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The Safety Management System (SMS) provides an environment where undesired events (proactively or reactively identified) are evaluated for the effect on safety using Risk Analysis. When the risk is evaluated, an interim risk reduction (mitigating action) may be applied to reduce the risk to a level that allows operations for a longer period before the safety issue is fully resolved. The risk assessment provides a means of evaluating the risk level and it may be difficult to quantify the “benefit” of interim mitigations that will reduce the risk. Prioritization of issues in the same risk category of the Risk Matrix is often simplified to a schedule and logistics basis of the final corrective action and often does not adequately show the benefit of the interim mitigating actions taken.

Faced with an ever increasing supply of road load data and no reasonable means to keep track of it, Managing Road Load Data and The Process is about one engineer's charge to deliver a solution. This paper summarizes the approach taken by this engineer and his team to produce a system that not only provides a place to store their data, but facilitates the entire data collection, validation and dissemination process. By following the steps outlined in this document, virtually every opportunity for improvement will be identified. That is, the process is thoroughly explored; the wants and needs of the users are identified, and then, as warranted, turned into functional elements of the system. The result is a central repository that is accessible to all and with the capability of significantly reducing cost and timing. The development process presented here is not a difficult one to accomplish, but does require keeping track of a lot of detail. It can therefore be quite time consuming.

The traffic noise has been a major source of discomfort to people for decades. Traffic noise is by far the most pervasive of all noises and over 80 million people are exposed to traffic noises of unacceptably high levels in the European Union alone. A major source of traffic noise is the noise generated due to interaction of rolling tire with pavement/road. In order to control this noise within the limits of comfort or regulatory requirements, improvement and engineering is required at both tire and pavement levels. Coast-by noise standards ISO 13325 (UNECE R117) was adopted for tire-road noise measurement purpose. With the introduction of more stringent rolling sound emission limits for new tire from 2012 in international market, a review of current state of sound emission levels emitted from new tire (C1 Category) available to Indian consumer for passenger car has been discussed in this paper.

Gasoline HCCI engine has the potential of providing better fuel economy and emissions characteristics than the current SI engines. However, management of HCCI operation for a vehicle is a challenging task. In this paper, the issues of mode transitions between the Spark Ignition and HCCI regimes, and the dynamic nature of the load trajectory within the HCCI regime are considered. Then the phenomena encountered in these operations are illustrated by the data from a single-cylinder engine with electromagnetic-variable-valve timing control. Mode transitions from the SI to HCCI regime may be categorized as robust and non-robust. In a robust transition, every intended HCCI cycle is successful. In a non-robust transition, one or more intended HCCI cycles misfire, although the cycles progress to a satisfactory HCCI operating point in steady state. (The spark ignition was kept on so that the engine could recover from a misfired cycle.)

Managing service deficiencies is a team effort in the airline business. The Captain's responsibilities and authority are directly related to safety and loss control. Service deficiencies are manifested by mechanical, design, procedural and communication shortcomings. Some examples and facts are covered to see how deficiencies can affect an operation in considering the airplane-mission match up and operate a safe transportation system. An aging fleet of airplanes can also present future mechanical problems that have no historical precedence. Fuel costs and supply are having a greater impact in both corporate and national survival. Fuel efficiency becomes an operating watchword and a strong pilot responsibility. Captains are well-trained and provide the discriminating assessment of their equipment based on flight conditions prior to each takeoff. They provide the last line of defense.

Whether you have just been promoted or fired, whether you are newly retired or about to undergo surgery, whether you have answered the phone to learn that a loved one has died or that you have won the lottery - in each of these situations, you will experience stress. And you will find the physical evidence of stress (the stress response) is always the same: your heart pounds, you breathe hard, your palms get sweaty, your stomach ties in knots, your blood pressure rises, the pupils of your eyes dilate, and your digestion grinds to a halt.

As world-wide container volume increases and very large container ships emerge as a dominant player in the maritime cargo transport market, functional capabilities of container ports need to be greatly enhanced. To address this problem, KAIST is undertaking a project to design a novel container transport system, namely Mobile Harbor. Mobile Harbor refers to a system that can go out to a large container ship anchoring in the open sea, load and unload containers between the container ship and the Mobile Harbor, and transport them to their destinations. Designing Mobile Harbor presents a number of challenges as with many other large-scale engineering projects, especially at the beginning stage of the project.

This paper describes the implementation effort behind adding a pair of suspension links between the axle and frame of a light truck with a Hotchkiss-type suspension. These links, referred to as anti-windup bars (or traction bars), were introduced into an existing system to improve NVH performance; however, doing so required modifications to maintain other vehicle attributes, including vehicle safety and durability life. The authors address the management of these attributes and related design decisions for the components involved, focusing on the conflicting requirements involved. Physical vehicle testing, using design revisions recommended by Finite Element (FE) simulations, was performed to confirm component performance and related system behavior. Test results suggested improvements to the FE models that were required to more closely approximate the vehicle's behavior.

Performance data offers a powerful tool for system condition assessment and health monitoring. In most applications, a host of various types of sensors is employed and data on key parameters (describing the system performance) is compiled for further analysis and evaluation. In ensuring the adequacy of the data acquisition process, two important questions arise: (1) is the complied data robust and reasonable in representing the system parameters; and (2) is the duration of data acquisition adequate to capture a favorable percentage (say for example 90%) of the critical values of a given system parameter? The issue related to the robustness and reasonableness of data can be addressed through known values for key parameters of the system. This is the information that is not often available. And as such, methods based on trends in a given system parameter, expected norms, the parameter's relation with other known parameters, and simulations can be used to assure the quality of the data.

If you can't measure it, you can't control it. If you can't control it, you can't change it. If you can't change it, you can't improve it. This logic seems simple when it comes to improving the efficiency of an isolated process, but it quickly becomes complex when attempting to improve the efficiency of a complete system. For compressed air systems, the economic argument for improving efficiency is compelling - with up to 90% of the energy consumed by an electric air compressor lost as waste heat due to mechanical friction and electric motor losses [1]. There is value and opportunity to improve efficiency in a single air compressor, but to realize the greatest impact a manufacturer must address compressed air efficiency through a system wide approach.

If a business is to be profitable and experience growth in the 1980’s and become competitive in the world economy, top management has to reorganize its priorities and systems of capitalizing on emerging technology. A practical approach for large or small businesses is the development of “partnership relations” beyond the company’s internal resources. The efficient diffusion and commercialization of technology can be significantly improved through a partnership relation. A number of practical suggestions in structuring successful partnership technology relationships will be reviewed.

The history behind Polymer Class “A” Body Panels for automotive applications is very interesting. The driving factors behind these applications have not changed significantly over the past sixty years. Foremost among these factors is the need for corrosion and dent resistance. Beginning with Saturn in 1990, interest in polymer body panels grew and continues to grow up to the present day, with every new global application. Today, consumers and economic factors drive the industry trend towards plastic body panels. These include increased customization and fuel economy on the consumer side. Economic factors such as lower unit build quantities, reduced vehicle mass, investment cost, and tooling lead times influence material choice for industry. The highest possible performance, and fuel economy, at the lowest price have always been a goal.

Multiple approaches have been created to enhance intra-vehicle communications security over the past three decades since the introduction of the Controller Area Network (CAN) protocol. The twin pair differential-mode communications bus is tremendously robust in the face of interference, yet physical access to the bus offers a variety of potential attack vectors whereby false messages and/or denial of service are achievable. This paper evaluates extensions of a Physical-layer (PHY) common-mode watermark-based authentication technique recently developed to improve authentication on the CAN bus by considering the watermark as a side-channel communications means for high value information. We also propose and analyze higher layer algorithms, with benefits and pitfalls, for employing the watermark as a physical-layer firewall.

Franklin Associates, Ltd. (FAL) is developing a methodology to deal with the issues of uncertainty and data quality in Life Cycle Inventories (LCI). In traditional LCIs, single point estimates of input variables (such as fuel requirements) are used to determine single point estimates for the output variables (such as total energy used or solid waste generated). These point estimates contain no information about the uncertainty of the data, and therefore give a false sense of precision. If LCIs are to become more widely used by decision makers and others, an acceptable method of dealing with uncertainty needs to be developed. This paper discusses the data uncertainty methodology being developed at Franklin Associates, and uses a previously completed case study as a real-world example of its use. The FAL methodology involves the assignment of data quality indicators to the variables used as inputs to our computer models.

A typical risk assessment or audit used in industry today will look at a single organizations risk in an isolated business system dimension, such as the management system, product, or process deployed at a specific company. Risk must be found in both material and information flows and quantified in order to enable effective management decisions. Value Stream Risk Assessment™ (VSRA™) is a tool to identify, quantify, prioritize, and intelligently mitigate risk wherever it resides in a the Value Stream. VSRA™ has been developed to compliment Lean and Six Sigma techniques and enhances the quality audit process to provide more value to the organization.

This paper reports the results of a project which aimed to eliminate, or at least reduce, the demand amplification effect in a value stream within the UK automotive component supply chain. The paper describes the progression from the identification of demand amplification, through a practical approach for its measurement, to the development of a methodology to overcome the negative impacts of the effect across three echelons of the supply chain. The results of a six-month trial implementation are reported.

A key component of developing a safety-critical automotive system in compliance with ISO 26262 is developing what is known as the safety case. This delivery justifies that the system is free from unreasonable risk and that the safety requirements are complete and satisfied according to evidence from ISO 26262 work products. However, the standard provides neither practical guidance on how the safety case should be developed, nor how the safety argument should be evaluated in the functional safety assessment process. This paper discusses quality and product readiness of the system under development in the context of safety case generation. We will focus on the software level and ISO 26262-6 requirements that relate to this. We will look at the software lifecycle of the system and how to measure and deliver key data throughout this lifecycle.

Managing the security of the infrastructure and applications for any aviation IT system necessitates some sort of control mechanism(s) for defining how the various components and processes of the system work. This is true for both the network components, applications within the infrastructure, and the various security infrastructure components such as access control mechanisms, intrusion detection systems, etc. The need for a comprehensive, defense in depth, solution to security can only be met if there is an association between the controls regulating the various security components, so that there is a consistent approach to regulating and controlling security. To meet this need we propose a unifying Global Policy Framework concept, that includes a Policy Workbench for developing and administrating the policies associated with security components and the security infrastructure.

This paper describes an embedded software solution to manage the various powertrain component and system diagnostics required for On-Board Diagnostics (OBDI and OBDII) regulatory compliance. It utilizes flexible configuration of the complex interactions between systems and components that would otherwise be very difficult to define early enough in the Engine Control Module (ECM) software process to meet lead-time requirements. This method for managing the OBD test routines and their interdependencies allows the interactions to be configured through the use of calibration tables after software verification testing has been completed. This results in higher reliability of productionized software by avoiding the need to have the interactions pre-defined and included in the software up-front, and by enabling configuration changes later in the process without affecting the software itself.

Most multinational companies have searched for cooperation within their units around the world when developing global products. To achieve this goal, those companies are making use of project teams whose members are geographically dispersed and culturally diverse. That context introduces more complexity to project management techniques especially on what concerns the communication among the project staff. Based on a bibliography research, this work intends to analyze how communication is affected by transnational context, what the importance of communication is to reach the project goals, and how it is possible to coordinate and communicate activities and information throughout multicultural and dispersed project members.