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Archive for July, 2011

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Plastic injection molding machines give the desired shape to molten plastic for offering different products of daily use. With the rampant use of plastic in many important areas of application like aerospace, transportation of medical gases and semiconductors, the plastic molding industry has grown in leaps and bounds today. Accordingly, the market has come up with different types of machineries for the purpose. However, not all machines are appropriate for the respective users.

Before getting onto the buying tips, it is necessary that you get to know about the various advantages of using plastic injection molding products in our lives. Plastic have properties and characteristics that score rightly over other raw materials. These features include a light resistance, high impact resistance, corrosion resistance, easy operation, high durability and reduced roughness. They also have the capacity to improve the appearance and durability of any product.

While buying machines for plastic processing and plastic rod, plastic molds, plastic welding, plastic molding, plastic injection molding and machining of precision parts, it is necessary that you must understand the capacity, and condition of the machines.

Next, make sure the plastic machine shop from where you are getting your machines give you important documents such as maintenance records, manuals and specifications of the manufacturer and complete description of the upgrading of equipment. These documents are excellent sources of information that is useful in deciding on plastic processing machines. The plastic injection molding machines include injection unit, clamping unit, and hydraulic unit.

Getting the right machines is very necessary so that the usual complications do not appear in the entire molding process. The complications may result in burned or scorched parts, war page of parts, surface imperfections and finally incomplete cavity filling. CNC Plastic Machining with automated and computerized performance features have emerged as great option these days for plastic molding products.

Nowadays, you can also get plastic injection molding machines online. Actually, it is the best option. This is because here you can get different varieties at one place. A little bit of researching can help you get your hands on the best machines for proper plastic machining from the online destination. Look for an experienced manufacturing firm that can guarantee you quality and high performance machines for Tight Tolerance Machining as well. It should have a skilled R&D team that harps on HMI improving, high speed injection molding researching, precision plastic filling with stable PC controlling to ensure that you get the best plastic injection molding machines.

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A new development method may allow breaking away from the pack as rapid prototype Shenzhen companies continue to employ outsource facilities that offer flexibility and foster innovation.

Innovation, whether through the development of new products or processes, has become crucial for companies in virtually every industry. New technology holds the key to competitive advantage and, perhaps, survival.

For manufacturers, the problem is particularly acute because of the ease with which competitors can outsource production. No longer can mature companies, with established manufacturing bases, count on an economy-of-scale advantage as a barrier to entry from new competitors.

Pressure longxiang-ltd.com has worked with hundreds of customers from the large multi-national corporations to small entrepreneurial start-ups, applying unique configurations of equipment and extensive chemical expertise. These efforts have often resulted in new products, processes and, at times, new business segments for the client company. As expected of developmental projects, however, many failed to produce a successful innovation, though, in retrospect, a large number of the attempts did yield substantial savings for the sponsoring client. Early “failures” have prevented a company from making large investments in a process that wouldn’t work as anticipated or in a product that couldn’t meet the performance and economic needs of the marketplace.

“We’ve been able to observe scores of successes, near misses, and failures — the entire range of potential results,” says Larry Rosen, CEO of Pressure Chemical. “In an effort to improve our own internal processes, we began to examine the data closely and realized that we had learned to do things in a new and different way, having seen the best and the worst of all the organizational processes used by our customers.” With the help of an outside consultant, Droz and Associates, we cataloged our new products and processes that illustrated a variety of circumstances, parameters and goals. The consultant found that our method was a radical departure from traditional budget-driven, stage-gate approaches.

Although attempts have been made to improve the traditional method, such as the CPM (Critical Path Method), a joint venture between DuPont and the Remington Rand Corp., the approach was flawed. The Japanese, perhaps driven by their respect for W. Edwards Deming, evolved a step-gate method that looks back periodically to correct the trajectory of a project. Still, something was lacking.

Droz helped us to conceptualize the approach in a graphic manner that illustrates the central distinction of this cyclic route from the traditional straight-line approach. The key benefits of this novel approach, which we call Concept to Commercialization (rapid prototype), are reduction in time, cost and risk, akin to a hat trick in hockey, according to Rosen.

The goal of a recent project, undertaken for a major international manufacturer, was the hydrogenation of a polymer for use in high-capacity data storage. This client chose to outsource the project because of the diversity of appropriately sized equipment available in our facility. The base polymer had been produced by the client in its large continuous production facility and the scope of work was limited to hydrogenation. Unfortunately, market testing of the target product revealed that its properties failed to meet expectations. Because it wasn’t feasible to interrupt commercial production to produce small quantities of differentiated precursors for further work, the client faced abandonment of the project.

In discussions centered upon future windows of opportunity to process additional samples, the client was introduced to the variety of Plastic mold resources and interdisciplinary team of specialists that could be assembled to move the project forward without substantial delay. The proposal presented to the client expanded the scope of work to include creation of a small polymerization system and synthesis of the triblock coRandpolymer precursor. Within three weeks, the project was back on track and demonstrating the best features of the nascent rapid prototype Method.

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Outsourcing: staying the course in the start-up world

It has become very common for start-ups to begin their entire product development by leveraging companies offshore. From being a long-haul possibility for large corporations with deep pockets, offshore development  outsourcing is accepted as a natural phenomenon of business strategy for even the smallest of companies. Industry reports assess the offshore outsourcing to touch 0 billion in 2010, of which at least 13% will be contributed by start-ups in product engineering and specialized outsourcing services.

So much so, in 2005-2006, the Craigslist has added over 20 new cities across the globe—from Manila to Bangalore to Sofia, and so on. These lists see active transactions exchanged—between buyers and sellers of offshore services, where the largest level of interest appears to be in areas like web applications development, custom software development in various domains, graphic design, and independent testing and quality assurance. Other electronic bulletin boards like Elance, Guru, ODesk, and OutsourcingWorld are providing robust environments for start-ups to engage with remote companies through their trusted channels.

If one were to look a little deeper into the boards, many of them provide a service ranking system, and platforms to rave and rant about the buyer experiences. While the buyers are scrambling to hand out projects even as they compete with a fickle market, the engagements have not been as uneventful or helpful as forecast. Why? The raves are far outnumbered by the rants, and the seller side seems to be completely uninterested in retorting or even salvaging tarnishes. Why again?

As a seasoned service provider that works closely with start-ups—from early stages to mature companies—Xoriant Corporation has assembled intelligence from the market, from the customers we have served as well as from the user companies that we have interacted with. Even as the venture funding explodes in new trend-driven development, the ground rules for commencing, nurturing, and expanding an offshore engagement are often forgotten.

From our experience in the past decades, we have created a list of some basic do’s and don’ts that will help you guide your company’s initiative in the offshore engagement. But before we get there, let us step back and ask a couple of questions: when do you commence an offshore exercise, and why should  you?

The answers will define the foundations of your offshore outsourcing engagement. We have found that a start-up typically commences an offshore initiative almost as soon as the business plan and prototypes

are validated. To build a product takes a lot of muscle—from conception to architecting, marketing, and selling, where each component is a big cost initiative to the company, not only in terms of direct dollar costs, but also in terms of management bandwidth. Even as the company spends front-end cycles delighting the first reference customers, the next solid version of the product has to be  simultaneously built for the next set of customers. Here is where the companies come up against a dilemma—how will they build out the product and not miss the market window, while spending as much local engineering bandwidth as possible to make the reference customer implementations a grand success? This is a good instance where a specialized offshore product engineering services partner can bring tremendous value.

To evaluate the reason for offshore, many list cost and convenience as valid reasons. While these are true, time could be the most important element since time-to-market can determine the success or failure of a software venture. An offshore partnership brings in the value of time-savings to the table— in the efficiency of operations, shortening development, in easing up the mandatory chores like testing and implementation for the core team, and so on. Pay a few dollars more to hire the right company that will save you time in managing the offshore, rather than choose the lowest bidder and find yourself spending increasing amounts of time in hand-holding or—even worse—cleaning up after the vendor leaves a trail of bad delivery. An offshore outsourcing engagement is like running the Marathon—the run is arduous and long, the benefits are returned manifold times in the long term.

To help you get the best from your outsourcing engagement, here are our customer-focused 10

Marathon Rules:

1. Ensure that the outsourcer is a product engineering specialist rather than an IT generalist: product engineering entails a mindset wholly different from IT support. The rules of the game change almost every day, and the services firm should bring a talent pool and the gene pool that understands and adapts to these vagaries with aplomb, and still deliver flawlessly. The interaction with the U.S. team will be intense, and the team should be able to understand the bigger, customer-centric vision of the problem and solution. For IT projects, customers are internal, which results in limited specification vagaries. Products are conceived with a certain customer use profile in mind, thus creating very high levels of changes in specifications, priorities and even technologies. To cope up with these changes and still deliver the output, the offshore team needs to have the right experience. Flexibility is the key for successful product engineering.

2. Treat the relationship as a partnership than as a client-vendor relationship. Treat the outsourcing team members as your own employees: when teams on the other side of the world understand your dreams and ambitions, the energies are different, and the commitment to solve the same problems that you intend to is of high importance. If you treat the partner as a vendor, the team will just work to your orders, and not contribute valuable experience that it may have gained from other engagements. In a typical product cycle, one never knows when one needs to draw on that “superhuman” effort from some members of the team. The chances of counting on that one extra stride are much more when the offshore team members feel the involvement.

3. Start small with maintenance-oriented activities before a full-fledged development: as with any nascent process, time, training and hands-on problem solving experience are the keys to accelerate the learning curve. At the beginning of the engagement the offshore team may not be fully aware of the product to run you a full functional testing plan. But if the engagement begins with some maintenance and enhancement tasks, it gives the partner firm time and scope to learn the product better, thereby able to engage better with time.

4. Choose your partner using a pilot project evaluation rather than from an RFP process: as the saying goes, anybody can write a good RFP response, but that does not mean that you will be able to choose the right partner from the responses. Take a closer look and you will find that most responses simply copy out your RFP just so they fill in the check boxes for our selection. A pilot project will involve effort, but pays off in the long run when you decide to choose a partner.

5. Hire for the job: If the outsourced work does not involve mainstream development, do not insist the partner provide the best and the brightest of their talent pool. The top class talent may not like the non-development work and will create attrition problems very soon. As the nature of the engagement evolves, the right partner can always bring in the right talent.

6. Delegate the project management: At least the people management should be in control of the outsourcer. They are on the ground there. The engineering leadership in the U.S. may tend to insist on full control on the project, which involves hiring, firing and day-today management—all of which will become distasteful issues with time. In many successful engagements we have seen than the involvement in these tasks is significantly higher at the beginning of the engagement, but the US company’s detailed involvement successively tapers down as the US based management develops more and more confidence in their offshore counterparts. It is important that this gradual transfer of control should be planned at the outset.

7. Focus on the team’s ability to deliver rather than choosing a group of technology savvy individuals, who do not operate as a team: the right partner firm will know best about putting the right team for you—choosing talent, experience, team effort and so on. Allow them the benefit of choice, and you will have a team that is far more responsive to your needs.

8. Ensure that the U.S. team begins following some engineering processes. Most start-ups scratch up a requirement document on the whiteboard, and the U.S. team, where the team members work in adjoining cubicles, will work very easily off such a rough transcript. Getting productivity out of a remote team working in a totally opposite time zone is much more complex than “over the wall” management. If you do not have a process, invite the partner firm to set up one for you. It will ease your managing the engagement vastly in the course of time. Again, one should never advocate a full blown SEI-CMM or ISO level processes for a startup. However, the discipline of creating specification-architecture design documents and critically reviewing the plans, documents and code created by the offshore team, both in a timely manner, is minimally necessary to ensure higher success.

9. Insist on weekly project meetings and monthly business review meetings in addition to the ad-hoc daily communications. Weekly meetings can bring milestones, schedules, issues, changes, and goals at a tactical level in front of the project teams, while the monthly meetings can focus on larger issues like company goals, directions, and plans. These help glue the offshore and onsite teams in a more powerful manner—especially if you can enable a video conference and meet up virtually.

10. Incorporate a certain resource slack in the overall project budget. The US startups are forced to work with almost no resource slack because of the resource costs. However, in case of offshore teams, the chances of encountering some unforeseen situations, either people-wise or infrastructure-wise, are much higher, which could impact  productivity and schedules. Since the offshore resources typically cost substantially less than the US resources, keeping a little resource slack is a very prudent way of doing things.

We hope this paper has given you a helpful list of rules in managing your next offshore project.

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Electronic Manufacturing Services

Today, most of us employ a few electronic objects for several different functions. This large need for the various models of electronic products includes led to quick growing of the electronics industry worldwide; specially the buyer electronics segment. Today, many area and also international institutions make numerous present day devices which include mobile phone devices, pcs, calculators, laptop computers, clocks, and so on.; which have been in a single way or various other connected to this electronics industry.

Sooner large range manufacturing with electronic products worldwide was accomplished in-house. However, because of disadvantages regarding procurement with natural stuff, human resources and also expertise; made the need for outsourced manufacturing comforts within the electronics industry; known as seeing that electronic manufacturing services (EMS). This different strategy looks at firms this style and design, put together, make, check and also restoration electronic components and also assemblies for authentic equipment manufacturers (OEMs); who need definitely not create and also share large supply, and can swiftly and also proficiently interact to different specifications.

Printed Circuit Board

Recently EMS agencies generally centered with printed circuit board (PCB) creation and also program assemblage was accomplished through the OEMs. However, at the moment the actions include delivering, creating, assembling and also assessment with numerous products which include instrumentation, health, industrial and also client electronics and also burdensome, supply and also client program for you to international consumers.

However, in the long run this OEMs maintain this possession of the product or service models and also brands. Not long ago, these EMS companies have likewise started presenting style and design services that includes mechanised, electrical and also computer software style and design; applied within the initial phases prior to creation. Many people possibly give well-designed, in-circuit, laboratory assessment and also analytical services which include enviromentally friendly and also agency compliance.

Electronic Contract Manufacturing

Electronic manufacturing program can be often known as electronic contract manufacturing (ECM). Today, many institutions operating out of numerous nations around the world around the globe are engaged throughout presenting a number of specific electronic manufacturing services; just like specialty area throughout quick prototyping or product or service assessment. Even more, these ECM firms could also fluctuate regarding manufacturing functionality; using supply for modest, low to medium, or large range creation. Having said that, many people maintain numerous level of quality command specifications depending on this norms, non-reflex requirements and also typical legislation followed within the electronics industry globally.

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Three-dimensional grating plate Print With the present three-dimensional features, so viewers can see objects from different viewing angle, can see the changes of objects, to be on the three-dimensional objects, but used three-dimensional grating plate before printing, it must rely on artificial photographs of the object, making the time-consuming, and the results may not meet the demand. This article aims to use a three dimensional effect grating array can show the characteristics of their building for the production of dimensional printing, by computer soft, it will be taken to reduce labor difficulties, to improve results and consistency of finished products, and improve processing efficiency.

I. Introduction Common market at present three-dimensional color pictures printed, generally refers to three-dimensional grating plate printing, the current direction of this three-dimensional imaging technology and more commercial development, combined with printing, creative arts and science and technology refined and is widely used

Package Decoration, commodity Advertisement , Interior and postcards, the use of such technology in Nepal had also produced a three-dimensional stamp. Compared with three-dimensional printing and traditional printing, has the following characteristics:

1. Realistic three-dimensional printing can reproduce three-dimensional objects, rich layers, realistic image.

2. Original multi-dimensional printing is styling

Design Or scenery shot is made, printed materials and more ink for the coated paper and high temperature, so good gloss, bright color will not fade.

3. Three-dimensional printing are coated with concave and convex cylindrical prism-like grating plate, can see the whole picture looks three-dimensional effect.

4. Aids without wearing a three-dimensional display system, will not arise often does not wear aids salt: but also for people watching.

With the computer To plate CTP Technology appears, using high-precision multi-color printing FM outlets. UV technology continues to mature, many equipment manufacturers introduced a variety of types of UV

Offset . Heidelberg, MAN Roland, KBA, Komori and Ryobi have been introduced such as oak printer has this feature. Printer with direct printing rubber plastic grating material is no longer a problem, three-dimensional printing quality is assured, so grating three-dimensional printing plate developed rapidly. In recent years, the domestic three-dimensional printing has been greatly developed. Start printing plate using grating three-dimensional printing technology to produce more complex products. From

Label , Posters to packaging products, and even the plastic cups are examples of its application. Although the three-dimensional printing plate grating products that are not true three-dimensional visual effect, but the grating three-dimensional printing is not just propaganda or art products. Three-dimensional photograph made with the traditional technique compared to the use flexibility in the economy and so on have shown its unique advantage. For example, raster printing three-dimensional map used in the production, in addition to easy to carry, easy to store the merits, but also get three-dimensional map of the concept of entities as a result, when combined with aerial photos or satellite photo images, but also provide a rich visual landscape conducive to the topography, surface features of the judged.

Traditional leaflets of three-dimensional view or print pictures of people, although you can use the single photo of the principle of making false 3D stereoscopic imaging, but the content object to photographs of subjective distance determined by the production staff, then according to the results of such judgments, Use image processing software to artificial methods described hierarchical, stratified and then use the grating plate to complete pre-press processing software, produced original. The results of this approach, changing the surface features of height difference between the real and artificial layered process is quite time-consuming, but also make the results vary, the lack of product consistency.

Plane or image for a three-dimensional map coordinates, the island has been measured with the system of DTM (DigitalTerrainModel, DTM) sets together, thus providing an added layer of objective basis. The purpose of this is grating array can show the characteristics of three-dimensional effect will be applied to produce three-dimensional map plane, by DTM for assistance, the design of a geographic information system software using a hierarchical approach to reduce the manual check and improve product consistency and objectivity, and improve processing efficiency. As the small number of hierarchical concept as that may arise in three-dimensional model of the phenomenon of discontinuous or indistinct, too layered to be increased production time, this article also different hierarchical way, to compare their results to understand the way for the production of .

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Today I am going to discuss really an interesting topic – crossing the barrier of SLA. This article will give you an insight how important is a customer relationship and how it is playing vital role not only in your carrier but also for your organization and how six sigma help us to achieve this.

As we all aware that SLA is nothing but service level agreement between customer and service provider. This document signed by both the parties. But here I am not going to discuss what a SLA is. I would like to discuss how we cross the boundaries of SLA and what the challenges we faced to do that are.

We have done this for a global auto major. From the end of 2006 auto industry was not doing that much of great like it did earlier and planned for cost cutting. As a cost cutting measure they planned to outsource lot of IT works to Asia pacific reason from the US.

 The managers from different levels of this company in Asia pacific region wanted to implement a new concept, ITIL in their IT to reduce the cost in more efficient manner (Another article on implement ITIL for global auto major soon going to publish here ).

I am the fortunate one who got an opportunity to implement this task. We have around 5-6 different service providers (Vendors). First hurdle we got the confidence of the resources to work on this model as none of them has worked in ITIL model prior to this assignment including me. Fortunately I was trained in my company ITIL 2 earlier. I could still remember once I selected for this tasks I was told by one manager that to success of this we just need to change our mindset and remaining things will follow smoothly. 

Once transitioned completed the real problem start. Whatever tickets we received all became SLA missed. This creates a serious concern for both management and customer. Things are getting worse in every day. Customer started threatening to us to pullback the project to US. This project deals with quality of the car and has lot of metrics information. This was the most prestigious project in our portfolio out of around 50 project transitioned to Asia pacific region and capability of this region was all depend on this project.

Management was very clear that any how this project should stay with us. Suddenly one new problem started. Every month there is a data load for this project from different external/internal agency or applications. We were unable to load the data. The reason behind this was network latency. I have provided a solution for this issue and it resolved.

Now we got the real problem. As data load was a real complex process which includes A-Z we were struggling to do this job by CTQ. It was taking almost 3-4 weeks every month instead of taking 1 week which was CTQ.

What we did to overcome this problem…

First we spoke to customer regarding the various issues we faced and convinced them to change all tickets raised during data load to Business support/Customer support ticket and here we were in a position to avoid 60% tickets as SLA missed. But problem still persists and as load taking longer time customer were willing to take back the project.

Then we introduce a 6 sigma Black Belt project which not only change the whole scenario but also inspired me in 6 sigma.

We found couple of key points which were outcome of this project

Most of the time resources do not send the update to customer properly. No proper communication between external/internal agencies about the data. As customers were spread across different geographies there was a huge time lag of confirmation in different stages of the data load. This is also important because one process output is input of other process. So every stage we need confirmation from all the customers to proceed further. There was no proper process to execute the load which was created.

The outcome of this project increase a sigma value from 0 to 2.7 in couple of months and load time reduce to 5-7 days only.

We had involved customers in all phase of the projects so that they can fill a part of it. We have setup couple of other small processes also like periodic feed back, pre load meeting, and pre load check list and so on and for past one year it is running fine. Now customer has a great confidence on us. Earlier in each status meeting there were some escalations surely and now we used to ask them “how is the weather there?”, “How you spent your holiday?” What we are planning to do in this weekend etc.

Below is the improvement of sigma value of Black belt project which we can measure but what we cannot measures are

Customer confidence Satisfaction for resources for overcomes the hurdle. Satisfaction for management for providing a new direction towards ITIL. Lesson learnt for common mistakes. Motivated towards process  and quality

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Rapid Sheet Metal™, Inc. hosted over 70 members of the New Hampshire Solidworks User Group (NH SWUG) on Tuesday, December 2.  After tours of Rapid’s state of the art sheet metal facility dedicated to the ultrafast turnaround of prototype sheet metal parts and a bountiful buffet dinner, the crowd settled in for an evening of discussions on cyber metal bending in the world’s most widely used sheet metal design CAD software, Solidworks.

Jay Patterson, Product Definition Specialist for SolidWorks, reviewed the tools and methodologies of how to design sheet metal parts within Solidworks.  Covering the basics as well as expert tips and tricks, Jay demonstrated the power of Solidworks for designing sheet metal.  Steve Lynch, Engineering Manager for Rapid Sheet Metal, followed with a presentation on manufacturing considerations for sheet metal design.  The audience was shown how a sheet metal shop uses their 3D Solidworks data to make real parts and the impact on manufacturing of certain CAD design features such as bend radii, hemming, offset bends and hardware insertion.  Concluding the meeting was a Question and Answer session that many felt had to end too soon. 

The User Group meeting was a great way for Solidworks Users to connect with others in the engineering community and refine their sheet metal design skills.  “Steve Lynch provided one of the best presentations we have ever seen.  Overall, everyone got a lot out of the night and I would consider it our best NH-SWUG meeting yet!  Kudos to Rapid Sheet Metal.” commented Cindy Berend, NH-SWUG President.

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What is rapid application development (RAD) and how can it help user interface designers?

Rapid application development is a software development methodology that emphasizes minimal planning and rapid prototyping.  It is an act first, think later method. The planning takes place through the fast flow of creative ideas and problem solving that take place during the rapid prototyping process.  Thus, rapid application development is very flexible and leaves room for endless improvements and a quicker software writing process.  In this article I will take a look at the history of the method as well as the pros and cons of using the strategy in user interface design.

Rapid application development: history and implementation

Rapid application development was introduced as a software design method in 1991 by James Martin, an IT consultant and Pulitzer Prize nominated author.  Since its inception, rapid application development (RAD) has evolved from strictly iterative development and prototypes to a method that can be defined more broadly, encompassing the use of various software frameworks and web application frameworks.

Rapid application development is a method that is designed first and foremost to deliver systems fast.  Before venturing down this speedy path in a user interface design project, make sure that you are using it to develop an interface design that can be delivered quickly.  For example, it is probably not the best method for designing a complex air traffic control system, but would work well if you are revamping an extant e-Commerce site.  Here are a few criteria that can help you discern whether or not to implement the method for the design of your new user interface:

•    Project Scope: a project with a scope that is narrow and well-defined is suitable for rapid application development, but a project with a broad and obscure scope is not.

•    Project Data: Project data that already exists (and therefore does not need to be analyzed) is suitable for RAD, but project data that needs to be generated and analyzed is not.

•    Project Decisions: Project decisions that can be made quickly by a small group of people who are always on-call are suitable for RAD, project decisions that must be made by a wide-range of people who are not always available are not.

•    Project Team: A small project team (about six or less) is suitable for RAD, a large product team (more than six) is not.

The abovementioned criteria can serve as a guideline to help you discern whether or not rapid application development is the right user interface design method for you, but it is ultimately your choice. If you do decide that rapid application development is a good fit, a typical RAD process can be broken down into the following steps:

•    Select a team: you should choose a team of designers/collaborators who will be able to give timely, efficient input and feedback.

•    Analysis: Assess your project goals and understand what you need to do, why you need to do it, and how you need to do it to realize the goal of your project.

•    Design workshop: Create a design workshop during which you and your team can rapidly iterate, prototype and conduct usability tests on each updated version of your user interface design until it has reached a point of satisfaction that aligns itself with your goals. At this point you are ready for implementation. The process of RAD is relatively unstructured so as not to impede the creative flow, but make sure you can work many uninterrupted hours—RAD is not for the faint of heart.

Pros and Cons of rapid application development in user interface design projects

Rapid application development can be a very effective user interface design method if used for the right reasons and under the right circumstances.  RAD promotes a collaborative and creative environment in which all stakeholders can take part in a very detailed project.  RAD can give fast results and bring forth successful new ideas that might have seemed too risky to use in a more deliberate process. However, RAD also has its drawbacks.  Its use is contingence upon a strong, cohesive team that does not have time constraints.  Its quick nature can allow for many errors and does not promote organization or well-thought-out solutions.  However, experience shows that the consequences of RAD pitfalls can generally be avoided if you carefully assess whether or not it is an appropriate method for your project—careful assessment at the beginning can open the floodgates to rapid success.

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CANCER:

Cancer arises because certain cells within a given tissue escape from normal growth controls, replicate more frequently, and migrate to sites distant from the parent tissue where further uncontrolled replication occurs. Such escape is facilitated by the accumulation of mutations within a cancerous cell as a result of the innate and environmental carcinogens to which cellular DNA is subjected. If errors generated in coding DNA are not repaired, these will be transmitted to the daughter strands as the cell divides. Clearly, mutations will arise more rapidly if external mutagenic stimuli are increased, or if the cell is defective in DNA repair systems.

ONCOGENES:

This term refers to a gene which has been mutated to facilitate neoplastic growth. The normal function of such genes may be the synthesis of factors involved in growth control, the cell cycle or apoptosis. Oncogenes can be broadly divided into two groups, according to whether their oncogenic effect results from overactivity of a ‘proto-oncogene’ or the loss of a ‘tumour suppressor’ function.

Proto-Oncogene:

The majority of known oncogenes are components of signal transduction pathways in which mutations or the presence of increased copies of a gene result in overactivity, mimicking persistent growth factor stimulation. These include genes encoding receptors (e.g. erbB in breast carcinoma), cytoplasmic signalling moieties such as K-ras, and transcription factors such as c-myc (important in gastrointestinal tumours and leukaemias). A recently described class encode mitotic spindle binding proteins; mutation in these genes promote premature exit from anaphase, leading to incorrect chromosome segregation to daughter cells, and anaploidy. In animals, a number of tumours are caused by retroviruses which carry activated oncogenes, but to date this has not been shown to be a common mechanism in human cancer. Nevertheless, several human cancers are undoubtedly caused by infectious agents. Important examples include human papillomavirus E7 (which inappropriately phosphorylates pRB), leading to cervical carcinoma; herpesvirus 8 (which encodes a cyclin that drives the host cell through the G1-S checkpoint); and Epstein-Barr virus, responsible for Burkitt’s lymphoma and nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

Tumor Suppressor genes tend to encode proteins whose normal function is to inhibit the cell cycle or to induce apoptosis to prevent transmission of uncorrectable DNA defects. Direct inhibitors of the cell cycle include pRB, illustrated in figure 1.15. Other tumor suppressor genes encode components of inhibitory growth factor-signaling pathways, particularly those of transforming growth factor (TGF)-β and its associated cytoplasmic signaling molecules such as Smad2 and Smad4 (which is the DPC4 ‘deleted in pancreatic carcinoma’ gene). As noted in the previous section, neurofibromin encodes as Ras inhibitor which is mutated in neurofibromatosis. APC, the gene mutated in familial adenomatous  polyposis and 60% of sporadic colon  adenomas and carcinomas, is bought to operate as an oncogene by rendering cells less susceptible to apoptosis. P53, a key tumor suppressor gene, normally uses both mechanisms to override other signals which would otherwise stimulate cell proliferation; details of P53 activity are highlighted in figure 1.16. The importance fo P53 is illustrated by the fact that it is inactivated in over 50% of human tumors, including breast and colon carcinomas, and childhood leukaemias.

When an oncogene results from a mutation reducing the activity of a tumor suppressor, a single mutation usually is insufficient to generate oncogenic activity unless an additional mutation in activities the second copy of the gene. This ‘two-hit’ model of tumorigenesis, developed by Knudson, is illustrated in figure 1.17. If, on the other hand, an oncogene results from over activity of a proto-oncogene, a mutation in only one of the two copies may be sufficient to promote tumorigenesis. This is also true in an important exception to the two-hit rule, in the case of the tumor suppressor gene P53, since mutation in only one allele may be sufficient to result in a biological effect. This reflects the operation of the protein as a tetramer, so abnormalities in any one of the subunits may derange its function.

By: DAVIDSON’S

Principles and Practice of Medicine

Eighteenth Edition