Chinese design engineers are pushing plastics tolerances on new designs of GM vehicles, such as the Buick LaCrosse. The rapidly growing GM design center near Shanghai recently proposed reduction of an interior fit line line from two to one millimeter, for example, raising objections from design chiefs in Detroit. Because of the enormous success of the Chinese-designed version of the LaCrosse, the GM Chinese designers have a lot of swagger right now. Size of the staff has mushroomed from 23 six years ago to more than 100 now, and they are now given the lead on some global design projects. And these aren’t U.S. transplant designers. They are all Chinese, except one, according to a recent feature article in Fast Company magazine. Does this portend a major thrust for products designed in China? Why not? China is now the second biggest market in the world for many products, and probably will be number one some day. Chinese nationals flood the best science and engineering programs in the Western World. They are smart and eager to learn. And their tremendous work on the LaCrosse shows that they earn their place at the table the old-fashioned way.
Ford and Unifi, maker of Repreve, will gather and recycle 2 million plastic bottles at CES and other shows for conversion into the Repreve seat fabric used in the 2012 Focus EV.
Thanks to embedded electronics, medical devices are getting smaller and smarter than ever. Pacemakers and implantable defibrillators are now able to call physicians. MRIs, CT scanners, and ultrasound machines are gaining mobility. And the venerable Band-Aid may soon be able to detect illnesses ranging from fevers to heart arrhythmias. On February 21, join Design News senior editor Charles Murray for a wide-ranging discussion, "Embedded Angles for Medical Products," which will explore the latest developments in medical electronics. The discussion will examine advances in medical device technology and offer an inside look at the embedded electronics behind it.
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