Virtual Reality (VR) is amongst the technologies that have existed as early as the 1960s. Only until recently it has resurrected and is making a comeback into many shapes and forms of our daily lives. This paper describes in general the use of VR tools in the manufacturing sector. Examples of successful adoption of VR technologies in manufacturing companies and organisations are described. Issu...

The implementation of lean manufacturing concepts has had a significant impact on various industries. Many companies around the world have attempted to implement lean manufacturing, but the lack of an obvious understanding of lean measurement and its performance has caused its implementation to fail. This paper presents an innovative approach by using fuzzy TOPSIS to measure the production lean...

Additive manufacturing is now mature and is becoming a mainstream production technique for various industries. It is important that engineering services organizations equip themselves to provide a new range of services in this sector. This paper presents an engineering process framework for evaluating and adopting additive manufacturing. It describes tools developed to improve engineering servi...

While the U.S. manufacturing sector has contracted sharply since the early 1980s, employment in high-skill manufacturing occupations has risen by an impressive 37 percent. An investigation of the growth in high-skill manufacturing jobs reveals that virtually all of the nation’s industries have shared in this trend. Moreover, skill upgrading has occurred in all parts of the country, even those e...

Significant Points — Fifty percent work in the construction industry, and another 20 percent are found in manufacturing industries. — Growth of the construction industry will be the driving force behind the demand for cost estimators; employment of cost estimators in manufacturing should remain relatively stable. — In construction and manufacturing, job prospects should be best for those with i...

Elizabeth Zamora and Jacob Kirchmer Lower wages in foreign markets and the rise in outsourcing by U.S. companies have become important topics in the debate on U.S. competitiveness. Though discussion of these issues tends to evoke images of the quickly growing information technology sector and of other service sectors especially vulnerable to outsourcing, debate has also focused on the impact of...

The increasing complexity of manufacturing systems in highly competitive environments motivates the need for refinement of the design of manufacturing systems. The application of systems engineering is still undeveloped in some industries, but the potential benefits are substantial. However, there exists a chasm between the theory and practice of systems engineering applied to the design of man...

PRECON S.A. is a manufacturing company devoted to produce prefabricated concrete parts for several industries as railway transportation and agricultural industries. Recently, PRECON S.A. signed a contract with RENFE, the Spanish National Railway Company, to manufacture pre-stressed concrete sleepers for the sidings of the new railways of the high speed train (AVE). The scheduling problem associ...

We exercised a cross comparison analysis on the linkage among computer-based information technologies utilized for production activities, perceived benefits of production information systems, and competitive performance of each plant, using the database for 164 manufacturing plants located in five industrialized nations from three industries (machinery, electrical & electronics and automobile),...