Rapid rate of technology innovation and globalization have put substantial stress on integrating the technology and operations management, particularly the traditional automation technology and new climate technology. Mass customization and high product proliferation desires for automated and flexible manufacturing system. To achieve this, the automated flexible material handling system (MHS) must be deployed. In the automation technology management, we have proposed a modified cost estimation methodology to investigate the economic feasibility of a free-ranging MHS which is proposed by us in the apparel industry. Beacon placement plays a significant role in the free-ranging MHS in terms of cost and positioning performance. Traditionally, beacons are placed in a 2 dimensional array in t...[ Read more ]

Rapid rate of technology innovation and globalization have put substantial stress on integrating the technology and operations management, particularly the traditional automation technology and new climate technology. Mass customization and high product proliferation desires for automated and flexible manufacturing system. To achieve this, the automated flexible material handling system (MHS) must be deployed. In the automation technology management, we have proposed a modified cost estimation methodology to investigate the economic feasibility of a free-ranging MHS which is proposed by us in the apparel industry. Beacon placement plays a significant role in the free-ranging MHS in terms of cost and positioning performance. Traditionally, beacons are placed in a 2 dimensional array in the xy−plane above the target with an adaptive beacon height with the orientation perpendicularly to xy−plane, positioning reliability is incorporated to investigate the beacon placement strategies for three common placement patterns: triangle, square and hexagon. For beacons with small cone angle and applications with low beacon height, relaxing beacon orientation can earn significant advantages, therefore, the effect of relaxing beacon orientation by discrete clustering and continuous clustering is investigated to identify the optimal beacon placement strategies in terms of placement pattern and clustering pattern. Climate change is a fact, and has serious impact on the living of human being. Currently, there are two types of approaches to stabilize the climate change: mitigation of carbon emission and climate engineering. Since the high speed railway (H-SR) has proved potential in reducing transportation related carbon emission, we have designed the capacity and operating speed of the HSR system incorporating the carbon emission based on one-way distance. Taking the US for example, the carbon analysis is presented. Engineered manmade particles is promising with few side effects over sulfate aerosol. However, the practical deployment issue in terms of dispersion factor has yet to be addressed. We have identified the major factors determining the dispersion issue which is formulated by van der Waals adhesion energy, and then a holistic optimization model is proposed to identify the deployment strategies in terms of particle size, deployment height and dielectric material selection. Performance comparison has shown its advantage over the sulfate aerosol in terms of mass efficiency, number efficiency and dispersion factor. Furthermore, metallic particles and structure optimization are considered to improve the performance of the engineered manmade particles. From performance analysis, the aluminum manmade particle with shell structure proposed by us is the most promising in terms of mass efficiency and number efficiency.