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The lost time arising from travelling and waiting of the production operators and manufacturing inspectors at the tool and gauge crib counters can be considerable in a large manufacturing plant. This travelling and waiting time can be eliminated or minimized by consolidating the tool and gauge cribs near the master crib, extending the totebox system and providing a dispatching system. In the proposed system the tools and gauges will be delivered at the workstation by the dispatchers. The new system would improve the utilization of the tool and gauge crib attendant’s time and reduce the tool and gauge inventory. The case problem revealed that a net annual labor cost saving of about $320,600 and a saving of $242,100 from the reduction of tool and gauge inventory could be achieved. The additional floor space requirement would be about 1,700sq. ft and the implementation cost would be about $144,500.

DURING recent years strain gauges have been used more and more in the aircraft industry as a means of assessing the loads in aircraft structures, both in structural testing laboratories and in flight. This increased use can be mainly attributed to the satisfactory development of successful electrical strain gauges of the resistance type and to the demand by engineers for a more complete knowledge of the load distribution in modern aircraft structures. Electrical strain gauges, although requiring accurate apparatus and a large amount of electrical wiring in addition, are much more easily attached to the structure than mechanical gauges and have the great advantage that they can be mounted in positions inaccessible to most mechanical gauges. This increased use of such gauges has been applied to the determination of the loads in tubes under combined bending and direct loading and to obtaining the direct and shear stresses in sheets and panels. The results of all this has been that more engineers have had reason to use the basic formulae for determining these quantities from the measured strains on three or more gauge lines.

This paper proposes the use of a gauge function as a measure of technical efficiency. The measure of technical inefficiency from a gauge function is desirable as the estimation of a gauge function is not subject to the endogeneity problem under the behavioral assumption of profit maximization in the competitive market.

The authors address three important properties of a gauge function, i.e. linear homogeneity, monotonicity and convexity in inputs and outputs, and show how such properties are utilized in its estimation. Then, the authors apply the estimation of a gauge function to US Blacksmiths in 1850 and 1880 to show that a failure to satisfy such properties may lead to an incorrect inference on the technical efficiency.

The authors find that the Blacksmiths in the 1850s were technically more efficient than the ones in the 1880s, indicating technical regress in Blacksmithing when the properties are satisfied.

This paper introduces a measure of technical inefficiency from a gauge function and shows how to estimate the gauge function parametrically for the measure. The authors show McFadden's gauge function and its properties, which differ from the properties of other distance functions. The authors emphasize linear homogeneity as well as monotonicity and convexity in inputs and outputs, which must be satisfied in the estimation of a gauge function.

The development of new, inexpensive, robust and miniaturised sensors is continuously being sought and it is believed that thick‐film technology can help to achieve these goals. A strain sensor utilising the piezoresistive properties of thick‐film resistors is described here. Characterisation of the sensing element has revealed that the gauge factor is significantly higher than that of metal foil strain gauges and the temperature coefficients are generally lower than those found for semiconductor strain gauges. Results show how the gauge factor can be optimised by varying the production parameters.

Outlines previous research relevant to the risks involved in residential mortgages and suggests some reasons for the gap between theory and market practice. Develops a model which adds household income, ability to pay problems and mortgage underwriting constraints to the standard pricing models, using a combination of Monte Carlo simulation and the backward finite difference method to apply it to data on house prices, income and interest rates for 62 US metropolitan areas. Discusses the results which suggest that prepayment risk dominates default risk in all except very low growth housing markets. Adds that increasing loan‐to‐value levels decrease loan values in low growth markets, slightly increase them in high growth/low volatility markets (due to decline in prepayment risk), but have little impact on high growth/high volatility markets (because they are offset by changes in default and prepayment costs). Considers the practical implications of the findings, e.g. for portfolio managers.

The use of robots to control for quality in manufacturing raises the issue of choice and its effect on the probability of accepting defective parts or rejecting good ones. The application of robots to the quality gauges is described and robot repeatability and errors in production processes are examined.

STRAIN‐GAUGE technique might, at first glance, seem so highly technical a subject as to occasion some surprise at interest in it at a time when production problems seem to require all of our attention. Actually, of course, the greatest possible aid to increased ease in production is to start with the original design and simplify the structure itself, resulting naturally in a simplification of the entire production problem right from the outset. Better understanding of the problems involved already has allowed considerable progress in the matter of reducing the complexity of aircraft structures. So far, every effort has been made to limit the application of the techniques about to be discussed to those problems for which solutions are needed most urgently, always with the idea in mind of reducing the factors of ignorance involved to the point that we are permitted to simplify the structures which may be in question. The very words “strain gauge” infer a primary concern with theory, due largely to their past limitation to laboratory work. They are, however, here discussed as a work‐a‐day aid to the structural designer, substantiating past decisions and supplying information for better future decisions. In general, these methods, in a halting sort of way, provide a seventh sense that permits the designer to see and understand the inner workings of a structure under load.

As the infrastructure of the railway, the rail could sink or deform to different degrees due to the impact of train operation or the geological changing force for years, which will lead to the possibility that the facilities on both sides of the rail invade the rail clearance and bring hidden dangers to the safe operation of the train. The purpose of this paper is to design the gauge to measure the clearance parameters of rail.

Aiming at the problem, the gauge for clearance measurement was designed based on a combination measurement method in this paper. It consists of the measurement box and the rail measurement vehicle, which integrates a laser displacement sensor, inclination sensor, gauge sensor and mileage sensor. The measurement box was placed outside the rail vehicle. Through the design of a hardware circuit and software system, the movement measurement of the clearance parameters was realized.

In this paper, the measurement equations of horizontal distance and vertical height were established, the optimal solutions of the structural parameters in the equations were obtained by Levenberg–Marquardt method, then the parameter calibration problem was also solved.

The gauge has high precision; its measurement uncertainty reaches 1.27 mm. The gauge has manual and automatic working modes, which are convenient to operate and have practical popularization value.

A process improvement sampling methodology, known as process variation diagnostic tool (PROVADT), was proposed by Cox et al. (2013). The method was designed to support the objectivity of Six Sigma projects performing the measure-analyse phases of the define-measure-analyse-improve-control cycle. An issue in PROVADT is that it is unable to distinguish between measurement and product variation in the presence of a poor Gage repeatability and reproducibility (R&R) result. The purpose of this paper is to improve and address PROVADT’s sampling structure by enabling a true Gage R&R as part of its design.

This paper derives an enhanced PROVADT method by examining the theoretical sampling constraints required to perform a Gage R&R study. The original PROVADT method is then extended to fulfil these requirements. To test this enhanced approach, it was applied first to a simulated manufacturing process and then in two industry case studies.

The results in this paper demonstrates that enhanced PROVADT was able to achieve a full Gage R&R result. This required 20 additional measurements when compared to the original method, but saved up to ten additional products and 20 additional measurements being taken in future experiments if the original method failed to obtain a valid Gage R&R. These benefits were highlighted in simulation and industry case studies.

The work into the PROVADT method aims to improve the objectivity of early Six Sigma analyses of quality issues, which has documented issues.

With the Venwick gauge, as for all accurate measuring instruments, the indirect measuring system is used, i.e. it must be set by a parallel end, gauge, an accurate plug gauge or standard piece. It then shows at a glance how much the workpiece differs from the standard size.