The extant literature on the focused factory has not explored the contingencies associated with the de facto adoption and use of focused factory principles: Why are some plants focused while others are not? Is focus—or unfocus—a strategic choice, best practice or perhaps a reflection of an environmental constraint? In his pioneering work, Skinner [W. Skinner, 1974. The focused factory. Harvard ...

This paper provides an overview of the framework and tools developed at the Agile Manufacturing and Enterprise Centre (AMEC) at the University of Liverpool to assist Merseyside SME’s in embracing agility concepts. The framework is based on four main pillars; auditing of company, auditing of the operating environment, benchmarking and learning from best practice. This paper describes the overall...

In the design and manufacture of mechanical devices, there are parameters whose values are determined by the manufacturing process in response to errors introduced in the device’s manufacture or operating environment. Such parameters are termed tuning parameters, and are distinct from design parameters which the designer selects values for as a part of the design process. This paper introduces ...

This paper presents uCR, a C++ runtime package for embedded program development. We make the case that in certain situations embedded programming is best done without the aid of a conventional operating system. A programming environment in the form of a C++ runtime is presented, and the environment, including the C++ language, is evaluated for appropriateness. Important factors are code size, p...

A package scheme helps users manage the environment variables needed by the applications that they use, but imposes a long delay during login while the environment is incrementally constructed. This paper describes an approach to caching the incrementally constructed environment. The mechanism caches different environments for different operating systems and is robust in the face of users’ chan...

The military environment is changing, e.g., the operating environment is becoming more varied and demanding. Due to these challenges, new user interfaces (UIs) are required providing improved soldier protection and performance both in day-time and night-time conditions. The new UIs should, e.g., improve the soldier’s situation awareness, i.e., perception of information, integration of pieces of...

This paper shows the use of protocols dynamically generated for a particular network environment and an application’s requirements. We have developed a novel system called PNUT (Protocols configured for Network and User Transmissions), which can be used to dynamically generate protocols. A distributed MPEG player has also been developed using PNUT to demonstrate the need for adaptive protocols ...

Programs that use mobility as a mechanism to adapt to resource changes have three requirements that are not shared with other mobile programs. First, they need to monitor the level and quality of resources in their operating environment. Second, they need to be able to react to changes in resource availability. Third, they need to be able to control the way in which resources are used on their ...