Water is one of the supplies that we can do without in any case. More important is that we have water in a clean condition available. Fraunhofer scientists have developed a method, which allows you to disinfect water in industrial processes using diamond electrodes. In this technology, no additional chemicals are used, and the operation requires little energy and can be carried out in an independent system in place.

How does it work?

For the electrochemical process, the electrodes are provided with a conductive diamond layer.



The material used for this purpose, however, differs greatly from the diamonds that we know as jewelry: It is an artificial, only a few microns thick. A view through the scanning electron microscope at 5000 times magnification shows that the gray layer is composed of many small diamond crystals.

The water comes into contact with the diamond layer, formed under the influence of electric current ozone, an unstable gas, and hydroxyl radicals, which are among the strongest oxidizing agents. For people and animals increased ozone concentration in the air is unhealthy, because ozone irritates the respiratory tract.

In water treatment, the oxidizing effect is used to destroy micro-organisms in an environmentally friendly way, and pollutants. The use of diamond electrodes, solvents, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, bacteria and other microbes are rendered harmless. The method is also suitable for pollutants associated with conventional methods is difficult or impossible to be eliminated. After the complete oxidation of the pollutants remain carbon dioxide and carbonic acid.

Used for operating and industrial water treatment in the beverage industry

Partners and users, for example, brewery and beverage manufacturer of technologies such as the company Esau & Hueber in Schrobenhausen. An example is the chemical-free treatment of industrial water and process water for brewing. The cleaning and rinsing of your brewing equipment used by the ozone water treatment completely free of germs. The internal operation of water supply affects the process as a firewall, which ensures that no microorganisms pass the water input. The residual effect of the ozone keeps the water distribution network is free from contamination.
read more at http://www.fraunhofer.de

Electrical car charger

Global automakers from the United States and Germany will demonstrate fast-charging technology that will enable the recharging of most electrified vehicles with compatible systems in as little as 15-20 minutes.

Audi, BMW, Chrysler, Daimler, Ford, General Motors, Porsche and Volkswagen have agreed to support a harmonized single-port fast charging approach – called DC Fast Charging with a Combined Charging System – for use on electric vehicles in Europe and the United States.

Live charging demonstrations will be conducted during the Electric Vehicle Symposium 26 (EVS26) May 6-9.

The combined charging system integrates one-phase AC-charging, fast three-phase AC-charging, DC-charging at home and ultra-fast DC-charging at public stations into one vehicle inlet.

This will allow customers to charge at most existing charging stations regardless of power source and may speed more affordable adoption of a standardized infrastructure.

The International Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) has chosen the Combined Charging System as the fast-charging methodology for a standard that incrementally extends the existing Type 1-based AC charging. The standard is to be officially published this summer. ACEA, the European association of vehicle manufacturers has also selected the Combined Charging System as its AC/DC charging interface for all new vehicle types in Europe beginning in 2017.

The charging system design was based on collaborative reviews and analysis of existing charging strategies, the ergonomics of the connector and preferences of U.S. and European customers. The system was developed for all international vehicle markets and creates a uniform standard with identical electrical systems, charge controllers, package dimensions and safety mechanisms.

read full article on http://media.gm.com/

We wish all of you a merry christmas and a happy new year and hope that we can welcome some of you in June 2012 in Frankfurt!

Generating Renewable Oil

San Francisco based Solazyme may have the answer to the future of fuel. Many of the companies working to generate oil from algae or other photosynthetic organisms have huge inputs of water or take up vast tracts of land. As mentioned in a post last month, the University of Texas is placing a large bet on algae, which they are “farming” in large tubes instead of open ponds to reduce land use and water consumption. Other companies have focused on ethanol derived from corn. Solazyme takes a “variety of different feedstocks” such as cellulosic materials, switch grass, wood chips, and sugar cane and feeds it to algae instead of sunlight, which according to co-founder Harrison Dillon is 1,000 times more productive than making oil from algae using sunlight.

See the video below for an overview of the company’s efforts and products.

The company has already worked with United Airlines, which recently flew the first commercial flight in the United

States using the their bio-fuel blend. Solazyme’s “unique technology transforms low-cost plant sugars into . . . high-value renewable oils.” This conversion of “low-cost plant sugars” into oil represents an important component of fuels from plant material. One of the biggest issues with biofuels today derives from the use of food-based plant material to produce oil, thereby creating a conflict between food and fuel. Using “virgin” plant material only heightens the problem. In addition, producing plants for the sole purpose of generating fuel drives up the price of food by reducing the amount of food grown.

According to their website, “Solazyme oils address many of the challenges associated with traditional oils, such as constrained supplies, volatile pricing, and potentially negative and irreversible environmental effects. The ‘drop-in’ nature of our tailored oils enables compatibility with existing production, refining, and distribution infrastructure in each of our target markets.” This second point is vital for the seamless integration of biofuels into the existing oil infrastructure. Many of the feedstocks are grown on land that would not produce viable agriculture.

Read more text http://www.greenconduct.com

Check this video.

After you create chart you can save it as image to you computer or share it on web. Download this software from
QTcharts free quality management tools

The Business Complexity Accelerator at Toyota

There was an interesting article in the Knowledge@Wharton newsletter today. Wharton management professor John Paul MacDuffie interviewed Toyota expert, author and Tokyo University Professor Takahiro Fujimoto. The piece is called Under the Hood of Toyota’s Recall: ‘A Tremendous Expansion of Complexity’ and raises the by now familiar questions of complexity of modern automobile systems design, attitudes at Toyota towards its recent quality problems, and what this means for both Toyota and its competitors. To sum up the article with an automotive metaphor, Toyota needs to take its foot off of the business complexity accelerator.

Fujimoto said, “I was surprised to see that Toyota was the first to be caught in this trap of what we may call

complexity problems.” What has puzzled Toyota watchers is how Toyota, proven to be so great at solving problems for so many years, seems to have stumbled in a big way during this recent acceleration-related recall. Why?

Toyota failed to see this problem in the right way, at least in the beginning.

Failing to grasp a problem clearly, quantitatively and without prejudice is the first step in problem solving. Was this a case that the problem solving approach was flawed, or was it that the problem solving process is still sound but that Toyota did not follow their own process?

The danger is that people tend to connect the two problems. “This happened and that happened, so there must be causal relations between the two.” But this is not the case. There appears to be no connections between the design problems and the Toyota production system or Toyota Way.

He clearly says that the recent quality issue at Toyota is not connected to their way of working within the production operations, i.e. the Toyota Production System or even more broadly their philosophy, the Toyota Way. He suggests that that the complexity of new systems within the design simply got out of hand, and when they did, Toyota was unable to respond properly. While the processes within TPS are sound, the mindsets and behaviors of people may have shifted in an unhealthy way towards overconfidence, even arrogance. Fujimoto said:

Read more text http://www.gembapantarei.com

The Rise of Sustainable Supply Chains

After the recession of 2008 companies got leaner and part of this new way of doing business involves looking at inefficiencies throughout the value chain as a way to leverage cost and enhance savings. Lean efforts have been demonstrated to yield substantial environmental benefits (pollution prevention, waste reduction and reuse opportunities) as well as leverage compliance issues.

Although sustainable supply chains have been steadily growing, in 2010 we saw an explosion of activity. The growth of greener supply chains in 2010 included a much greater focus on monitoring, measurement and verification from a host of companies including Wal-Mart, IBM, Proctor and Gamble, Kaiser Permanente, Puma, Ford, Intel, Pepsi, Kimberly-Clark,

Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Dell, AT&T, P&G, and Herman Miller.

In addition to private enterprise, government agencies in the US (General Services Administration) and abroad (DEFRA in Britain) have set green standards and guidelines for federal procurement.

Major value chain concerns such as materials water and waste management, are part of a growing sustainability trend where companies are increasingly concerned with their suppliers’ sustainability efforts.

Corporate social responsibility issues including addressing concerns for human rights, fair labor and sustainable development got a lot of attention from big companies like Nestle, Corporate Express, Danisco, Starbucks, Unilever and the apparel industry.

Read more text http://www.greenconduct.com

Toyota to Reduce Span of Control in Engineering

The Nikkei reported on June 11, 2010 that Toyota is bringing back front line supervisors, adding a layer of management to staff positions that has been missing since 1989. This is an admission by Toyota, the world’s greatest lean manufacturing company, that they got their span of control in engineering and possibly other staff areas, wrong.

This move is in quite stark contrast to the “de-layering” going on at many global companies in an effort mainly to cut costs. While it may not seem lean to add layers of supervision, it is in fact very lean when done to reduce span of control. Form follows function and in this case the supervisors function as team leaders, coaches and first responders to andon

cord pulls (calls for help). This in turn helps expose, catch and correct problems while they are still small, rather than letting them grow into bigger problems. These problems have apparently been escaping in recent years, based on the recalls and quality problems we are seeing at Toyota.



A few years ago we commented about an article citing concern among old-timers at Toyota that the rush increase volume and make large cost cuts in design was moving the company away from it’s principle of slow, steady growth through development of people. “When did Toyota get to be a company like this?” was the question asked in alarm at the way things were being changed. The person quoted in that article was Shoichiro Toyoda, the father of current Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda, who is leading this latest reorganization towards smaller span of control for engineers.

The Nikkei reports that this new team structure will be implemented first in the technology development sections. About 1,000 employees who have been with the company for about 10 years will move into supervisory positions. The span of control is a conservative five engineers per leader. Toyota has not given this position an official title yet, and plans to do so after a one-year pilot, according to Toyota.

For further reading on this important topic, here are three more articles on our blog about supervisor span of control:

Read more text http://www.gembapantarei.com

Road vehicles – Pedestrian protection ISO 11096:2011

The number of pedestrian leg injuries caused by dangerous car design should be reduced thanks to an ISO International Standard defining a new crash test method.

According to the World Health Organization, road traffic accidents kill more than one million people a year, injuring another thirty-eight million (five million of them seriously). The death toll on the world’s roadways makes driving the number one cause of death and injury for people aged 15 to 44.

ISO 11096:2011, Road vehicles – Pedestrian protection – Impact test method for pedestrian thigh, leg and knee, sets out a test method to assess the protection of an adult pedestrian by simulating the leg-impact conditions sustained during the car-to-pedestrian crash.

The goal is two-fold – to:

- Provide information on pedestrian safety to consumers
– Induce manufacturers to develop vehicles with excellent pedestrian protection.

Sukhbir Bilkhu, Chair of the ISO subcommittee that developed the standard, commented: “The pedestrian impact test simulates accidents in which a pedestrian is hit by an oncoming vehicle. These accidents represent about 15 % of fatal crashes. Thanks to ISO 11096, we will make substantial progress in improving vehicle structure, and in so doing, reducing pedestrian lower-limb injuries.”

Read more text http://www.iso.org