At what price spares?
Article Abstract:
The US armed forces consume a stupendous number of spare parts: some 57,000 spare part transactions are processed every day by the Department of Defense (DOD). The Pentagon's Defense Spares Initiatives Office has about 4.3 million cataloged items, and the DOD budgeted $18.5 billion for spare parts in fiscal 1988. Some over-charging abuses were publicized in the early 1980s, but some of those inflated prices for spare parts were justified. A variety of factors can make spare parts more expensive, such as overhead costs, retooling costs, military specifications, etc. Electronic components make up a large part of the spare parts demand, and they are stocked at 16 sites around the world. The spare parts scandals have made contractors more cooperative. Less effort is made to manufacture unique parts that can not be purchased elsewhere, and many times contractors will now give the names of other vendors who sell the same equipment.
Publication Name: IEEE Spectrum
Subject: Engineering and manufacturing industries
ISSN: 0018-9235
Year: 1988
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Garbage in, power out
Article Abstract:
Communities are turning to waste burning plants as a means of disposing of ever greater amounts of garbage, but pollution issues will probably require a combination of incineration, recycling, and landfill to address the entire waste problem. About 60,000 tons of waste are burned daily in the 120 existing plants, are there an additional 600 plants planned or under construction. Plants can burn up to 3,000 tons per day, and 75 of the existing plants produce power that is fed to the local utility. 39 percent of the current capacity is in refuse-derived fuel plants which burn waste that has been converted into small pellets. This will drop to 13 percent after 1990, as most new waste burning plant orders are for plants that mass burn unsorted garbage. The major pollution problems are acid gasses, heavy metals, and other toxic chemicals.
Publication Name: IEEE Spectrum
Subject: Engineering and manufacturing industries
ISSN: 0018-9235
Year: 1988
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Solid state
Article Abstract:
The US and Japan have more-or-less declared a truce in the chip wars, while semiconductor manufacturers worldwide retrenched. A number of companies, most of them Japanese, announced 4-megabit DRAMs. The market for application specific ICs continues to grow by twenty-five percent per year. Also, the last year brought more refinements in digital signal processors (DSPs), which allow engineers to use numbers as-is, without scaling. Sample production of gallium arsenide or silicon wafers was announced by Kopin Corp., combining advantages of the two technologies. Finally, a process for tape-automated bonding (TAB) has been developed and is becoming very popular. TAB allows more chips to be mounted side-by-side, while providing lead protection, burn-in, and testability.
Publication Name: IEEE Spectrum
Subject: Engineering and manufacturing industries
ISSN: 0018-9235
Year: 1988
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