Micro costs

There is also a decision to be made about the precision of the cost data to be collected. Micro costing includes each component of resources used and a unit cost for each. Costs can also be collected according to the case-mix group (i.e. the type of case category or patient). Per diem costs can also be collected as an average of all categories of patients or for each disease category. 

The principle of optical triangulation has been known since the time of the early Greeks, and indeed optical triangulation has been used for hundreds of years in applications such as surveying, camera auto-focus and even smart-bombs. With the advent of low-cost, compact electro-optic components such as lateral-effect photodetectors, diode lasers and micro-optics, laser-based triangulation sensors can now be employed for applications that were, heretofore, considered uninspectable. 

A recent victim of the killer micros was Evans and Sutherland s parallel computer development effort, halted ia 1990. Their architecture combiaed a small number of approximately 1-MFLOPS processors iato semi-iadependent functional units. Several of these units could, ia turn, be combiaed to form a processor hierarchy, building up to systems that were expected to cost between 1 and 8 million dollars. With the advent of lO-MFLOPS uniprocessor killer micros, such an architecture became irrelevant and the project was halted. The RISC killer micro could deUver the same level of performance as could the combiaed efforts of 10 of the 1-MFLOPS processors, evea with the unlikely assumptioa that the problem could be perfectiy parallelized across 10 processors. 

Micro-scaling or bottom up approach to quality costs, where it is possible to calculate the cost of losses involved in manufacture and due to returns and/or claims. This method requires a great deal of experience and relies on the availability of detailed cost data throughout a product s life-cycle. While this is a crucial activity for a business, it is also not a practical approach for estimating the quality cost for product in the early stages of product development. 

A micro supply curve of conserved energy for a large commercial refrigerator. Each step represents a conservation measure. The numbers above the steps are keyed to the measure descriptions in the legend. Note that measures 1-4 are cost-effective because the cost of conserved energy is less than the energy price. If energy prices rise, then measures 6 and 7 may also become cost-effective. 

For a number of years HF-A oiTin-water emulsions have been used as a fire-resistant hydraulic medium for pit props. Concern over maintenance costs and operational life has created interest in a better anti-wear type fluid. Micro-emulsions are known to give better wear protection... 

The desire to replace cadmium is generally attributed to its toxicity, both in terms of process pollution and product corrosion, and several alternatives are feasible thicker zinc, tin-zinc alloy or tin-nickel alloy depending upon the precise application " . The demise of decorative nickel-chrome systems in the automotive industries of the world is partly due to cost and partly to market image, and not to technical performance where major improvements took place in the period 1960-1975 through the establishment of duplex nickel under-layers and micro discontinuous chromium top-layers. In the 1980s the trend has been towards black finishes produced generally by powder-applied epoxy polymers. 

In this chapter we examine the processes that have been developed to produce micro-organisms as a source of food protein. We will examine the reasons why micro-organisms have been considered as alternative protein sources, the substrates on which they have been grown, the various process technologies developed and the comparative economics of these processes. One process will be examined in depth, to illustrate how a team composed of such diverse people as microbiologists, process engineers, patent lawyers and cost analysts work together to develop a marketable product. 

All consumer films and professional stock continue to be offered on cellulose triacetate. All its X-ray and micro photographic film is supported on PET. Only Advantix is on PEN. The primary issue is the cost of PEN, which may be why it has not been adopted widely in packaging. Its transport characteristics for bottles is excellent because of its physical characteristics. Its cost is high but a premium price in a premium product is more acceptable than it would be in Kodak s mainstream product range. 

In the thermochromic liquid crystal (TLC) the dominant reflected wavelength is temperature-dependent and it has been employed for full-field mapping of temperature fields for over three decades. Although it is non-intrusive and cost effective, there are some problems in applying it to micro-scale measurements, because of size (typically tens of micrometers) and time response (from a few milliseconds to several hundred milliseconds depending on the material and the form). Examples of application are micro-fabricated systems (Chaudhari et al. 1998 Liu et al. 2002) and electronic components (Azar et al. 1991). 

Based on the micro-electronics fabrication process, Micro-Opto-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MOEMS) have not yet been used in astronomical instrumentation, but this technology will provide the key to small, low-cost, light, and scientifically efficient instruments, and allow impressive breakthroughs in tomorrow s observational astronomy. Two major applications of MOEMS are foreseen ... 

A strong collaboration between micro-optics and astronomy will certainly lead to reach the best scientific return for the lowest cost in next generation astronomical instrumentation for ground-based and space telescopes. 

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