Search results

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the underlying hazards of human‐mimic human‐collaborative industrial robots.

Preliminary hazard analysis is applied to a new industrial upper‐body‐humanoid under development. The result of the analysis is summarized by Fishbone diagram analysis.

Six hazard categories involving a four‐class physical human robot interaction hazard classification are derived from the analysis.

The method of analyzing hazards presented here and the hazard theory derived from the analysis can be used in other developmental projects.

Global warming has become one of the most important issues in today's world, and business behavior to prevent global warming is receiving more attention from stakeholders. Mandatory domestic emission trading schemes have not been implemented in Japan as of June 2011, resulting in more discretion being given to companies to set their carbon management strategies, especially in selecting optimal targets and measures to achieve them. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that quality function deployment for environment (QFDE), developed by incorporating environmental aspects into quality function deployment (QFD) in order to simultaneously handle environmental and traditional product quality requirements, can provide a framework for selecting targets and measures.

The authors apply a three‐step approach: first, a framework for selecting measures is derived through a review of good‐practice activities in two leading companies; second, a framework based on QFDE is generalized by collecting key elements through a literature review of environmental and corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports published by 35 companies; and third, the usefulness of the framework is verified through case studies.

The main outcomes of this study are the derivation of a hierarchical framework with QFDE as its base and verification, through the use of case studies, of the applicability of the framework as a template, as well as an effective communication tool to be used for setting targets and selecting measures.

The framework will be useful for companies which voluntarily set targets and select measures that could form an essential part of their carbon reduction strategies, based on QFDE concepts.

The increasing use of rapid prototyping (RP) which fabricates complicated models easily, has highlighted the desire for making metal models also with RP technology. However, direct RP technology for metal models is not established yet. This paper presents a technology for manufacturing sacrificial patterns using salt powder. By soaking in water the salt patterns can be removed from moulds very easily. They are converted to metal models very easily through investment casting. The feasibility of the method was examined by laminating salt powder with 3D printing method. In the preliminary test it turned out that pure salt powder is unsatisfactory. So flour was mixed with salt powder for the absorption of the binder, because it is insoluble in water and readily available at low cost. Controlling the mixing ratio tests were made to examine the quality of the salt patterns, and showed promising results not only as sacrificial patterns but also as conventional 3D models. Then metallic models with complicated shapes were fabricated by casting in plaster using these salt models as patterns, and it was proven that these salt models can be used in investment casting as sacrificial patterns.