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The conveyors are used to transport various products in successive steps until they reach their destination and to ensure cargo volumes to balance the flow buffer. The conveyors monorail type are used for the transfer of the products, piece by piece and they can be suspended and can operate at heights and different tasks. In this paper is presented a method for the design of the drive shaft of a monorail conveyor, by using CAD-CAE applications.

In today’s competitive business environment, with a continuously increasing diversity in customer demand, a high level of supply chain responsiveness is an imperative requisite for companies’ survival. As a consequence, enhanced agility is requested for the supply chains. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants that influence the position of the ‘decoupling points’ along the value chain, as according to the reviewed literature these represent the separation point between leanness and agility in a hybrid supply chain. It has been found that by applying different technical solutions along the chain, including breaking down the complete production process in modular sequences and outsourcing specific ones, considering reshaping the supply chain, the decoupling points’ location can be moved, allowing greater agility. The chosen methodology is a case study of a FMCG company, aiming to illustrate how increased agility is achieved by outsourcing labour-intensive and time consuming activities, while shortening the downstream to customer. The selected firm is since several years under Lean and Agile strategies implementation. The study shows that understanding both, material and information decoupling points, certain lean processes can be moved upstream, leveraging more agile processes close to the end customer. This way, supply chains can be redesigned towards increasing market responsiveness.

Nowadays, manufacturing companies are involved in a big competition, each of them looking to increase productivity and profit by implementing best practices within the company. The present paper presents an analysis of best practices of manufacturing companies which contributes to increasing and improving the productivity, and also have been identified new trends regarding best practices implemented in manufacturing companies. In order to accomplish this research, has been analyzed a successful manufacturing company in the field of manufacturing and automation from Romania. To collect data for this study there were accessed two databases, different specialized websites in the field, but the most important source of information was obtained from the analyzed company. One of the best practices identified in this study was to improve the productivity through re-engineering, practice that the company studied has implemented. In order to highlight this good practice, namely reengineering, were analyzed in parallel both of existing manufacturing types from the analyzed company, respectively production on CNC processing centers and classical production. The exemplification of both types of productions was done by using a Lean Manufacturing method, namely Value Stream Mapping, identifying the operational flow of both types of production.

The complexity of operative fabrication planning, especially in the case of series production, requires a high volume of calculation. The frequent changes of batches require the recalculation of the fabrication cycles with time-consuming operations. In this paper we developed a new algorithm which allows the calculation of the fabrication cycles directly on a component level without the necessity of operation level calculations. In order for this to work it is crucial to memorize on a component level information about the component’s technology. Like this the fabrication cycle can be calculated online for any type of fabrication batch. The algorithms can be used in the contractual phase in order to estimate the delivery timeline, in the fabrication preparation phase in order to estimate the required capacity and workforce, as well as in the fabrication programming and reprogramming phase when different simulation can be made with different priority variants, different capacity allocations with variance efficiency analysis. Through the definition of specific data structures for the presented relations, we demonstrate that the computer assisted operative programming approach is possible in the machine building industry, even on an enterprise level. With these conditions it is ensured a superior quality of the decision system, the accumulated experience is suggesting the realization of a methodological framework in this field.

The temperature control of automotive brake discs during operation is a difficult process because they have shiny metallic surfaces moving rotational contact with fixed brake pads and different temperature gradients. The instrument used for measuring the temperature, in this case is the thermal camera, but requires precise calibration for the emissivity of the material being analyzed and the influence of environment. The study refers to changes depending on the temperature of thermal emissivity of the material disc brake car, both in static and in dynamic regime and determining analytical relationships to estimate this variation acceptable accuracy.

Abstract: We report first results from the ZEPLIN I dark matter detector, based on measurement of scintillation pulse shapes in a liquid xenon target of 3.2kg fiducial mass. Neutron calibration shows nuclear recoil pulses to have a time constant≅0.5 that of gamma and beta background events. The detector is located in the 2800mwe depth UK Boulby Mine, and is surrounded by a liquid scintillator Compton veto and passive lead shielding. Three runs totaling 293kgd fiducial exposure yielded data consistent with a single population of background pulses, with no significant low energy population of shorter pulses. From the 90% confidence limit on the latter a limit is derived on the spin-independent WIMP-nucleon cross-section versus particle mass with a minimum at 1.1×10−6 pb. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The problems of determining the protective properties of barrier materials used for the production of body surface protection products of an isolative type are very actual. These garments are expected to have long-term resistance against permeation of toxic substances. The paper deals with the study of the effect of organic solvent vapours on the changes in protective properties of selected anti-gas protective garments commonly used by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization armed forces. Permeation measurements of selected gases with integral permeameter were performed to verify their barrier properties, surface changes after exposure to selected solvents by using a 3D optical profilometer, permeation measurements for vapours of these solvents with differential permeameter, and experimental simulating the possible influence of barrier properties of garments within permeation of air. It has been shown that in the case of gases, the permeability of the studied materials increases with decreasing kinetic diameter of the penetrant molecule used. In the case of acetonitrile and isooctane vapours, permeability increased with increasing vapour concentration due to interactions between polymeric materials and molecules of organic compounds. The permeation measurements of pure vapours and air/vapour mixtures indicate that the level of interactions between the molecules of the penetrant and the material of the protective garment is not strong enough to degrade the material of the garment in such a way as to allow a greater penetration of the pollutants through it. The results of permeation experiments for gases and organic vapours showed very good barrier properties of studied chemical isolated garments., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare no conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Barrier materials have wide applicability in both professional (military, medical, industrial) and non-professional (leisure and sports) fields. This paper focuses on the preparation of real conductive polymer (CP) sensors, for the study of the permeation of volatile toxic compounds through barrier materials. Use of such a CP sensor can help improve the quality of barrier materials used in protective clothing. Several types of platforms have been manufactured or purchased for use as comb sensors with different electrode dimensions, and a suitable method of applying the detection layer of conductive polymers (polyaniline and poly-pyrrole) has been developed. Prepared sensors were obtained using various technologies and were assessed not only for response to exposure to vapors of volatile toxic substances, but also for the possibility of their incorporation into a permeation cell, in order to expand the possibilities of using existing permeation devices. The resulting conductivity of the surface film ranges from 50 to 10,000 μS/cm. When exposed to ethanol vapors, the conductivity of the sensors dropped significantly and returned to the original value after exposure ended. The conductivity of the B12 CP sensor was in the range of 10-100 mS/cm and is considered the most valuable tested sensor. CPs deposited on this substrate have very high sensitivity in units of ppm (in special cases, even ppb) within the detection of analytes (in this case toxic vapors of ethanol, acetic acid) and the ability to return to initial (zero) conductivity., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

According to general principles of good practice, adopted at the international level, quality control is a key function in management and not just a simple means of verification. In a clinic or hospital pharmacy, the chief pharmacist has the training and authority to take the control measures necessary to develop and implement an Internal Managerial Control System (IMCS). The present article analyzes and describes the case of the County Hospital of Oradea, Romania, and presents how the IMCS was adopted and integrated. Quality assessment in the health services takes place via an accreditation process and quality certification, as well as through an internal audit of the hospital pharmacy. The authors report a retrospective and descriptive study carried out from 2012 to 2017, analyzing how current legislative standards are applied. The IMCS in the hospital pharmacy is a dynamic process of continuous transformation, permanently adapted to hospital requirements, achieved under the direction of the chief pharmacist and involving all pharmacy employees, as well as through good coordination practices applied by hospital management. In this specific case, the IMCS features 11 annually updated compliance standards, classed under the headings of work procedures, risk register, job descriptions and staff training. The pharmacy's good practice model for IMCS development, was adopted by all of the hospital's sectors, services and departments., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)