A Successful Transformation? : Restructuring of the Czech Automobile Industry
This book investigates the complex processes of the post-1990 transformation in the Czech automotive industry and its selective integration in the West European automobile manufacturing system. The post-1990 restructuring of the Czech automotive industry is analyzed in the context of its pre-1990 development and in the context of the Central and East European automobile industry as a whole. Specifically, the book examines the development and post-1990 restructuring of the Czech passenger car industry, the components industry and truck manufacturing. Major topics covered include the development of the Czech automotive industry before 1990, the detailed case study of Škoda Auto, the effects of the post-1990 privatization in the Czech automotive industry, the role and effects of foreign direct investment during the post-1990 restructuring, the restructuring of the Czech truck industry, and the rapid development of the automotive components manufacturing.
A cost based approach to project management : Planning and controlling construction project costs
Illustrates the principles of project management and the essentials of cost planning and control with easy-to-understand examples from the construction industry Includes step-by-step details of project planning, cost estimating, and management processes Offers clear, cost-based methods for defining scope, preparing bids, and planning for contingencies, as well as monitoring progress and determining when to take remedial action Contains a user-friendly guide to project management acronyms and terminology Provides sample construction schedules, budgets, and progress report forms
Building from waste : Recovered materials in architecture and construction
"Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Recover" is the sustainable guideline that has replaced the "Take, Make, Waste" attitude of the industrial age. Based on their background at the ETH Zurich and the Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore, the authors provide both a conceptual and practical look into materials and products which use waste as a renewable resource. It looks into innovative concepts of how materials usually regarded as waste can be processed into new construction elements. The products are organized along the manufacturing processes: densified, reconfigured, transformed, designed and cultivated materials.
Lean Architecture : Excellence in Project Delivery
Shows readers a path to improve their project delivery via the application of lean concepts and process management. Authors Michael Czap and Gregory Buchanan challenge readers to reexamine their approach to architectural practice and projects by presenting a unique and compelling alternative. Readers will learn to: Maximize the use of their resources to deliver superior results in less time / Minimize waste, cost, and inefficiency in their firm’s operations / Move between radically different project scales while retaining efficient and effective processes
Landscape Architecture as Storytelling : Learning Design Through Analogy
Introduces a comfortable approach to learning landscape architectural design free of design jargon and derived from their existing knowledge. A step-by-step process has readers consider their knowledge of language as metaphorically related to basic design and landscape design. Through information delivery and questioning processes, readers build on what they already know, their tacit understanding of language as applied to problem solving and storytelling. Everyone is a storyteller.
Cities After Crisis : Reinventing Neighborhood Design from the Ground-Up
The book details how these crises have led to a new urban vision—from avantgarde modern design to an artisan aesthetic that calls for simplicity and the everyday, from the sustainable development paradigm to a resilient vision that defends de-growth and the re-wilding of cities, from a homogenizing globalism to a new localism that values what is distinctive and nearby, from the privatization of the public realm to the commoning and self-governance of urban resources, and from top-down to bottom-up processes based on the engagement and empowerment of communities.
Building information modeling : BIM in current and future practice
Thought leaders from universities and professional practice composed essays exploring BIM's potential to improve the products and processes of architectural design including the structure and content of the tools themselves. These authors provide insights for assessing the current practice and research directions of BIM and speculate about its future. Design Thinking and BIM BIM Analytics Comprehensive BIM Reasoning with BIM Professional BIM BIM Speculations
BIM for design firms : Data rich architecture at small and medium scales
Expands on Building Information Modeling, showing its applicability to a range of design-oriented projects. It emphasizes the full impact that a data modeling tool has on design processes, systems, and the high level of collaboration required across the design team. It also explains the quantitative analysis opportunities that BIM affords for sustainable design and for balancing competing design agendas, while highlighting the benefits BIM offers to designing in 3D for construction. The book concludes with a deep look at the possible future of BIM and digitally-enhanced design.
Beyond bending : Reimagining compression shells
The examination of old construction principles in combination with the development of new digital graphic construction methods leads to unusual ways in the design of self-supporting structures. Based on its Armadillo Vault, which was awarded at the Venice Biennale 2016, the Block Research Group of ETH Zurich describes development processes and visions of resource-saving, refined load-bearing structures without steel. The intensive examination of principles is fundamental.
Architecture and design for industry 4.0 : Theory and practice
The book is structured into three sections (research, practice, and technologies), with the goal of creating a new framework useful for widespread awareness necessary to initiate technology transfer processes for the benefit of the public sector, universities, research centers, and innovative companies, and a new professional figure capable of controlling the entire process is essential. Thus, the book chapters arouse a series of relevant topics such as computational and parametric design, performance-based architecture, data-driven design strategies, parametric environmental design and analysis, computational and parametric structural design and analysis
Mathematical Modelling of Biosystems
This volume is an interdisciplinary book, which introduces, in a very readable way, state of the art research in the fundamental topics of mathematical modelling of Biosystems. These topics include: the study of Biological Growth and its mechanisms, the coupling of pattern to form via theorems of Differential Geometry, the human immunodeficiency virus dynamics, the inverse folding problem and the possibility of analysing true protein backbone flexibility, the Biclustering techniques for the organization of microarray data, the analytical approach to the modelling of biomolecular structure via Steiner trees, the action of biocides on resistance mechanisms of mutated and phenotypic bacteria strains, a description of the fundamental processes for the distribution and abundances of species towards a unified theory of Ecology, and a special introduction to Protein Physics aiming to explain the all-or-none first order phase transitions from native to denatured states.
Mathematical Modeling for the Life Sciences
Proposing a wide range of mathematical models that are currently used in life sciences may be regarded as a challenge, and that is precisely the challenge that this book takes up. Of course this panoramic study does not claim to offer a detailed and exhaustive view of the many interactions between mathematical models and life sciences. This textbook provides a general overview of realistic mathematical models in life sciences, considering both deterministic and stochastic models and covering dynamical systems, game theory, stochastic processes and statistical methods. Each mathematical model is explained and illustrated individually with an appropriate biological example. Finally three appendices on ordinary differential equations, evolution equations, and probability are added to make it possible to read this book independently of other literature.
Mathematical Methods in Robust Control of Linear Stochastic Systems
Linear stochastic systems are successfully used to provide mathematical models for real processes in fields such as aerospace engineering, communications, manufacturing, finance and economy. This monograph presents a useful methodology for the control of such stochastic systems with a focus on robust stabilization in the mean square, linear quadratic control, the disturbance attenuation problem, and robust stabilization with respect to dynamic and parametric uncertainty.
Mathematical Methods for Engineers and Geoscientists
This book introduces and explains classical and modern mathematical procedures as applied to the real problems confronting engineers and geoscientists. Written in a manner that is understandable for students across the breadth of their studies, it lays out the foundations for mastering difficult and sometimes confusing mathematical methods.
Materials for Springs
“Materials for springs” is basically intended for engineers related to spring materials and technologies who graduated from metallurgical or mechanical engineering courses in technical high school, or in other higher engineering schools, as well as those who are related to the purchase or sales of spring materials. The first chapter introduces into the fundamental selection processes of spring materials including the information sources on materials database. It is followed by the basic mechanisms and theories of spring failures such as fatigue fracture, creep/stress relaxation and stress corrosion cracking of metallic materials.
Markov Processes, Brownian Motion, and Time Symmetry
The book consists of two parts. Part I,This part introduces strong Markov processes and their potential theory. In particular,it studies Brownian motion, and shows how it generates classical potential theory.Part II, focus on the effects of time reversal, duality, and time-symmetry on potential theory. Certain theorems in Part I are re-proved in Part II under slightly weaker hypotheses. The volume is very useful for people who wish to learn Markov processes but it seems to the reviewer that it is also of great interest to specialists in this area who could derive much stimulus from it. One can be convinced that it will receive wide circulation." (Mathematical Reviews)
Markov Decision Processes with Their Applications
Markov decision processes (MDPs), also called stochastic dynamic programming, were first studied in the 1960s. MDPs can be used to model and solve dynamic decision-making problems that are multi-period and occur in stochastic circumstances. There are three basic branches in MDPs: discrete-time MDPs, continuous-time MDPs and semi-Markov decision processes. Starting from these three branches, many generalized MDPs models have been applied to various practical problems. These models include partially observable MDPs, adaptive MDPs, MDPs in stochastic environments, and MDPs with multiple objectives, constraints or imprecise parameters.
Marine Geochemistry
Since 1980 a considerable amount of scientific research dealing with geochemical processes in marine sediments has been carried out. This textbook summarizes the state of the art in this field of research. The topics comprise the examination of sedimentological and physical properties of the sedimentary solid phase, of pore water and pore water constituents, organic matter as the driving force of most microbiological processes, biotic and abiotic redox reactions, carbonates and stable isotopes as proxies for paleoclimate reconstruction, metal enrichments in ferromanganese nodules and crusts as well as in hot vents and cold seeps on the seafloor. A new chapter describes properties, occurrence and formation of gas hydrates in marine sediments. The textbook ends with a chapter on model conceptions and computer models to quantify processes of early diagenesis.
Marine carbon biogeochemistry : A primer for earth system scientists
This book discusses biogeochemical processes relevant to carbon and aims to provide with insight into the functioning of marine ecosystems. A carbon centric approach has been adopted, but other elements are included where relevant or needed. The book focuses on concepts and quantitative understanding of primary production, organic matter mineralization and sediment biogeochemistry. The impact of biogeochemical processes on inorganic carbon dynamics and organic matter transformation are also discussed.
Manufacturing Systems : Theory and Practice
The book has six chapters that have been arranged according to the sequence used when creating and operating a manufacturing system. Thus, the subjects emphasised are: the decision framework for manufacturing, the manufacturing processes, the manufacturing equipment and machine tools, the design for manufacturing and the operation of manufacturing systems. The book attempts a compromise between theory and practice in all addressed manufacturing systems issues, covering a long spectrum of issues from traditional manufacturing processes to innovative technologies such as Virtual Reality, Nanotechnology and Rapid Prototyping.



















