Optimal concurrent product design and process planning based on the requirements of individual customers in one-of-a-kind production

One-of-a-kind production is a new manufacturing paradigm for producing customised products based on the requirements of individual customers while maintaining the quality and efficiency of mass production. This research addresses the issues in optimal concurrent product design and process planning based on the requirements of individual customers. In this work, a hybrid AND-OR graph is developed to model the variations of design configurations/parameters and manufacturing processes/parameters in a generic product family. Since different design configurations and parameters can be created from the same customer requirements, and each design can be further achieved through alternative manufacturing processes and parameters, co-evolutionary genetic programming and numerical optimisation are employed to identify the optimal product design configuration/parameters and manufacturing process/parameters. A case study is introduced to identify the optimal design configuration/parameters and manufacturing process/parameters of custom window products of an industrial company to demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed method.     

Prediction of manufacturing resource requirements from customer demands in mass-customisation production

Mass-customisation production is a new manufacturing approach to produce customised products based on requirements of individual customers while maintaining the quality and efficiency of mass production. Due to the large variations of customised products, the traditional methods for planning manufacturing resources based on volumes of mass produced products are not effective for mass-customization production. In this research, a new manufacturing resource planning method is developed by studying the relations between customer demands and manufacturing resource requirements based on the true data from a mass-customisation production company—Gienow Windows and Doors. In this research, first the relations between the customer demands, modeled by sales data at levels of whole company, sales branches, and markets in sales branches, and the manufacturing resource requirements, modeled by labour requirements of different production lines are studied. Fuzzy pattern clustering method is employed for classifying the resource requirements into patterns to further understand the relations. Based on this study, linear regression and neural network are used to model the linear and non-linear relations between customer demands and manufacturing resource requirements, and to predict the manufacturing resource requirements from available customer demands. A manufacturing resource planning system was developed to demonstrate the effectiveness of this introduced approach.     

Economic in-line inspection sampling strategy with learning effects

This paper presents an innovative approach to a wafer inspection strategy that incorporates learning dynamics in semiconductor manufacturing factories. Using the data from fabrication lines (fabs) we demonstrate algorithms for computing the sampling strategy in terms of the percentage of wafers to sample for a process in different phases of a product life cycle. The average selling price and wafer starts per weeks are considered in the model. The paper provides an optimal solution methodology and concludes that the learning benefits of quality control activities may achieve the most cost-effective operations.     

The impact of applying product-modelling techniques in configurator projects

This paper aims to increase understanding of the impact of using product-modelling techniques to structure and formalise knowledge in configurator projects. Companies that provide customised products increasingly apply configurators in support of sales and design activities, reaping benefits that include shorter lead times, improved quality of specifications and products, and lower overall product costs. The design and implementation of configurators are a challenging task that calls for scientifically based modelling techniques to support the formal representation of configurator knowledge. Even though extant literature has shown the importance of formal modelling techniques, the impact of utilising these techniques remains relatively unknown. Therefore, this article studies three main areas: (1) the impact of using modelling techniques based on Unified Modelling Language (UML), in which the phenomenon model and information model are considered visually, (2) non-UML-based modelling techniques, in which only the phenomenon model is considered and (3) non-formal modelling techniques. This study analyses the impact to companies from increased availability of product knowledge and improved control of product variants. The methodology employed is an exploratory survey, followed by interviews with 18 manufacturing companies providing customised products. The results indicate that companies using UML-based modelling techniques tend to have improved documentation of their product knowledge and an improved ability to reduce the number of product variants. This paper contributes to an increased understanding of what companies can gain from using more formalised modelling techniques in configurator projects, and under what circumstances they should be used.     

Integrative process plan model and representation for intelligent distributed manufacturing planning

Process planning is one of the key functions for product design and manufacturing. Process plans have very great impact on all phases of product design and manufacture. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a high level of interaction between different product design activities and their tight integration into a coherent system. In this paper we describe a process plan model that allows for such integration. The framework for integration is briefly described and the process plan model that considers three dimensions of planning is explained. The manufacturing process plan model is defined as a three-dimensional model with the following dimensions: time/order, variability/alternatives, and aggregation. All three dimensions are defined and explained as they relate to overall manufacturing planning. The nature of these dimensions is illustrated with several examples. The implementation of the framework and the model within the distributed system IMPlanner is presented. The prototype has been implemented in the Java language and the model for data storage has been implemented in XML. The benefits of integrated consideration are described for several currently implemented applications such as feature modelling, process visualization, process network generation, cell formation, and scheduling.     

Feature-driven,process-based approach to the integration of CAD /CAM in wireframe models

This paper presents a structure for an integrated CAD/CAM system in wireframe models than can be simultaneously used for product design and manufacture of prismatic components. A feature-driven, process-based design methodology, which derives its basis from traditional geometry-based design, feature-based design, deterministic and expert heuristic manufacturing knowledge, is proposed. This methodology provides an integrated modelling environment for automation of downstream manufacturing applications such as process planning and NC code generation. Representation of features in the design database is not limited to geometry alone but includes material, tooling and machine specifications and is based on a process-to-geometry mapping. Research shows that informational completeness of a CAD database depends on application; and for manufacturing tasks, the vocabulary of the process describing the means of making a part should be mapped directly to the feature-based geometry. This effort answers key issues in integrating CAD and CAM in the most widely used wireframe modelling systems.     

The role of non-intrusive operator logging to support the analysis and generation of product engineering data using immersive VR

Virtual reality (VR) has the potential to substantially alter the manner in which products of the future are engineered. Currently there are many applications of VR during the product engineering process from design and analysis through to process planning, assembly, machining and shop floor layout. VR takes a multitude of forms, including immersive, desktop, augmented, and is rapidly developing as a tool that can be used in the engineering of products. This paper looks at the use of immersive VR as a tool for analysing both design and manufacturing product engineering activities in a series of research projects involving assembly planning and cable harness design. It focuses particularly on the use of the non-intrusive logging of users in such environments as a means to obtaining a rich data source for activity analysis and its potential within computer integrated manufacturing environments as a means of providing downstream engineering data.     

Manufacturing responsiveness through integrated process planning and scheduling

This paper describes a novel approach to improve manufacturing responsiveness, defined as the ability of a manufacturing system to make a rapid and balanced response to the predictable and unpredictable changes characterizing today's manufacturing environments. The approach aims at creating a dynamic environment that is capable of reacting to factory conditions and which has a significant impact on the reduction of cost, lead time and inventory. The concurrent engineering concept of information sharing to support all the product development phases is employed here. Techniques such as design for manufacture have been applied to the design-process planning interface. Efforts have been made towards eliminating the divisions between process and scheduling activities using the concept of resource elements, which are the exclusive and shared capability boundaries between processing elements in the manufacturing facility. A prototype integration system has been implemented consisting of a knowledge base with facility modelling functions, an intelligent feature-based design system, a featurebased process planning system and a simulation-based scheduling module.     

Feature-based representation for manufacturing planning

Improved integration using product models in a computer aided design and manufacture environment implies that there is an enhanced need to provide information support across a wide range of applications. In a typical situation concerned with mechanical products, these applications are likely to include detail design, process planning and assembly planning. Features have frequently been used to support these and other applications individually, but single feature representations that simultaneously meet the information needs of a number of applications are unusual. Assembly and process planning are two important aspects of an integrated design and manufacture system, and a formal structure for their representation in a feature-based design system is presented. Features are considered to be machined volumes and are described in a hierarchical taxonomy that is designed to be useful across a range of machined components. The assembly structure is also defined hierarchically with the (machining) features forming the basic entities in the assembly. Assembly relationships among features are defined in the form of mating relationships that are carried by the features. A set of mating relationships between pairs of features has been defined after having studied the literature and a number of engineering products. An integrated data structure containing process planning information from earlier research work and the assembly mating relationships is presented and forms the basis of class definitions for each level in the assembly hierarchy. Object-oriented programming techniques have been used to implement a prototype system using the ACIS solid modelling kernel. The research has illustrated the feasibility of using a single feature representation to support a number of activities within a computer integrated manufacturing environment.     

The role of non-intrusive operator logging to support the analysis and generation of product engineering data using immersive VR

Virtual reality (VR) has the potential to substantially alter the manner in which products of the future are engineered. Currently there are many applications of VR during the product engineering process from design and analysis through to process planning, assembly, machining and shop floor layout. VR takes a multitude of forms, including immersive, desktop, augmented, and is rapidly developing as a tool that can be used in the engineering of products. This paper looks at the use of immersive VR as a tool for analysing both design and manufacturing product engineering activities in a series of research projects involving assembly planning and cable harness design. It focuses particularly on the use of the non-intrusive logging of users in such environments as a means to obtaining a rich data source for activity analysis and its potential within computer integrated manufacturing environments as a means of providing downstream engineering data.     

Concurrent multifunction deployment (CMFD)

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a powerful tool for quality planning in product design. In the course of time, the QFD method has passed over several improvements and adaptations to meet specific requests of particular working environments. The current needs and challenges in developing radical innovative and life-cycle optimised products require a concurrent approach of product planning against a complex set of objective functions (e.g. quality, cost, assembly, manufacturing, environment, technology, service, disposal, etc.). An advanced form of QFD that integrates concepts of concurrent engineering for planning product development with respect to multi-objective functions is presented in this paper. This framework is called Concurrent Multifunction Deployment (CMFD). TRIZ method was initially exploited to determine the appropriate vectors of intervention in formulating the CMFD methodology. A systematic algorithm supports the CMFD deployment process. It takes into account results from the analysis, innovation and evaluation phases over the product design process, too, ensuring a superior integration of the planning activities within the product development process.     

Strategic evolution of eco-products: a product life cycle planning methodology

This paper presents a methodology and a software tool to establish an eco-design concept of a product and its life cycle by assigning appropriate life cycle options to the components of the product. The product life cycle planning (LCP) methodology provides the following systematic procedures. First, the medium- or long-term production and collection plan for the product family is clarified. Next, target values for the product and its life cycle are set in the process of determination of customer-oriented specification and eco-specification. Then, eco-solution ideas to realize reasonable resource circulation are generated by using various life cycle option analysis charts. Finally, an eco-design concept which involves eco-solution ideas is evaluated for decision-making at early stages of product development. A design support tool was made for efficiently planning product life cycles by using quality function deployment and life cycle assessment data. Based on case studies, it was verified that the proposed methodology and tool are useful for developing multi-generational eco-products.     

An approach to conceptual and embodiment design within a new product development lifecycle framework

The design of new innovative products is the result of an accurate and precise management of knowledge sources all over its life cycle, such as technology, market, competitors and suppliers. The work contributes with a framework that shows how the knowledge sources influence in the state-of-the-art and market needs so that they become opportunities for innovating products addressing the whole product life cycle. It provides a systematic path from the early generation of ideas to the production of a new product proposal. Through a deep analysis of previous research works of new product innovation life cycle development frameworks and linking it with knowledge management, strategic planning and scorecards, we came out with a structured contribution. The result considers the concurrent activities and its relationships all the way through the product life cycle that can help in creativity and innovation, combined with a process management proposal. Managing the sources of knowledge in highly dynamic markets and technologies is one of the major difficulties involved in innovative products design and development. The emerging knowledge from external sources is confronted with organisation internal knowledge and experience in order to achieve the first product correct.     

Automated robotic programming for products with changes

To achieve mass customization, a manufacturing system needs to accomplish a variety of manufacturing processes of different products for the same product family. One of the critical issues is to develop an automatic program for process planning, so that the required product variations can be tackled appropriately in the same manufacturing system. In the current paper, robotic motion planning for automatic coating process is investigated, the state of the art in this area is reviewed and a new methodology is proposed for path generation, trajectory planning and integrated system simulation.     

Structure dynamics control approach to supply chain planning and adaptation

Many of the existing methods and models of supply chain planning and control consider only one supply chain structure and assume it's more or less static in nature. In practice, supply chains have a multi-structural semantics and those multiple interrelated structures (organisational, functional, informational, financial, topological, technological, product, and energy structures) are dynamic and subject to many planned and disturbance-based changes. These changes are tackled by control activities which make planning an adaptive process. Although the supply chain optimal planning domain for static structures has been extensively investigated, the domain of planning and control of supply chains with structure dynamics merits more systematic and critical attention. In this study, an original form of supply chain representation as a dynamic system with changing multi-structural characteristics is developed. The structure dynamics control is a dynamic interpretation of the supply chain (re)synthesis process and aims at both advancing the supply chain (re)planning domain and enlarging the scope of the supply chain analysis domain that is currently rather limited. The developed approach is based on an optimal program control theory, active modelling objects, and structural–mathematical concept blended with mathematical programming. In this paper, we describe its basic features and exemplify possible applications and extensions regarding real planning and control problems faced by international supply chains in recent years.     

Multi-agent systems applications in manufacturing systems and supply chain management: a review paper

This paper offers a review of the development and use of multi-agent modelling techniques and simulations in the context of manufacturing systems and supply chain management (SCM). The objective of the paper is twofold. First, it presents a comprehensive literature review of current multi-agent systems (MAS) research applications in the field of manufacturing systems and SCM. Second, it aims to identify and evaluate some key issues involved in using MAS methods to model and simulate manufacturing systems. A variety of different MAS applications are reviewed in three different classified research areas: production design and development, production planning and control, and SCM. In presenting a detailed taxonomy of MAS applications, the paper describes MAS application domains from five different perspectives. The review suggests the MAS approach represents a feasible framework for designing and analysing real-time manufacturing operations, since the approach is capable of modelling different levels of agent behaviour and dynamical interactions. The paper also highlights a number of key issues which have to be taken into account in attempting to design MAS-based research paradigms for future applications in manufacturing systems.     

Defining specialized design similarity measures

Similar product designs resemble each other and have similar attributes and characteristics. When examining a product design to create its process plan, design its fixture, or estimate its manufacturing cost, manufacturing engineers often identify one or more similar products that the factory has manufactured in the past. They may do this from memory, from a file cabinet, or from a database (in a product data management system). Then, they retrieve the process plan (or fixture or cost estimate) for the similar product and modify it for the new product. Manufacturing and process planning experts use a complex set of rules, guidelines, and other knowledge to determine how similar two products are. Computer-aided process planning tools, however, generally use simpler, less sophisticated procedures for determining similarity. These traditional procedures may be inappropriate for specific settings. This paper presents an approach for developing function-specific design similarity measures. Such a measure explicitly exploits the specific need for similar products and thus improves variant approaches for process planning, fixture planning, and manufacturability evaluation. The approach is applied to a specific fixture planning domain.     

面向全生命周期的大规模定制生产模式的研究

针对目前关于大规模定制的研究主要囿于产品族开发的现状,提出了从全生命周期的角度研究大规模定制生产模式的思路。通过分析单件定制、大规模生产和大规模定制三种生产模式之间的差别,形成了面向大规模定制的响应模式,总结出了设计和定制分离、延迟策略以及模块化产品族的特点。提出了面向DFX的产品族设计方法、包含需求配置和工程配置等在内的定制配置过程、基于制造单元的生产线布局规划过程、基于产品族结构和JIT策略的物流网络融合处理、面向并行装配线规划的设计结构矩阵处理算法等内容。     

Distributed product and facility prototyping in extended manufacturing enterprises

In order to reduce the cost at the early product development stages, the planners need methodologies and tools that would allow them to judge upon the implications of the product design on the required manufacturing processes and facilities for their production. This paper reports on a new theoretical platform and a pilot implementation of a decision-making environment for distributed product and facility prototyping in an extended enterprise. The approach is based on an exchange of requests and information between collaborative autonomous agents that support the design, manufacturing planning and facility formation activities. The decision-making is formalized as iterative matching of design, process and facility attributes using multilevel resource capability representation within the extended enterprise. The system is implemented as an XML/CORBA-based environment for conveying design and manufacture messages across traditional technology boundaries. The reported research aims to provide the designers with a rapid manufacturing feasibility assessment tool to be used at different design and planning stages in extended manufacturing enterprises.