Graham, T B | Search NASA

DOE OSTI2010

IR Hot Wave

The IR Hot Wave{trademark} furnace is a breakthrough heat treatment system for manufacturing metal components. Near-infrared (IR) radiant energy combines with IR convective heating for heat treating. Heat treatment is an essential process in the manufacture of most components. The controlled heating and cooling of a metal or metal alloy alters its physical, mechanical, and sometimes chemical properties without changing the object's shape. The IR Hot Wave{trademark} furnace offers the simplest, quickest, most efficient, and cost-effective heat treatment option for metals and metal alloys. Compared with other heat treatment alternatives, the IR Hot Wave{trademark} system: (1) is 3 to 15 times faster; (2) is 2 to 3 times more energy efficient; (3) is 20% to 50% more cost-effective; (4) has a {+-}1 C thermal profile compared to a {+-}10 C thermal profile for conventional gas furnaces; and (5) has a 25% to 50% smaller footprint.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

DOE OSTI2010

Integrated Resource Planning Model (IRPM)

The Integrated Resource Planning Model (IRPM) is a decision-support software product for resource-and-capacity planning. Users can evaluate changing constraints on schedule performance, projected cost, and resource use. IRPM is a unique software tool that can analyze complex business situations from a basic supply chain to an integrated production facility to a distributed manufacturing complex. IRPM can be efficiently configured through a user-friendly graphical interface to rapidly provide charts, graphs, tables, and/or written results to summarize postulated business scenarios. There is not a similar integrated resource planning software package presently available. Many different businesses (from government to large corporations as well as medium-to-small manufacturing concerns) could save thousands of dollars and hundreds of labor hours in resource and schedule planning costs. Those businesses also could avoid millions of dollars of revenue lost from fear of overcommitting or from penalties and lost future business for failing to meet promised delivery by using IRPM to perform what-if business-case evaluations. Tough production planning questions that previously were left unanswered can now be answered with a high degree of certainty. Businesses can anticipate production problems and have solutions in hand to deal with those problems. IRPM allows companies to make better plans, decisions, and investments.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗