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Industrial Assembly is a rapidly changing field with significant importance in production. This book is the first of its kind to combine technology, design, methods, and planning and control models of assembly operations and systems. With the increasing importance of assembly in industry and of simultaneous engineering approaches, this timely publication provides: comprehensive coverage of technological, engineering, and management aspects of this field; multi-disciplinary approaches to rationalization of assembly operations and systems; explanation of qualitative models, information technologies, and design techniques, which have been practised effectively in industrial assembly; as well as theoretical foundations and emerging trends that shape the future of assembly

1: Introduction -- 2: Why use robots? -- Robot versus hard automation -- Robot availability, purchase and viability -- Assessing the robot market -- 3: Which configuration? -- Specialized robots -- Robot capability -- Which programming method? -- Important elements in robot specifications -- 4: Calculation of cycle times -- Methods for calculating cycle time -- Parts trees -- Assessing workload -- 5: Grippers -- Sophisticated gripper versus simple gripper -- Compliance -- Types of grippers -- Gripper design -- Sensory control of grippers -- Gripper classifications -- Multiple robots -- Multiple arm robots -- Multiple grippers -- 6: The assembly process -- Assembly techniques -- 7: Product and process design for assembly -- Product compatibility -- Method of construction -- Fifteen design rules -- 8: Workstations -- The system -- Assembly line balancing -- Balancing a robot line -- Implementation of workstations -- 9: Material feeders -- Automatic feeders -- Feeding delicate items -- Component manufacture at site of usage -- Feeding consumable materials -- Conveyors -- Automated guided vehicles -- Prepackaged material control -- 10: Sensing and vision -- Sensors -- Selecting a suitable sensor -- Automatic inspection -- 11: Man-machine mix -- Interaction between man and machine -- Programming -- Man-robot systems -- 12: Safety -- Humans at risk from injury by robots -- Safety procedures and devices -- Procedural checks -- 13: Evaluation of a robot system -- Methods of financial appraisal -- Strategic and tactical justification -- Productivity ratios -- Robot versus manual cost per hour -- Resource graphs -- Cost groups -- The proposal -- 14: Economics of alternative systems -- Assessing costs -- Equilateral triangle -- Direct calculation -- Benefits and total expected savings -- Systems for a range of quantities -- Flexible and fixed aspects of automated assembly -- 15: Economics of robots and grippers -- The workstation -- The gripper design -- 16: The future -- The short-term outlook -- The long-term outlook -- References and bibliography -- Appendix: Assembly Robots Available in the USA and the UK.

I apply nominate scaling to analyze a database of Cold War and post–Cold War roll call votes in the United Nations General Assembly. I investigate the dimensionality and stability of global conflict as well as the substantive content of the voting alignments that have replaced the Cold War East-West dimension. I find that post–Cold War conflict in the UN General Assembly is mostly one-dimensional. This single dimension positions countries on a continuum that runs from a group of Western countries at one extreme to a "counterhegemonic" bloc of countries that frequently clashes with the West, and the United States in particular. Levels of democracy and wealth are important independent determinants of the voting behavior of states. The positions of countries along the single dimension are remarkably stable across time, issue area, and issue importance. Except for the Eastern European countries switching sides, they are very similar to the positions on the Cold War East-West dimension. Contrary to expectations, post–Cold War conflict shows little resemblance to Cold War North-South conflict.

The organization of a conference of world leaders & nongovernmental organization representatives to commemorate the first meeting of the UN's General Assembly in the new millennium is explored. It is argued that similar conferences organized during the 1990s to discuss issues of human rights, women, food, & education produced no significant results. UN officials are delineated as individuals who overlook the activities of member states yet advocate the creation of a more equitable moral order. It is then asserted that such special conferences permit UN officials to feign achievement by setting dates for realizing certain objectives. In addition, the current UN Secretary General, Kofi A. Annan, is criticized for believing that all regional & international conflicts can be resolved if goodwill is established between conflicting parties. The need to determine whether the UN is an inherently flawed institution is articulated. J. W. Parker