simulated objects to create a simulated environment that can be used to enhance the design and manufacturing processes. Virtual and Augmented Realty Applications in Manufacturing is written by experts from the world's leading institutions working in virtual manufacturing and giv...

Manufacturing systems can be very complex and are often costly to develop and operate. Simulation technology has been shown to be an effective tool for optimizing manufacturing system design, operations, and maintenance procedures. However, each manufacturing simulation is usually developed to address a specific set of industrial issues, and may only apply to a small portion of a complex manufa...

Untangling Trade and Technology: Evidence from Local Labor Markets We juxtapose the effects of trade and technology on employment in U.S. local labor markets between 1990 and 2007. Labor markets whose initial industry composition exposes them to rising Chinese import competition experience significant falls in employment, particularly in manufacturing and among non-college workers. Labor market...

Photolithography is the engine that empowered semiconductor industry to reduce the minimum feature size of the components of a microchip from some 50 microns in the 1960s to below 14 nanometers today. Diffractive and refractive micro-optical components play a decisive role in modern photolithography systems, e.g. for laser line width narrowing, laser beam shaping (customized illumination), as p...

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology has been widely used in many fields. However, previous studies have mainly focused on product life cycle tracking, and there are few studies on real-time status monitoring of workpieces in manufacturing workshops. In this paper, a wisdom manufacturing model is introduced, a sensing-aware environment for a wisdom manufacturing workshop is construc...

Solar cells are becoming a highly promising alternative energy source for various markets. In the last five years or so a tremendous amount of research effort has been put into increasing the efficiency of solar cell technology and reducing its manufacturing cost. It is believed that success in both of these areas will further propel its use in various markets. The two major structures commerci...