The blog moved to a new web-address

The Sustainable Manufacturing in China Blog moved:

http://gus.nottingham.edu.cn/blogs/green-tec

Last entry

Due to technical reasons the Sustainable Manufacturing in China – blog has been moved to a new address:

http://gus.nottingham.edu.cn/blogs/green-tec

If you are interested in news, reviews, interviews and other articles related to sustainable product design, green manufacturing, and other related clean technologies not only focussed on China then please follow the above link.

Testing Feedjit

A friend of mine recommended Feedjit as a tool to increase blog traffic. This was backed up by an article I read about Feedjit: “Webmasters report an increase of time spend, number of visited pages per visitor, number of repeat visitors.”

Personally I like the Feedjit Life Traffic Feed feature (right column, at the bottom of this page) because it gives an indication on location and time of the blog’s visitors. On the other hand, I can understand that some people might feel a bit like being part of a “Brave New World”…

Anyway, after -admittedly- not so careful consideration I decided to test the tool on this blog. I am looking forward to learning about your thoughts or reservations.

As promised: The follow-up on “Long time no see”

Finally I can deliver the promised details on the remaining points listed in my post „Long time no see” (link to article):

1. A technological research proposal

We have submitted a research proposal called “Energy efficiency in the regional Ningbo automotive industry” to the University’s Inter Campus Research Development Fund, utilising the international nature of The University of Nottingham by involving the three campuses, Malaysia, China, UK, and associated partners.

The project’s overarching vision is to reduce cost, and energy consumption in manufacturing processes, whilst increasing the fabricated parts’ quality. To proof the concept from a technological point of view, this project focuses on the analysis of energy consumption in an extrusion blow moulding process. An initial industrial case has been selected here in Ningbo to assess the influence of different part design features, and process and equipment configurations on energy consumption.

2. A delegation of the Ningbo Municipal Government

On 05/12/2008 representatives of the municipal government visited UNNC to get an overview of the science and technology research of the University and to learn about the related future plans.  The delegation was led by the Vice-Mayor of Ningbo, who was accompanied by the director of the Science and Technology Bureau, the deputy director of the Personnel Office, the assistant director of the Education Bureau, and the director of the Industry and Science Department.

We prepared a short presentation of the Engineering Division outlining our teaching portfolio (2+2 programmes in Mechanical, Civil, and Environmental Engineering), our research theme “Sustainable Manufacturing” and our planned research activities. As a direct result of this meeting the Science and Technology Bureau supported our first research seminar, inviting local companies to take part. This brings me to my next point:

3. “Research in Green Manufacturing”

I admit the invitation to this workshop has been published (in this blog) on short notice , but then again, here in China things tend to happen/work on very short notice. A summary, containing details about how the workshop went, can be found in this article, which I have written for the University news.

4. Postgraduate open day, 7 Dec 2008

Kuan Yoong gave a presentation about the engineering division, informing potential students and their parents about the advantages of being an engineer. More information about the event can be found here.

5. China mission

The NIMRC research trip has already been described on 29/12/2008.

10h/d

A very interesting approach to greener manufacturing can be found here. VirTex Assembly Services,  an electronic manufacturing services company in Austin, USA, changed from a 5 day week to a 4 day week, increasing the daily worktime from 8 to 10 hours. The benefits have not been quantified yet, however, following gains are expected in terms of the environment:

• less fuel consumption of employees driving to work
• energy saving in the PCB assembly: no powering up of the reflow ovens, savings on airconditioning in the manufacturing area.

In addition, the company has noticed an improvement in productivity and employee morale.

Great start into the New Year

Good friends from Nottingham, UK, Ronaldo and Ann, were visiting us here in Ningbo whilst on their holiday in Shanghai. Ronaldo and I used to work together for the Precision Manufacturing Centre at the University of Nottingham (http://www.precisionmanufacturing.co.uk) whereas Ann is working on fuel cells in the Chemical Engineering Division in Nottingham.

Tianyi Pavilion Library

They arrived yesterday afternoon and I brought them along to say hello to some familiar faces from the UK now working here at UNNC. In addition, we visited the Engineering department and talked about old and new research ideas. Then we went out for a nice Szechuan style restaurant (i.e. very hot food- even for Chinese, as I learned on a few occasions by now), before finishing the evening with some more catching up at home. Today we headed to town for sightseeing, the oldest private library in China, Tianyi square, little street markets and similar, before saying goodbye later in the afternoon.

“The same procedure as every year”

Towards the end of every December it seems increasingly difficult to escape from the ever more popular reviews of the year. For China this means reflecting on major events such as the Beijing Olympics or its first walk in space. For the USA the election of Barack Obama seemed to be a key event. The present economic crisis effects countries world-wide and is accordingly being reviewed around the globe. Anyway, following the mentioned trend I am using the last day of the year to reflect on this blog, showing statistics, and outlining its still ongoing creation as well as future plans.

NIMRC China Research Trip

Following the article “Long time no see…” from December 13, 2008 I would like to give a brief overview of my trip to selected Chinese research institutions active in the area of green manufacturing.

The research trip was organised by Professor Nabil Gindy (http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/school3m/staff-look-up/staff-by-role.php?id=NTM2NjEz&page_var=personal), director of the Nottingham Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre (NIMRC) and his researcher Dr Yan Wang to get an insight of the sustainable manufacturing related research carried out across China. Under consideration of the recent establishment of the “Centre for Sustainability in Global Manufacturing” as part of the NIMRC, the exploration of possible collaborations was a particular aspect of the visits.

 

At this point, I would like to outline the journey (the map gives an indication of the places visited):

Workshop on Research in Green Manufacturing – 绿色制造研讨会

Sustainable manufacturing: Risk or Chance? -可持续制造：机遇与挑战？

Workshop Invitation

The Division of Engineering at the University of Nottingham Ningbo, China and the Nottingham Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre (NIMRC), UK are co-organising a workshop on research in the area of green manufacturing.

Interested parties should contact me by email or telephone (see contacts link above).

Long time no see…

…as they say in Britain. I am aware that there has not been a blog-post in a long time. The last weeks have been quite busy and I would like to give a very brief overview of the activities that kept me from regular blogging:

1. We have prepared and submitted a technological research proposal for the University of Nottingham’s “Inter Campus Research Development Fund” bringing together the three Nottingham campuses, Malaysia, UK and China.
2. A delegation of the Ningbo Municipal Government came to see UNNC. An overview of our activities had to be prepared and delivered to them.
3. We are currently preparing a seminar on “Research in Green Manufacturing” involving companies, local research institutions and government.
4. A postgraduate information day was held at UNNC on Sunday 08/12/2008.
5. On short notice I was invited to join Professor Nabil Gindy and Dr Yan Wang on their China mission, visiting research institutions across the country.

I have just returned from the above mentioned research journey. My initial idea of life blogging (which I got from here: http://www.cleanergreenerchina.com/2008/11/09/off-to-juccce-beijing-conference/ ), did not work because I couldn’t access this blog from any of the locations we visited…

To make up for the break in blogging I will write comprehensive articles on each of the above points as soon as possible.