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Continuing Professional Development

Wed, 13 Nov 2019 11:25:49 GMT

Managing your CPD as a professional engineer.

Are you making the most of your abilities and experience?

This practical guide, designed specifically for engineers and technical professionals, will help you to realise much more of your potential through considered and structured CPD. It will help you to analyse where you wish to take your career, based on the clear identification and ongoing development of your competencies and skills. It explains how to base your CPD not just on courses but also on capturing your day-to-day learning. Details of personal development planning software and other useful resources are given, including how to use the internet and distance learning in your CPD. The role of the professional institutions, and the importance of coaching and mentoring are also discussed.

Through a very readable text, with many practical diagrams and real-life case studies, you will develop a clear understanding of what CPD is and, more importantly, what it could do for you.

Developing a Make or Buy Strategy for Manufacturing Business

Tue, 12 Jun 2018 01:08:42 GMT

How can a company decide where to concentrate its expertise? Why are some companies better at exploiting their strengths than others? Is there a link between the range of a company's activities and its success and profitability?

These are just some of the questions at the heart of a make or buy strategy for manufacturing business. Most companies will face issues such as these at some time or other, and in resolving them will determine the future shape of the business - for better or worse.

Based on original research and case experience, this book presents a structured approach to making these important decisions. By drawing on the collective knowledge of people in the company, a make or buy strategy can be developed which focuses manufacturing capability on the factors critical to business success.

The key aspects covered include:

the links between business strategy, vertical integration in manufacturing industry, and business performance;
why a make or buy strategy is central to manufacturing capability and business results;
the difference between strategic, tactical and component make or buy issues;
the best practice approach to make or buy decisions;
what is involved in developing an optimal make or buy strategy for a business;
how to apply the approach to your own business.

The book is aimed at directors and managers from manufacturing companies concerned with developing their capabilities and focusing their strengths, but many other people in manufacturing, finance, engineering, purchasing and service operations will find something of value in this book.

Exhibiting Electricity

Tue, 12 Jun 2018 00:27:38 GMT

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries technical exhibitions, held for the benefit of both cognoscente and the general public alike, have presented a mirror to the progress of science, engineering and, towards the second half of the 19th century and throughout the 20th century, to electrical technology.

Exhibitions themselves are important not only to provide a given generation with a summary of its current capability but also to present a forum for new inventions and techniques, often shown to the public for the first time. The special requirements of exhibitions are also productive of new developments such as sophisticated lighting techniques, use of dioramas, new concepts in architecture, the first use of moving pavements and exploitation of new ideas in mass travel, such as monorail or magnetic levitation railways.

Here the history of such public exhibitions is traced from their beginnings towards the end of the 18th century to the present day, with particular reference to their presentation of electrical invention and manufacture. The key factors determining this progression are described, together with the influence of competing nations in the changing format of these presentations. The book will be of interest to all those engineers who are interested in how their speciality has been presented to a wider public in the past and provide a pointer to its continued presence in the media for the decades ahead.

Designing Businesses

Tue, 12 Jun 2018 00:24:18 GMT

Engineers and other technical professionals are increasingly presented with the opportunity of running their own businesses as entrepreneurs. In other circumstances, particularly in times of great change in industry, they may be considered 'corporate entrepreneurs', leading divisions of larger organisations in an entrepreneurial fashion.

This book aims to support the engineer finding him/herself in this position. It looks at the many issues confronting the technical professional faced with the task of leading a company, or a semi-autonomous unit within a company, with clarity and direction in a changing environment. It focuses particularly on:

designing the business to meet the requirements of the marketplace
financial design of the business and raising venture capital
alliances and acquisitions, management buyouts and buyins

The material will be useful to three groups of engineers: those who are setting up their own businesses or running companies in changing markets, those who are presented with a management-buyout opportunity, and those who wish simply to broaden their awareness of commercial issues.

Power System Commissioning and Maintenance Practice

Mon, 11 Jun 2018 23:51:20 GMT

Power system reliability and security is highly dependent on the practices employed in both the commissioning and maintenance processes. Both must be to a high standard to ensure that equipment does not enter service with latent deficiencies. This demands engineers who understand the necessary management involved as well as the technical processes. There is very little literature currently available on the subject; a situation which this book seeks to redress.

The subject matter covers high voltage plant and the associated protection and control systems and, although it is essentially targeted at the practicalities of commissioning and maintenance, it also incorporates the underpinning technical theory and design considerations. It is aimed primarily at those who are at the outset of their career in electrical engineering, but additionally provides a thorough reference for more experienced engineers.

Artificial Intelligence Techniques in Power Systems

Mon, 11 Jun 2018 23:09:42 GMT

Research in artificial intelligence has developed many techniques and methodologies that can be either adapted or used directly to solve complex power system problems. A variety of such problems are covered in this book including reactive power control, alarm analysis, fault diagnosis, protection systems and load forecasting. Methods such as knowledge-based (expert) systems, fuzzy logic, neural networks and genetic algorithms are all first introduced and then investigated in terms of their applicability in the power systems field. The book, therefore, serves as both an introduction to the use of artificial intelligence techniques for those from a power systems background and as an overview of the power systems implementation area for those from an artificial intelligence computing or control background. It is structured so that it is suitable for various levels of reader, covering basic principles as well as applications and case studies. The most popular methods and the most fruitful application fields are considered in more detail. The book contains contributions from top international authors and will be an extremely useful text for all those with an interest in the field.

Ultrawideband Radar Measurements

Mon, 11 Jun 2018 23:04:48 GMT

Interest in the applications of ultrawideband (UWB) radar systems is increasing rapidly all over the world. This is evident from the number of monographs recently published on the subject and from the many papers presented at international conferences on the general problems involved in UWB radar and on its promising new applications. Conventional (classical) methods seem to have exhausted their potential and studies in the field are undergoing a profound change. This book presents some of the novel approaches to radar system analysis now being investigated.

A good source of information on UWB signals is their structural analysis in the time domain. This allows a greater understanding of the specific features of UWB radar systems, such as the properties of receiving and transmitting antennas, and various characteristics of near- and far-range target scattering fields. It is shown how the systematic application of numerical procedures can provide new results in the evaluation of UWB radar target responses.

The authors do not try to cover all of the possible solutions to the problem of multidimensional representation of target responses; rather they aim to give a general understanding of the techniques of confluent analysis, computer holography and adaptive synthesis of antenna apertures. These methods have great potential for solving conventional radar problems in target detection and recognition, and they are sure to stimulate the use of UWB signals in many fields such as subsurface probing and ecological monitoring.

Open Electromagnetic Waveguides

Mon, 11 Jun 2018 22:33:57 GMT

Electromagnetic waves are guided by open structures in a variety of applications at radio, microwave, millimetric and optical frequencies. Examples range from the propogation of radiowaves down the shaft of an oil rig to that of light through an optical fibre. As the guide is open, radiation may also be present, for example from a microstrip-fed patch or a slot antenna. These twin aspects of waveguiding and radiation are in fact closely interwoven and this book is the first to deal with the two by means of a single mathematical formalism.

The treatment develops from intermediate level guided wave electromagnetism through to frontier concepts and theoretical methods for discontinuities in open, hybrid mode 3D structures by way of real detailed problems taken from the fields of microwaves, millimetric waves and integrated optics. Examples include slotted waveguides, step discontinuities in slab waveguides, coupled and truncated ribguides, via holes in open microstrip, and air bridges in open coplanar waveguides. The unifying concept is the fundamental modal approach for both guiding and radiation, developed by the authors during the course of many years of research.

The book is suitable for engineers and scientists dealing with the simulation of integrated planar antennas, millimetric circuits, integrated optics and other general open cylinder structures.

Microwave Transmission Line Impedence Data

Mon, 11 Jun 2018 22:31:51 GMT

A compendium of data for computing the characteristic impedance of transmission lines based on physical dimensions. This book covers both conventional structures and unusual geometries, including coaxial, eccentric and elliptic coaxial, twin-wire, wire-above-ground, microstrip and derivatives, stripline, slabline and trough line. Also details numerous configurations of coupled lines.

Genetic Algorithms in Engineering Systems

Mon, 11 Jun 2018 21:19:55 GMT

This book comprises ten invited expert contributions on the theory and applications of genetic algorithms in a variety of engineering systems. In addition to addressing the simple formulation of GAs, the chapters include original material on the design of evolutionary algorithms for particular engineering applications. Chosen for their experience in the field, the authors are drawn from both academia and industry worldwide, and provide extensive insight into their respective fields. The volume is suitable for researchers and postgraduates who need to be up-to-date with developments in this important subject, as well as practitioners in industry who are eager to find out how to solve their particular real-life problems.

Control Engineering Solutions

Mon, 11 Jun 2018 21:11:08 GMT

This book collects together in one volume a number of control engineering solutions, intended to be representative of solutions applicable to a broad class of control problems, and outlines possible alternative approaches to finding them. This is neither a control theory book nor a handbook of laboratory experiments, although it includes both the basic theory of control and practical laboratory set-ups to illustrate the solutions proposed.

A number of control problems are identified and discussed, from the initial phase of experimental construction of a model of the process to the final steps of hardware and software implementation, for several illustrative applications including a motor drive and a small scale robot. PID tuning and anti-wind-up, disturbance rejection, time delays and distributed systems, state feedback and observer design, multiloop interaction, fault detection and supervision, and fuzzy logic control are some of the control issues treated.

Written by a team of European experts, the book should interest a broad audience. Control engineering students will find potential applications for control theory and workable examples of practical control problems. Most of the laboratory set-ups will be easy to replicate by control engineering teaching staff, enabling practical activity to complement theoretical and exercise class sessions. Applied control engineers will find guidelines to approach the solution of their own control problems, including discussion of alternative methods and results to be expected. The publication of this book represents the final outcome of a European TEMPUS project to improve educational practice in automation and control technology.