Keeping Tractors Cool

Keeping Tractors Cool Keeping Tractors Cool Keeping Tractors CoolOne critical engineering difference between farm tractors and over-the-road semi tractors is their speed. Eighteen-wheelers zip along open roads at 65 mph or better. A farm tractors usual plowing speed is about 4 mph, so keeping farm tractors cool is a major task.This big speed differential has big heat-transfer implications. Very little air flows naturally under the hood. Farm tractor designers have always had cooling problems. Those are compounded by farm tractors comparatively small engine compartments. Large, turbocharged diesel farm tractors have up to five under-hood cooling systems one each for the engine, the fuel, the transmission oil, the air compressor, and the cabin air conditioning. New emissions regulations from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have created additional cooling challenges.Farm tractors rely almost entirely on one big fan to drive off all that welcheste heat. Making sure it work s efficiently has always been a tedious task. The under-hood components often were juggled to optimize airflows against the fans appetites for engine power and fuel. That forced manufacturer Case New Holland (CNH), Burr Ridge, IL, to build and test a prototype for each arrangement. There was never enough time or budget to optimize a design.Until very recently, engineers at CNH used hand and spreadsheet calculations. Those were verified, to one degree or another, by physical prototypes. And that was a problem.Automating CalculationsCNH solved the problem by automating heat-transfer calculations with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software supplied by Fluent, Inc., Lebanon, NH. CNH engineers and managers in Burr Ridge say the Fluent package was chosen because its software accurately simulated extremely complicated cooling packages while keeping computational requirements to reasonable levels. Fluent is a unit of ANSYS, Inc., Canonsburg, PA, a developer of engineering simulation an d analysis software. CNH is a unit of CNH Global N.V. in The Netherlands, and is majority owned by Fiat Industrial S.p.A. in Italy.CNH engineers now model and simulate the flow of air from the fan through the engine compartment and through the heat exchangers used in each of the modules. In the companys new Magnum tractors, the fans power consumption was significantly reduced. CFD made it possible to evaluate enough potential designs, and several alternatives, to optimize the design. Also reduced were the costs of building and testing prototypes. Fluents software predicted the performance of the proposed designs.Verifying CalculationsThis was the big change. The old calculations had been verified only in a lab and not under the hood, where the fans behave differently. CNHs old methods also were unable to take into account the geometry of the under-hood compartment and didnt show how the air actually flowed, and that uncertainty made the prototypes necessary.CFD inputs included the g eometry of the tractors diesel engines, fans, heat exchangers and other components, and engine compartment sheet metal. The CFD-driven modifications on the Magnums included improved fan designs that draw much less power as well as new oil coolers.Coolant temperatures predicted by the simulation correlated well with measured temperatures. The CFD models had 5 mio to 10 million elements and it took 24 to 48hours to run the simulation. These results were considered excellent because they approximated the variability of physical testing. The use of simulation in the design process made it possible to bring the product to market substantially faster than the previous generation of products.Adapted from Efficiency for the Field, by Panos Tamamidis, CFD manager, Case New Holland, for Mechanical Engineering, April 2007.CFD made it possible to evaluate enough potential designs, and several alternatives, to optimize the design.

Pros and Cons of the Uberization of Work

Pros and Cons of the Uberization of WorkPros and Cons of the Uberization of WorkToday, nearly one in five jobs is performed by a part-time independent contractor or freelancer. Thats a 60 percent rise versus the number of jobs that part-timers held 15 years ago. This change in how we work has sometimes been referred to as the gig economy. And recently, it has also been referred to as the Uberization of the workplace, named after the ride sharing company Uber, which employs 4,000 full-timers and 156,000 part-timers- that is, only 2.5 percent of the people who rely on Uber for at least some of their earnings are full-time employees.Although Uber the company is relatively young, theUberization of work is nothing new. Uber, Lyft, Apple, and others certainly didnt invent the gig economy its been around for years. And, for better or worse, it seems to be here to stay.Uber is not so much a labor-market innovation as the culmination of a generation-long trend. Even before the founding of the company in 2009, the United States economy welches rapidly becoming an Uber economy writ large, with tens of millions of Americans involved in some form of freelancing, contracting, temping or outsourcing.The decades-long shift to these mora flexible workplace arrangements, the venture capitalist Nick Hanauer and the labor leader David Rolf argue in the latest issue of Democracy Journal, is a transformation that promises new efficiencies and greater flexibility for employers and employees alike, but which threatens to undermine the very foundation upon which middle-class America welches built.In other words, the Uberization of work is good for some, bad for others, and ugly for millions of middle class Americans.Heres one example of how it benefits workers.A company called HourlyNerd, based in Boston, connects alumni of top business schools and other specialized programs to companies with projects in need of completing, like market analysis or examinations of pricing strategy. The most sought-after experts enjoy a steady stream of work, earn well into six figures and can winter in Buenos Aires if they choose.I had an offer from another consulting firm, but I wanted more flexibility with my life, said Carlos Casteln, who started taking on HourlyNerd projects while still at Harvard Business School and now plans to build his career around the platform. I can work from home, have more control of my schedule.Sure, winters in Argentina arent bad. But if youre an older worker, with a family to support, youre not going to be taking the kids On the Road in between gigs anytime soon. And youre going to want some security, are you not?Last year, 23 percent of Americans told Gallup they worried that their working hours would be cut back, up from percentages in the low to midteens in the years leading up to the recession. Twenty-four percent said they worried that their wages would be reduced, up from the mid- to high teens before the recession.The following example from one attorney underlines this worry of those trying to support a family in the gig economyUnlike many of their colleagues in the fast-growing legal outsourcing and temping market, lawyers who work for Axiom, one of the industrys leading players, receive health insurance, paid time off, 401(k)s and money comparable to what they would make at a traditional firm or corporation. Yet many live with the uncertainty of not knowing how long they will go between assignments, during which time they earn no income from the company.When Im done with this job, it could be a month, two months before another one, said a lawyer who worked for Axiom until 2013 and requested anonymity to avoid drawing attention to her current employer. It was a stress point for me. My family depends on me.As for the ugly side of the gig economy, the middle class is shrinking while the concentration of wealth of the so-called 1 percent is rising. Which can be seen in the below NYT infographic, which shows shares of hou seholds by income range. (Note middle income equals households earning between $35,000 and $100,000 per year.)In fact, the above was part of the focus of one presidential candidates address to Americans earlier today.In New York, at the New School, Hilary Clinton gave an economic address of sorts that set forth some of the economic issues shed focus on if elected. She spoke about enacting stricter financial regulation for Wall Street, tightening the gender wage gap, and increasing the minimum wage. She also spoke about the disheartening fact that the middle class was shrinking, thus making it more difficult than ever to get ahead. And, yes, she mentioned the gig economy, too. Heres part of the Atlantics take on Clintons speechShe seemed content to split the difference on many of the issues themselves. She spoke warmly of the new opportunities the gig economy- her term- has created, but also worried about the lack of workplace protections. Later, she vowed to crack down on employers who misclassify workers as contractors to deprive them of benefits, which could equally be a dig at the real goods economy, like FedEx, or the new-tech economy, like Uber. (Unlike Jeb Bush, who plans to cite Uber as a model, Clinton didnt mention the ride app by name.)In any case, where do you stand on the issue? Does the Uberization of work present more solutions than problems to the modern worker? Is it better for our economy or worse? Do you typically dial up Uber or Lyft? Let me know in the comments below.Follow me on Twitter.Read More 3 Leadership Lessons From Obamas Talk With Marc Maron Republican or Democrat Which Way Does Your Industry Lean? The One Job Robots Cant Do (Yet)

Frederick Winslow Taylor

Frederick Winslow Taylor Frederick Winslow Taylor Frederick Winslow TaylorBorn to a wealthy Philadelphia family in 1856 and schooled at Phillips Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, Frederick Winslow Taylor eventually gained entry to Harvard University. His eyesight became poor and he chose instead to take an apprenticeship in a machining shop. After two years, he worked as a laborer at Midvale Steel and quickly rose through the company, becoming an expert in treating steel. Some credit his abilities and others credit his wealthy family, who were friends with the owners of the steel company, for his quick advancement.Some know Taylor for his important steel-tool discoveries. He invented the Taylor-White process for tempering steel, which revolutionized metal cutting techniques and earned multiple medals. He also invented a high-speed cutting tool that won awards at international expositions. fruchtwein know him for his shop-management philosophies, which have earned him the title Father of Scientific Management.While working at the Midvale machine shop, he noticed that some workers werent working to their capacity, slowing down production and causing inefficiencies. He developed a system, sometimes called production or task management, for approaching jobs objectively and measuring workflow efficiency and productivity before these concepts had names.Taylors Principles of Scientific Management discusses how to save time and money when laborers work to their utmost capabilities. He was a proponent of removing anything that didnt add value and finding the best practices possible.He performed scientific studies of workers to determine their lifting capabilities and attempted to quantify horsepower equivalents of manual laborers performing tasks such as unloading iron from a railroad car or digging ditches with various types of shovels. He discussed incentives and the effect that working in herds has on motivation and following instructions.He introduced the idea of ti me and motion studies by observing a job and breaking it down into individual tasks. His ideas had tremendous immediate effect and were quite controversial, as can be expected when providing reasons for people to change their behaviors. When used correctly and in the right context, time-motion studies have the potential to make efficiency improvements, eliminating useless motions and introducing quicker ones.Taylor also recognized one of the dangers to be guarded against, when pay of the man or woman is made in any way to depend on quantity of the work done, is that in the effort to increase the quantity, the quality is apt to deteriorate. It is necessary, almost in all cases therefore, to take definitive steps to insure against any falling off of quality before moving in any way towards an increase in quantity.People reacted both positively and negatively to his ideas. Many were hesitant to implement his ideas. But, when the skepticism wore off, the benefits of higher working stand ards were demonstrated. New standards started appearing in industries such as bricklaying, which hadnt changed in hundreds of years. Loafing on the job started to become criminal.According to Hans D. Pruijt in his 1997 book Job entwurf and Technology Taylorism Vs. Anti-Taylorism, Taylorism is considered a management strategy that separates thinking from doing, as managers think and plan, and workers execute orders. There were many critics of Taylors ideas, and according to some, he was ruthless when recommending that people be fired.Taylor preached the ideals and principles of his system of management until his death from influenza in 1915. Taylors timeless ideas are firmly footed in modern social science and industrial engineering. They still interest business schools and those studying management philosophies worldwide. He continues to be widely studied, debated, and written about.Debbie Sniderman is CEO of VI Ventures LLC, a technical consulting company.Taylors timeless ideas are firmly footed in modern social science and industrial engineering. They still interest business schools and those studying management philosophies worldwide.

3 Tips on Landing an Automotive Engineering Gig

3 Tips on Landing an Automotive Engineering Gig 3 Tips on Landing an Automotive Engineering Gig Vehicles are now one of the most sophisticated products we purchase. Cars are smarter, safer, and more connected in fact,there are more micro-controllers in the average cartoday than there were on the Apollo 11 spaceshipAccording to the Center for Automotive Research (CAR), the automotive industry as a whole employs nearly 1.6 1000000 people, many of whom are directly engaged in designing and engineering the cars and trucks of the future.If youre interested in automotive engineering, there is a job out there waiting for you.As a vehicle systems engineer at Argonne National Laboratory, one of the Department of Energys national laboratories, I assist with molding the future of this nations automotive workforce. I help organize the EcoCAR 3 competition, an elite four-year competition giving students from 16 competing universities the opportunity to gain hands-on, real-world experience by re designing a 2016 Chevrolet Camaro.Thats why Im here today to offer you three ways tojump-start your engineering career1. Find an Accredited UniversityWhen deciding on a university, begin by researching programs with accreditation from the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET). Potential employers may not consider you if your degree is not from an ABET-accredited school.Accreditation should be a minimum requirement. Consider the quality and reputation of the engineering program alongside the cost of tuition some schools carry more weight than others.For example, Virginia Techs College of Engineering is accredited, has a reputable name, and is an economical state school with competitive tuition. Taken altogether, this makes for a verycompelling value proposition.2. Realize the Value of University Student CompetitionsStudent competitions like Advanced Vehicle Technology Competitions (EcoCAR 3), Formula SAE, the American Solar Challenge,and Baja SAE are great waysto deepen your understanding of the automotive industry while gaining the real-world skills you will need for the workplace.Solutions to these competitions complex challenges cannot be found in a book, and the answers are not right or wrong. Teams must collaboratively choose the best options by applying engineering fundamentals and concepts to navigate the problems posed to them.Engineering competitions are intense, but also highly impressive to future employers. Getting involved gives you the opportunity to learn valuable career and life lessons before entering the workforce.3. Gain Soft SkillsSoft skills are just as important as the hard engineering skills that higher education will teach you. Beinga professional in a workplace setting, interacting with management, communicating with your teammates via email or in person, and presentingengineering information to peers are all vital, real-world skills that you can learn via extra-curricular activities.My advice is to take on multiple internships or co-op positions and workwith different companies in various environments to learn where and how you fit in to the industry overall.I myself completed two internships, the first with Mainstream Engineering in Florida and the second with General Motors in Michigan. Both internships provided experience and benefits that have helped me succeed in my role at Argonne. However, it was my involvement as the team leader for the Virginia Tech team in the EcoCAR 2 competition and not my GPA that really landed me the great gig I have today.Graduating with a bachelors degree will help you land a job, but it should be stated that a degree alone may not be enough to get you the job you really want. To land your dream job, youll need to distinguish yourself from the competition. For that reason, experience is vital. Get involved, whether through competitions, internships, co-ops, or extracurricular activities. Doing so will set you up for future career success, no matter what indu stry you have your eyes on.

A Fools Handbook to Bilingual Resume

A Fools Handbook to Bilingual Resume The target of a resume headline is to sum up your abilities and experience into a brief phrase that will stick out and show the possible employer exactly what youve got to offer you. Follow our basic principles, look at a few of the examples and you need to have a fantastic idea about what it requires to truly stick out. 1 approach to highlight your achievements is to begin each work history with a concise description of your duties. By knowing the right structure, you might earn a successful resume. Recruiters understand what youre up to Resumes ought to be a work in progress, tailored to the requirements of the specific job. Up in Arms About Bilingual Resume? Our goal is to highlight your language abilities and the ability to completely comprehend, translate and reproduce the info. Unless youre asking for work in IT, you can alsoput your computer skills in the exact section beneath an overall core competencies heading. Other important areas in your work experience will likewise be explored to highlight your credentials and make a stand-out resume. The greatest additional skills for resume writing are the ones that are linked to the job. The Good, the Bad and Bilingual Resume Resume language skills are the same. Your language skills are just a little portion of your resume, therefore its critical that also you realize how to compose a resume by every section. If you speak more than 1 language, you may well save a life by means of your communication abilities. So if you would like to understand yourself better, learning another language may be the key What You Should Do to Find Out About Bilingual Resume Before Youre Left Behind The capacity to speak different foreign languages will always be regarded as a strong point irrespective of the particular needs of the work position. Even knowing only a few words of a foreign language can be useful. Whats more, if you would like to list more than 1 language, y ou will be using up too much space. You ought to have a particular languages section which gives more thorough info on your ability. No matter your degree of work knowledge, your resume structure is essential to making your application stick out. If a particular language is critical for any particular position, you can take a proper certification exam. Subsequently its better to select the very best and proper resume template. Our 20 templates offer you examples for fruchtwein instances that you could face. As a consequence the level of bilingualism can fluctuate from one person to another. Its possible to only become bilingual if you start when youre a kid. With an increasing number of marriages between people from various nations, it is extremely common to have a few languages spoken within a relationship or house. You solve problems each and every day. Quite a few of our teens have been referring Project READ to pals and peersan exciting method to begin the school year For instance, if you teach yoga in your free time leave it off unless its relevant. So after youve got another language below your belt, you could be fighting off job offers For instance, if the company is searching for someone to improve profitability, you might mention your history of impacting the main point of different businesses. The majority of the world is really bilingual. Besides, make an effort not to include irrelevant positions if you presently have many years of professional bilingual job experience behind your back. Dont forget, the work market is ever-changing. Get the Scoop on Bilingual Resume Before Youre Too Late Some positions might be considered full-time, while others might just be considered part-time or hourly. While it might appear dull, you often have to personalize every letter to fulfill the particular job for which youre employing. Thus the letter is similar to any formal small small business letter. The absolute most efficient cover letters a re custom-tailored to each potential employer to find optimal effect.

How to Cope with a Job You Hate and Can#8217;t Quit

How to Cope with a Job You Hate and Can8217t Quit Americans Hate Their Jobs, Even with Office Perks, a June 24, 2013 CNBC News headline declared. But do they hate them enough to quit and, importantly for the discussion to follow, what about those who, for whatever reason, simply cannot quit? There are lots of reasonsmany very good onesfor being unable to quit, including heavy family responsibilities with no available alternative way to earn an adequate income. So, what can anyone who has to cope with a job (s)he hates, but cant quit, do to make the situation bearable, if not better?1. Think of the good your job does or something about it to be proud of. I have a true story, from my childhood, to tell, about an immigrant who, long ago, for more than 30 years, worked like a robot in a U.S. industrial plant at the height of American industrial supremacy, ceaselessly pounding out piles of silverware e very day at a cramped, noisy work station, one spoon at a time, operating a deafening, enormous mechanized drop-hammer. To get himself through his thousands of shifts, he drew upon one of the few reserves he possesseda reserve of pride. Although numbingly bored and exhausted by his job, whenever hed spot his companys silverware at a restaurant table, hed proudly beam as he pointed to the stamp that he may have banged onto the spoon in his hand. Although not enough, that pride and the wages helped him cope all those years.He was my dad.(Despite being gently lampooned in the King of the Hill series, cartoon Texas family man Hank Hills expressions of small-town. small-scale pride as a myopic propane and propane accessories sales manager are emblematic of this kind of professional and existential coping, and, in his case, celebration.)Even though spoons dont save lives as often as other things, unquestionably nurses and seat belts do. So, if your job, like nursing or seat-belt manufactu re, saves lives, or merely makes them substantially better or safer, take comfort in deserved pride for a job not only well-done, but also for one that does good.2. Beef up your free-time satisfactions. Since the dawn of the industrial revolution, and probably since the dawn of man, offsetting dreary or otherwise unsatisfying work with free-time pleasures has enabled generations of workers to cope with the worst kinds of workwhether through cheery gatherings at the local pub, DIY hobbies, community involvement or just through spending time with ones family or cat.But, giving this coping strategy a modern, savvy spin, it is worth noting that the compensations of post-work activity may get a bonus boost by including anything that upgrades ones employment skills, e.g., a software entwurf course that is enjoyable as well as professionally valuable.Interestingly, free-time satisfactions are neither intrinsic nor extrinsic job rewardsthe two most commonly cited forms of job benefits. For Mozart, as employed, commissioned composer, music provided both kinds.There was the intrinsic, exquisite pleasures afforded by composing and performing perfect and immortal music, enhanced with the extrinsic cash payments and perks from patrons (which, unlike the intrinsic aesthetic rewards are separable from the act of composing or performing).As a historical matter, we are left to wonder to what extent in his free time Mozart continued to compose, just forand only forthe intrinsic fun of it.For the rest of us, it may be thought that post-work free time is an extrinsic reward at the end of the work daya payoff for having stuck to the job for yet another shift. But this seems incorrect, not only because free time is not synonymous with good time, but also because the amount of free time one has is inversely proportional to the amount of time spent at work.This is quite the opposite of money earned as a reward for the same work time, since that extrinsic cash reward increases proport ionately with the work effort, as presumably most other extrinsic rewards should and do.No, punching the time clock on the way out from work is merely the cue to resume other activities in the free-time zone, activities that may or may not be especially rewarding and that can include going home to fight with a battle-prone mother-in-law.The challenge is make that free time a sufficiently effective offset to whatever it is about the job that makes it hatedor, even better, to make the free-time satisfactions a way out of that job.Perhaps we should recognize, in addition to intrinsic and extrinsic rewards, a third category of job-related rewardsthe offsetting.3. Ignore status-consciousness. What do you if you hate your job because it is demeaning or incapable of financing your status strivings? Michael Jordan, hauptstadt von frankreich Hilton and Justin Bieber may have enormous wealth and status stratospherically higher than a nurse, a wheat farmer, a seat-belt assembler (if human), a welder or you, but we have to ask ourselves, who is more indispensable to our lives and civilizationHilton?As for general socioeconomic status cravings measured in terms of things other than a job or its associated income, we must ask exactly what is accomplished when they are satisfied. Chances are that even when the latest specific cravings, e.g., for a pricier car, are satisfied, most people arentor at least not for very long.4. Reframe the boredom. When I, at 19, whined to a co-worker standing at his machine next to my gargantuan aircraft-plant center-drive lathe about being bored, he found my boredom unfathomable. That was because, he said, with visible signs of genuine excitement, the huge room-sized jet-engine turbine disks we made might be titanium one day, steel the next or some exotic alloy the third.He had averted or overcome boredom through a Zen-like fascination with some of the details of his job, framed or re-framed as a varied and therefore engaging experience. (I la sted about two weeks on the job, until he snitched on me, reporting my boredom to the foreman, and before I was reassigned to the parts inspector department, which I stoically held down until I returned to college.)5. Improve your stress-management skills. As an offset to a hated job, this is huge. Assuming that you cant quit your job, you cannot do what the average savannah zebra will do to manage sudden stress at the first whiff of a pride of lions flee. Also, if you cant wage a war at work for improved conditions, mission, etc., without getting fired, fight, as well, is unavailable as an option.So, with fight or flight ruled out, it would seem that, following zebra and general animal logic, the only alternative is to freeze, which, although useful for well-disguised rodents in the bush, is unlikely to work for zebrasor you, since, absent a better strategy, the job, if not a lion, is likely to eat you up.Situations in which freeze (which is to be distinguished from unhelpful paral ytic fright) may pay off are those in which the stressor is not extremely intense engagement would be too risky, ineffective or premature when you do not believe you can immediately control the stressor or when you require more feedback or other information before taking any other steps.Fortunately, you are neither a zebra nor a rodent, and have far more stress-management options available to you, including forgetting (tuning out) and framing (and re-framing) of the kind mentioned above, in connection with the aircraft plant.If you hate your job (or are merely stressed by it) and dont have the time, energy or opportunity at work to formulate additional stress-management strategies like these, you can explore and develop them by taking another piece of advice presented above.Beef up your free-time satisfactionsby using your free time to devise more ways to manage the stress of your un-free, on-the(-hated)-job time.Even if you dont have the time of your life, it will be well-spent tim e for your life.