Concurrent engineering: an application in the hospitality industry

A Design for Assembly application with dynamic information retrieval from case database

An integrated graphical user interface (GUI) for concurrent engineering design of mechanical parts

Recently, concurrent engineering (CE) has become one of the major conceptual approaches in reducing product developing time. Design for manufacturing (DFM) and design for assembly (DFA) are two of the major areas in CE. Several researchers have integrated a CAD/CAM system and a knowledge-based system to implement DFA and DFM concepts. However, the incompatibility of the data representation methods between CAD/CAM and knowledge-based systems is the major issue in this integration method. In this paper, an approach is proposed to find the minimum wall thickness of a part from its boundary representation (B-Rep) model. These data can then be directly utilized by a knowledge-based system to analyse the manufacturability of thin wall parts such as injection moulded or diecast parts.

Aiming to minimize the surface distortion of large-aperture laser transport mirrors in high-power laser facilities, an assembly design and mounting method are proposed for the mirror. First, a theoretical model on the mirror surface deformation is established. With a new assembly design, the mirror is fastened on its neutral plane and its optical surface distortion can be precisely compensated through several adjustable forces on the sides, which will generate bending moments on the mirror body. Furthermore, a dynamic kinematic joint is designed, in which a corresponding relationship between spring compression and screw rotation ensures the accurate control of the magnitude of mirror preload. Finally, the performance of the presented method has been validated through field experiments and numerical simulations. This transport mirror assembly and mounting design have obvious technical advantages on simple mechanical structure, high operational efficiency, and precise preload control. The results show that the assembly design and optimized mounting strategy can keep the total surface distortion of the mirror within 350 nm (peak-valley).

In this modern and sophisticated era, the manufacturing industry is developing both service industries and those that produce products with a variety of shapes and models to attract customers. For example, adjustable welding tables, motorbikes, cars, and others. Companies compete with each other in terms of price, product excellence, product innovation, and product convenience in order to find the right consumer market. DFMA (Design for Manufacturing and Assembly) is a method of making products that aims to facilitate the manufacturing and assembly process where existing designs can be simplified and adapted to the capabilities of the manufacturing facility by considering technical aspects. The scope of design and ergonomics activities includes problems related to human needs, including interior design, furniture design, environmental equipment design, transportation equipment design, textile design, graphic design, etc. (Setiawan, M. S. 2022). At this stage, data collection is carried out, and the author needs to design an adjustable welding table. However, first recompose the table components and determine which are assembly parts and subassembly parts. Then identify each component. Product size and components, labor time, manufacturing data, and others to support research. 1. Analysis of Design Needs 2. Preliminary Design Sketching 3. Design Evaluation 4. Final Design Refinement 4. Final Design Refinement 4. Final Design Refinement 4. Final Design Refinement 4. Final Design Refinement 4. Final Design Refinement. 1) In the previous product development, design 3 was completed with a design that is certainly more ergonomic than design 1, because design 3 has been adjusted to body size using ergonomic standards. 2) Based on the results of the development of this adjustable welding table product, option 3 is the one with the lowest cost because it has a smaller number of components and total assembly steps compared to options 1 and 2. The cost of option 1 is around Rp. 1,780,000; option 2 is around Rp. 1,515,000; and option 3 is around Rp. 870,000. The total assembly steps for option 1 are 40; option 2 is 34; and option 3 is 25. The number of components in options 1 and 2 is 10, while option 3 is only 9.

This chapter presents some results from a number of investigations concerning impact on concurrency and efficiency from the use of Design for X (DFX) tools in product development in Swedish industry. The project has been performed through an inter-disciplinary research programme with cooperation between Department of Machine Design at Royal Institute of Technology and Department of Psychology at Stockholm University. The studies were carried out in industrial sectors of mechanical and electro-mechanical products. Studied tools include DFA — Design for Assembly, FMEA — Failure Mode and Effects Analysis, QFD — Quality Function Deployment and EPS — Environmental Priority Strategies. The results have proven valid for product development in general. Important results are: • No tool will create concurrent engineering unless the organization of work is adapted to a high degree of co-operation between functions, e.g. marketing, design and manufacturing, and competence domains. • Use of the tools and/or information technology in product development could give excellent support to concurrent engineering if the implementation is made with regards to co-operative work. • Design for competition demands a simultaneous focusing on both product development process and the persons in the process.

Concurrent Engineering (CE) realized faster time to market with great reduction of time, cost and energy. This old version of CE, however, focused its attention to production within an individual industry. It is process-focused. It is pointed out that if we expand CE from individual industry to a group of industries, greater increase of productivity and reduction of cost can be achieved. In this new version of industry-focused CE, overlaps will be eliminated and common functions across industries are pursued. Such seamless engineering will bring us a great reduction of energy consumption and it will contribute a great deal toward the establishment of the green society.

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">The lithium ion battery is one of the key technologies of electric and hybrid vehicles. Though the electric vehicles pose a promising solution to conventional vehicles, the high cost and weight of the battery package makes the electric vehicle less competitive in the market. As the current researchers focus on making the battery pack more affordable, an approach can also be made in modularizing and speeding up the assembly process of these battery packs. Therefore, this paper focuses on achieving a smaller, lighter and less expensive battery pack suitable for global production using Design for Assembly (DFA) principle. The approach includes considering a battery pack of Audi Q5 as a case study and studying its assembly sequences. DFA principles would be applied to the assembly design, to simplify/reduce its components through part integration, and making recommendations to modularize the design so that similar assembly processes can be used for variety of battery requirements. The manufacturing cost of the proposed suggestions are not included in the paper due to lack of data available which therefore defined the scope of the study to introduce ideas that could be implemented to improve only assembly process using Boothroyd Dewhurst DFA method.</div></div>

Strict quarantine restrictions have caused a crisis in the hospitality industry both in Ukraine and around the world. The number of hotel and restaurant establishments are decreased, because a significant reduction in the number of domestic and foreign tourists. In additional, the population’s spending on recreation and culture, restaurants and hotels are decreased, because they are lost their jobs. This critical situation requires the improvement of hotel and restaurant management, their adaptation to new business conditions, flexibility and efficiency of decision-making. The concept of “hospitality industry” and negative factors that affect its development are considered in this article. Statistical data on the dynamics of the volume of services provided for temporary accommodation and catering and the number of incoming (foreign) and domestic tourists in Ukraine, the decrease in the level of effective demand of Ukrainian citizens are researched. The interpretation of the concept of “hotel and restaurant management in a crisis” in terms of the importance of using modern management tools to change the format of work with clients, in order to adapt to crisis conditions resulting from the pandemic, gain competitive advantage, meet customer demands and as a result of obtaining a high level of profitability. The staff is an important component of the success of the hotel and restaurant industry in the market and its competitiveness. Customer demands are constantly growing, so staffing requirements are also changing. Important competencies of the manager of the hotel and restaurant industry are: analytical, logical, strategic thinking, communication skills, and leadership skills. In the competition for customers, information and communication play an important role, and effective communication management helps to make optimal management decisions. Particular attention should be paid to external communications, namely marketing communication policy. The strategy of the hotel and restaurant industry in a pandemic includes: the development of an effective marketing policy, improving the expansion of sales channels, the formation of customer protection and safety.

The classical way to manage the product development processes for massive production has been changing as the high pressure for cost reduction, higher quality standards and market seeking for innovation lead to the necessity of new tools for development control. This context and the learning from the automotive, aerospace industries and others segments were the starting point to understand and apply manufacturing and assembly oriented designs to ease the task of generate goods and from this to obtain at least part of the expected results. This paper demonstrates the applicability of the concepts of Concurrent Engineering and DFM/DFA (Design for Manufacturing and Assembly) in the development of products and parts for the White Goods industry in Brazil (major appliances as refrigerators, cookers and washing machines), showing one case concerning to the development and releasing of a component. Finally, it shows, shortly, how using these techniques as a solution had provided cost savings and reduction in delivery time.

PurposeThe speed of new product development (NPD) has been a key factor in a firm's degree of competitiveness. The tools and philosophy of quality management have been widely used to improve and control product quality. However, there is a lack of literature on the relationship between quality management and NPD. This paper aims to report on a study that investigates the influence of quality management on the speed of NPD.Design/methodology/approachThe philosophy of quality management refers to total quality management (TQM). Tools for quality management include teamwork, continuous improvement (CI), value analysis (VA) and quality function deployment (QFD). This study begins by comparing literature in concurrent engineering (CE) and TQM, which leads to several common principles and five hypotheses. The hypotheses are tested using survey data from 700 manufacturing companies in 20 countries.FindingsThe research reveals that TQM, Team, VA and QFD are positively correlated with the speed of NPD, meaning that the tools and philosophy of quality management have a positive influence on the speed of NPD. However, no relationship is found between CI and the speed of NPD.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper tests hypotheses using survey data. It reveals the empirical relationship between quality management and the speed of NPD but does not provide details regarding the mechanism of influence between the two. Consequently, case studies should be conducted in the future to probe into the details. Additionally, new quality methods like Six Sigma can also be included in a future study, since Six Sigma covers both quality and NPD.Practical implicationsThis study proposes that companies that have implemented TQM and other quality management tools will have a better foundation for implementing new NPD approaches like CE and design for manufacturing and assembly. This is especially encouraging for those original engineering manufacturing (OEM) firms that would like to change from OEM to original design manufacturing/original brand manufacturing (ODM/OBM). OEM companies typically implement TQM but invest very little in NPD.Originality/valueThis paper fills the gap in research exploring the links between quality management and NPD. It addresses the concern over whether quality management may hinder NPD. The critical issues for implementing quality management such as culture change, learning, change management, and team building can all be applied to implementing NPD methods such as CE. The result also supports the concept of “design the quality into products”. It is beneficial for employees in quality and NPD to share and work together.

Several Design for Assembly (DFA) methodologies have already been introduced both in research and industry, among which methodologies having quantitative assemblability evaluations are more favored in industry. The evaluation criteria involved in such quantitative measures are only concerned with the difficulty of performing assembly operations one by one. These measures are then combined by a formula to find the total product evaluation. Accordingly, the designer can improve the total assemblability by redesigning the parts that caused bad measures. It can be observed that a major effect of cascading several assembly operations in a certain order on the remaining operations to complete the product assembly is neglected by most DFA evaluation methodologies. Actually, this effect might result in serious difficulties while generating the assembly sequence usually done at a later stage in most industrial firms. To overcome these difficulties, this paper introduces some elementary insights to the integration of assembly design and planning. A systematic feature-based method is introduced to find the precedence assembly constraints and the global evaluation constraints resulting from operations cascading orders. A modified genetic algorithm that finds the best assembly sequence based on these constraints and on the traditional DFA evaluations is then introduced to be included in the DFA procedure. This genetic planner generates a more representative evaluation of the product assemblability by considering the effects of operations orders. As a result, feedback reflecting the actual assembly process difficulties can be given to the designer to improve the product design, while simultaneously generating the best sequence to assemble the product.

The Impact of the 2007 Oklahoma Immigration Reform Act on Labor Costs in the Restaurant Industry by Xun Zhou Robert H. Woods Full Professor of Hotel Management University of Nevada, Las Vegas Restaurant industry is becoming the largest employer of immigrants in the United States, immigration policies are fundamental to the success of the restaurant industry, as entrepreneurs, as customers, and as workers. Therefore, this paper attempts to investigate current issues regarding the unauthorized labor force in the hospitality industry. In particular, this study will try to discover and explore the difference in labor costs in the restaurant industry before and after the newest immigration reform act enacted in Oklahoma. In addition, this paper will also provide suggestions for future researchers in this research field.

This paper presents a case study on the collaboration between a set of distributed web applications developed and deployed for carrying out a 'Design for Assembly' analysis. The case study is conducted using a web-based prototype system called CyberCO. The system is based on a theoretical framework which has been formed through an innovative combination of a number of concepts such as agents and workflows. Unlike previous attempts in computer supported concurrent engineering systems, collaboration in this framework between distributed web applications is achieved through workflows between their representative agents. The flows of data between agents are guided by the associated constraints. The flows of controls are somewhat data-driven in the sense that agents start and stop themselves whenever the predefined conditions are satisfied. The data-driven flows of controls are different from those widely used in workflow management where flows of controls are determined by the precedence relationships. The key purpose of this case study demonstration is to extend our knowledge and insights into this emerging field where increasing number of web applications are developed and deployed for collaborative product development and realization projects.

Productivity in the hospitality industry is a major management concern. Productivity in hotels has not grown at all since 1979. In the restaurant industry, output has declined at an annual rate of 0.7 percent over the same period. While some productivity improvement techniques developed in manufacturing industries have ramifications for the hospitality industry, unique characteristics of the hotel and restaurant business mean that productivity improvement techniques borrowed from manufacturing have to be carefully selected and modified to be used in service industries. Since the work pace is largely determined by customer demand, and the service interaction is a crucial part of the total “product,” management must change its thinking about productivity before improvements are possible.