Word: processing
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2000
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...clear is that Arafat is searching for a legacy that will fit his ambitions for himself and for his people. It is that search that brought him to Camp David and to his tense, exacting talks with President Clinton and Barak. "God, it's hard," Clinton confessed of the process. And much of the difficulty could be traced to Arafat, a man whose place in history revolves entirely around the outcome of his eleventh-hour negotiations with Israel...
Kirila has devised a system that will make almost any product, anywhere, anytime. Well, at least anything that can be molded--which is just about everything we touch these days. Kirila's Virtual Engineered Composites (VEC) process is a factory in a box. The box can be as small as a mop basin or as big (so far) as a 40-ft. freight container. Plopped down in the middle of Azerbaijan or Arizona or Angola, it could start pushing out toilet seats one day and pipeline sections the next...
...process is to manufacturing what DOS was to the personal-computer business in its early days. If it proves itself, it will lead the way toward an entirely new system of manufacture in which we can make things digitally. "If operating systems could run computers, they should be able to run a factory," Kirila says. "My big question was this: How do you leverage everything that is happening in the information age and use it to build tangible products...
...Chinese peasants. Instead of shipping the tubs from California, you simply ship the VEC unit, or cell. To make the tubs, two composite skins are draped over a foam model, and a thermochemical reaction causes them to harden into shape. (Because no metal bending is involved and the "thermoset" process uses chemistry, not immense heat, the molds cost a fraction of the conventional version.) The skins are then attached to a universal frame. The cell is closed and filled with pressurized water, which braces the skins together. Then composite materials are injected into the mold and catalyzed, causing the materials...
...Kirila sold his company to fitness giant Cybex and started Pyramid Operating Systems. That's when he and his engineering chief, Bob McCollum, devised a software program to control each step in the manufacturing process. A company offered them a lucrative contract to build storm drains, but Pyramid didn't have the $2 million needed to fashion or tool the proper steel mold to shape the pipe. That's when McCollum came up with a startlingly simple--and cheap--idea. Instead of a metal mold, why not fashion two pieces of composite in the shape of the product, inject...