Function Structure Technique

Use Functional Analysis upstream in your ideation efforts to identify opportunities for improving the value quotient of your future solutions (see Technique 3). A simple Functional Analysis can be performed without the help of an engineer or expert. But for the details involved in complex systems, a value engineer or expert with experience is advisable if not necessary—especially when dovetailing this technique with such other formidable techniques as Axiomatic Design (Technique 31) and Function Structure (Technique 32). 

It s important to understand all three types of customers so you can consider each group when designing your innovation. Once you ve done this, you can determine how best to meet each group s expectations through the use of such techniques as Axiomatic Design (Technique 31), Function Structure (Technique 32), and TILMAG (Technique 34). 

The Function Structure technique is employed when you need to create design concepts and are translating functional requirements into design parameters. But since Function Structure doesn t necessarily address the independence of requirements and parameters, it s most effective when applied in conjunction with axiomatic design (see Technique 31). Function Structure is best applied with the help of a qualified engineer. 

Scenario In Function Structure (Technique 32), we determined a list of design options for an automatic hair washing machine. We can use Morphological Matrix to combine these options into possible solutions at the sub function level. 

For simple designs, you can brainstorm a list of subfunctions. More complex systems require the use of Function Structure (Technique 32) or axiomatic design (Technique 31). For process-based innovations, a Process or Value Stream Map (Technique 46) will help you identify subfunctions, which may correspond to steps in the process. 

If you use Function Structure (Technique 32) to identify your innovation s subfunctions, you can follow up with TILMAG to help you design a solution for each subfunction. 

Using the list of desirable and measurable features from step 1, create an initial design. For this high-level design, you can apply any number of techniques, including Axiomatic Design (Technique 31), Function Structure (Technique 32), Structured Abstraction (Technique 23), and Separation... 

The major objective of biochemistry is the complete understanding, at the molecular level, of all of the chemical processes associated with living cells. To achieve this objective, biochemists have sought to isolate the numerous molecules found in cells, determine their structures, and analyze how they function. Many techniques have been used for these purposes some of them are summarized in Table 1-1. 

Much of chemistry occurs at small scales. As Dalton and other scientists realized, atoms are the basic units of matter and combine chemically to form molecules. Although chemists usually work with substantially larger amounts of matter, researchers in the field of nanotechnology are beginning to develop the techniques to manipulate matter on the atomic and molecular scale. By finding the right conditions in which atoms and molecules will assemble into functional structures, or by constructing tiny machines that oscillate, researchers have entered the domain of the atom. 

A knowledge of the structure of proteins has long been recognized as fundamental to an understanding of their chemical and biological functions. One technique for the successful determination of the X-ray crystal structure of proteins was initiated by Perutz in 1954 and involved the isomorphous replacement of heavy atoms into the protein crystal.412 The development of this technique was recently reviewed.413... 

Structural elucidation of natural macromolecules is an important step in understanding the relationships between the chemical properties of a biomolecule and its biological function. The techniques used in organic structure determination (NMR, IR, UV, and MS) are quite useful when applied to biomolecules, but the unique nature of natural molecules also requires the application of specialized chemical techniques. Proteins, polysaccharides, and nucleic acids are polymeric materials, each composed of hundreds or sometimes thousands of monomeric units (amino acids, monosaccharides, and nucleotides, respectively). But there is only a limited number of these types of units from which the biomolecules are synthesized. For example, only 20 different amino acids are found in proteins but these different amino acids may appear several times in the same protein molecule. Therefore, the structure of... 

Changes in conformation involved in the function of RNA molecules often lead to large changes in molecular size and shape and involve only partially folded conformations, which preclude crystallization. In such cases SAXS has proved to be a useful technique which complements more local structural techniques such as FRET, hydroxy radical footprinting, and others, as it gives a measure of the global changes in size and shape of the molecule. 

Although the goal here is the extension of molecular electronic structure techniques into the realm of heavy elements, it is important that as much as possible of the reliability of light-element work be retained. The accuracy of the effective potential approximation can most readily be determined by careful comparisons of molecular EP results with those obtained from allelectron calculations. At the present time this can be done easily only for the nonrelativistic case. Although comparisons can be made with experimentally determined properties, it should be kept in mind that in general highly accurate valence wave functions are required. 

One of the most difficult problems for ab initio quantum chemistry is to determine the potential energy function for a chemical reaction on a metal surface. Why is this so First of all, the metal substrate is strongly delocalized. This means that the system cannot be modeled [1] by considering just a small or medium-sized cluster of metal atoms. On the other hand, the band structure techniques that would simplify calculations for a bare metal surface cannot be directly applied because the translational symmetry is broken by the presence of the reactants. As a result one has the difficulty of dealing with extended interactions without the benefit of simplifications due to symmetry. Many problems involving surfaces, interfaces, impurities, or defects in solid state materials fall under this broad rubric along with various solution phenomena as well. 

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