ENGINEERING LIBRARY BLOG

	Title:	Materials and Innovative Product Development : Using Common Sense
	Author:	Gernot H. Gessinger
	Call number:	TA403.6.G392
	Availability:	Click here

Synopsis:
Innovation in product design starts with materials. Developing successful commercial products demands a sound understanding of the materials that go into those products-their uses, their costs, their lifetime performance. However, the valuable knowledge of materials engineers is often not fully leveraged in the creative phase of the product design cycle. Gessinger seeks to bridge this gap that exists in many companies.

Written from the bottom-up perspective of the engineer or scientist on a product design team, Materials and Innovative Product Design introduces business, economics and strategic product development to the materials specialist and demystifies materials selection for other members of the design team and manufacturing management. Using case studies from innovative organizations, such as ABB, and successful start-ups, such as NDC, Day4Energy, and Metoxit, Gessinger illustrates how the integration of different engineering and business disciplines can power innovation in the design process. By addressing the real world needs of innovators, this book allows the reader to unlock the potential of the new material types that have been changing the face of product design and deploy an integrated business approach to materials selection and the design process.

• Allows engineers to develop a fuller understanding of economics and business objectives in order to contribute more effectively to innovative product design
• Introduces the business opportunities and practical challenges of deploying new material types to design and manufacturing management
• Illustrates how to harness the power of R&D within the design cycle through case studies of innovative and successful organizations that have brought new materials technologies to known markets and known materials to new markets. [As taken from Amazon.com]

	Title:	The Fundamentals of Product Design
	Author:	Richard Morris
	Call number:	TS171.M877
	Availability:	Click here

Synopsis:
This book is about understanding the process of product design, from start to finish.

• Detailed overview, perfect introduction for students
• More than 200 color images plus easy-to-understand flow charts

What is product design? It’s materials, manufacturing, ideas, CAD, engineering, art, marketing, and so much more. “The Fundamentals of Product Design” is an integrated overview of the design process, gathering information about every facet from idea to execution to selling into one handy volume. Full of inspiring visuals and enlightening diagrams, this book is a celebration of everyday design and a remarkable one-volume reference work for students and working designers. [As taken from Amazon.com]

	Title:	Lean Six Sigma in Service : Applications and Case Studies
	Author:	Sandra L. Furterer
	Call number:	TS156.8.L437
	Availability:	Click here

Synopsis:
In real life, data is messy and doesn’t always fit into normal statistical distributions. This is especially true in service industries where the variables are, well, variable and directly related to and measured by the constantly changing needs of customers. As the breadth and depth of tools available has increased across the integrated Lean Six Sigma landscape, their integrated application has become more complex. Filled with case studies using real-world data, Lean Six Sigma in Service: Applications and Case Studies demonstrates how to integrate a suite of tools to make sense of an unstructured problem and focus on what is critical to customers.

Using a clean, clear writing style that is not overly technical, the author describes the Six Sigma DMAIC (Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control) and Design for Six Sigma IDDOV (Identify-Define-Design-Optimize-Validate) problem solving approaches and how they can be applied to service and transaction-related processes. The case studies illustrate the application of Lean Six Sigma tools to a wide variety of processes and problems including, but not limited to financial process improvement, designing a recruiting process, managing a college’s assets, and improving educational processes. Examples of tools include Pareto analysis, cause and effect analysis, failure mode and effects analysis, statistical process control, SIPOC, process flow charts, project management tools, cost of quality analysis, and Lean tools, such as 5S, 8 wastes, and the 5 whys.

Ultimately, the Lean Six Sigma team must show improvement against the metrics that assess customer satisfaction. This book includes strategies for integrating Lean Six Sigma tools into measurable improvement processes and eliminating the root causes of problems. With its inclusion of case studies and an alternative approach to the material, the book provides an instant understanding of how others have successfully applied Lean Six Sigma tools. This understanding then translates into processes that can be applied to any service organization. [As taken from Amazon.com]

	Title:	Lean for the Process Industries : Dealing with Complexity
	Author:	Peter L. King
	Call number:	TS183.K54
	Availability:	Click here

Synopsis:
Compared to its widespread implementation across almost all areas of production, Lean improvement efforts lag within the process industries. While, a number of innovators have successfully applied Lean principles to these industries over the last two decades, most of those pioneering efforts were never recorded to guide the improvement efforts of others.

Drawing on 40 years of application experience at one of the world’s largest chemical and materials manufacturers, Peter King corrects this void by providing the first comprehensive resource written explicitly for change agents within the process industries. Focusing on areas where the improvement needs of the process industry differ from parts assembly manufacturing,

Lean for the Process Industries: Dealing with Complexity –

• Covers each of the eight wastes commonly described in Lean literature, looking at how they manifest themselves in process operations
• Explains how to adapt value stream mapping for process operations
• Shows how to identify the root causes of bottlenecks, and systemically eliminate them
• Provides process-oriented modifications that will enhance the usefulness of Cellular Manufacturing, Heijunka Production Leveling, and Pull Replenishment Systems
• Discusses the role of process operations management in a Lean strategy

Whether you are manufacturing consumer products such as foods, paints, and pharmaceuticals, or materials such as bulk chemicals, sheet goods, and synthetic fibers, this book shows you how to achieve that enviable level of performance where continual improvement becomes inherent to your processes. [As taken from Amazon.com]

	Title:	Space Travel and Culture : from Apollo to Space Tourism
	Author:	David Bell, Martin Parker
	Call number:	TL794.5.S732
	Availability:	Click here

Synopsis:
Explores the significance of the first Apollo moon landing and how the countless books, films, and products associated with factual space fiction had an affect on popular culture and artistic practice, but not social sciences and humanities

• Investigates how a topic is hugely important in popular culture, but almost invisible in the academy, and how it makes us want to ask questions about visibility, or perhaps self-censorship
• Evaluates how little impact the space age actually had on the social sciences and humanities – partly because its combination of military-industrial cold war politics, combined with patriarchy and big science, sits uneasily with contemporary thought in these areas
• Provides an interdisciplinary collection of essays on various aspects of NASA, the moon landing, and the commercialization of space generally
• The book travels from hard engineering to space romance, echoing the variety of attempts to blur science and culture

[As taken from Amazon.com]

	Title:	Heavenly Ambitions : America’s Quest to Dominate Space
	Author:	Joan Johnson-Freese
	Call number:	TL789.8.U5J71
	Availability:	Click here

Synopsis:
In the popular imagination, space is the final frontier. Will that frontier be a wild west, or will it instead be treated as the oceans are: as a global commons, where commerce is allowed to flourish and no one country dominates? At this moment, nations are free to send missions to Mars or launch space stations. Space satellites have become vital to many of the activities that have become part of our daily lives—from weather forecasting to GPS and satellite radio. The militaries of the United States and a host of other nations have also made space a critical arena—spy and communication satellites are essential to their operations. Beginning with the Reagan administration and its attempt to create a missile defense system to protect against attack by the Soviet Union, the U.S. military has decided that the United States should be the dominant power in space in order to protect civilian and defense assets. In Heavenly Ambitions, Joan Johnson-Freese draws from a myriad of sources to argue that the United States is on the wrong path: first, by politicizing the question of space threats and, second, by continuing to believe that military domination in space is the only way to protect U.S. interests in space.

Johnson-Freese, who has written and lectured extensively on space policy, lays out her vision of the future of space as a frontier where nations cooperate, and military activity is circumscribed by arms control treaties that would allow no one nation to dominate—just as no one nation’s military dominates the world’s oceans. This is in the world’s interest and, most important, in the U.S. national interest. [As taken from Amazon.com]

	Title:	Practical Diesel-engine Combustion Analysis
	Author:	Bertrand D. Hsu
	Call number:	TJ797.H873
	Availability:	Click here

Synopsis:
Hsu (General Electric) walks through the process of calculating heat release during combustion in a diesel engine, and demonstrates its application to the diagnosis of engine performance problems and the prediction of how different hardware configurations will affect engine performance. Combustion analysis examples illustrate how to use the method to measure fuel efficiency, smoke, nitrogen oxide formation, and noise emissions. The final chapter summarizes the author’s experiences with developing diesel engines fueled by natural gas and coal water slurry.  [Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.]

	Title:	Wind Energy Basics : A Guide to Home- and Community-scale Wind Energy Systems
	Author:	Paul Gipe
	Call number:	TJ820.G514N
	Availability:	Click here

Synopsis:
The availability of clean, renewable power is without question going to be the defining challenge and goal of the 21st century, and wind will lead the way. Internationally acclaimed wind energy expert Paul Gipe is as soberly critical of past energy mistakes as he is convincingly optimistic about the future. The overwhelming challenge of transforming our world from one of fossil carbon to one of clean power seems daunting at best—and paralyzingly impractical at worst. Wind Energy Basics offers a solution. Wind power can realistically not only replace the lion’s share of oil-, coal-, and naturalgas– fired electrical plants in the U.S., but also can add enough extra power capacity to allow for most of the cars in the nation to run on electricity. Gipe explains why such a startlingly straightforward solution is eminently doable and can be accomplished much sooner than previously thought—and will have the capacity to resuscitate small and regional economies. Wind Energy Basics offers a how-to for home-based wind applications, with advice on which wind turbines to choose and which to avoid. He guides wind-energy installers through considerations such as renewable investment strategies and gives cautionary tales of wind applications gone wrong. And for the activist, he suggests methods of prodding federal, state, and provincial governments to promote energy independence. [As taken from Amazon.com]