The evidence is clear that a lack of attention to structured tool management has resulted in the poor performance of many manufacturing systems. Plant tooling systems affect product design options, machine loading, job batching, capacity scheduling, and real-time part routing decisions. With increasing automation in manufacturing systems, there is a growing need to integrate tool management more thoroughly into system design, planning and control. This paper critically evaluates various tool management approaches, identifying the operational tradeoffs and analyzing the models developed to address management decisions involving tooling. These decisions range from selecting the optimal machining parameters and the most economic processing rate for a particular operation, to the loading of tools and jobs on machines and the determination of the optimal tool-mix inventories needed for a particular production schedule. We present an integrated conceptual framework for resource planning to examine how tool management issues, depending upon their scope, can be classified into tool-level, machine-level, and system-level concerns. This framework specifies how decisions made at one level constrain those at lower levels, and how information from lower levels feeds back to higher level decisions. The framework structures our critical evaluation of the modeling approaches found in the academic literature and points to promising directions for future research.flexible manufacturing systems, production planning, CIM, performance evaluation, automated manufacturing systems

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Increasing globalization has affected the way that firms are managed today. While its impact on competitive strategy, marketing, and finance has been well accepted and well studied, its effect on the firm's technology and operations has not. This paper provides resources for research and teaching in international technology and operations management (itom). Included are an extensive bibliography of papers and an overview of large‐scale survey research initiatives in the area. By bringing together and categorizing this body of work, we hope to facilitate further work in the area and to help define ITOM'S scope.

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After completion of this article, the reader should be able to explain the impact of obesity on the health of nonpregnant and pregnant women, summarize the methods of distinguishing overweight from obesity, and recall the proper weight management programs for and assessments of obesity in women.

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An operations and maintenance (O&M) simulation tool has been developed with inputs specific to the off-grid array of wave energy converters designed by Scottish company Albatern Ltd. This paper takes the ongoing test programme of six 'Squid' wave energy devices as a case study for analysing several aspects of the O&M strategy for an off-grid wave energy array. The study demonstrates how the O&M simulation model can be a useful tool to inform contractual negotiations during the development phase of a wave energy array. Uncertainty in the model inputs is addressed by presenting the results of three different input scenarios.

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