Adapting IDEF0 modelling to perform manufacturing diagnosis

This paper presents the work done to adapt a system modelling methodology, ICAM DEFinition Zero (IDEF0), to perform manufacturing diagnosis. It describes the basic notions of IDEF0 modelling and the underlying principle of a novel reasoning technique, the worst-first search, developed for manufacturing diagnosis. The reasoning technique which was originally based on graph theory and possibility theory, has been adapted to access the information stored in an IDEF0 model. Details of a prototype IDEF0-based system for manufacturing diagnosis are presented. The results of system validation based on a manufacturing system for the production of mechanical components are reported.     

Development of a knowledge-based manufacturing modelling system based on IDEF0 for the metal-cutting industry

This paper looks into a new area for knowledge-based system application, that of manufacturing modelling. The objective is to develop a knowledge-based manufacturing modelling system that can be used to build company-specific as-is and to-be IDEF0 models, and can therefore greatly reduce the turnaround time and effort involved in IDEF0 modelling of manufacturing systems, which can be time-consuming if done manually or even with the aid of a commercially available software package like DESIGN/IDEF. This is especially so when the systems being modelled are large and complex. Besides, there is also the inconsistency problem associated with conventional IDEF0 modelling systems owing to the terms and terminologies in IDEF0 not being precisely defined, and hence being subject to individual interpretations. In this paper, a knowledge-based IDEF0 modelling system that can not only automate the tiresome and time-consuming process of manufacturing modelling but can also eliminate the inconsistency problem is proposed. The paper explains the knowledge-based approach to automated generation of IDEF0 models, and also identifies the kinds of domain knowledge that are required for the construction of the knowledge-based manufacturing modelling system.     

Statistical error analysis and calibration of industrial robots for precision manufacturing

This paper presents a new perspective on the calibration of industrial robotics systems by describing robot position errors as time varying variations of the actual positions of the end-effector from the target position, the error calibration of a robotics manipulator is treated as a process rather than a state. Therefore the theory of variations is applicable. The importance of distinguishing the two kinds of variations, namely random system variations and assignable variations, in a robot calibration process is demonstrated through a Monte Carlo simulation.Statistical process control techniques provide a tool for measuring and characterising the position errors of robotics manipulators. Their application in this work, not only focuses on the development of mathematical formulation of calibration models, but provides a deeper understanding of the randomness of the errors in robot systems.It is also shown that if a robot system is adjusted for its random errors to compensate for undesirable results, the resulting output will be worse than if the robot system alone was not adjusted.     

Engineering the Virtual Enterprise: An Architecture-Driven Modeling Approach

The managerial and organization practices required by an increasingly dynamic competitive manufacturing, business, and industrial environment include the formation of virtual enterprises. A major concern in the management of virtual enterprises is the integration and coordination of business processes contributed by partner enterprises. The traditional methods of process modeling currently used for the design of business processes do not fully support the needs of the virtual enterprise. The design of these virtual enterprises imposes requirements that make it more complex than conventional intraorganizational business process design. This paper first describes an architecture that assists in the design of the virtual enterprise. Then it discusses business process reengineering (BPR) as a methodology for modeling and designing virtual organizations. While BPR presents many useful tools, the approach itself and the modeling tools commonly used for redesign have fundamental shortcomings when dealing with the virtual enterprise. However, several innovative modeling approaches provide promise for this problem. The paper discusses some of these innovative modeling approaches, such as object-oriented modeling of business processes, agent modeling of organizational players, and the use of ontological modeling to capture and manipulate knowledge about the players and processes. The paper concludes with a conceptual modeling methodology that combines these approaches under the enterprise architecture for the design of virtual enterprises.     

An Intelligent Tool for Process Redesign: Manufacturing Supply-Chain Applications

Manufacturing enterprises face intensive competitive pressures, and many firms are forced to redesign processes just to stay even with the competition. But process redesign is an expensive, time-consuming, and labor-intensive activity, and first-generation computer-based tools are inadequate for redesign today. Alternatively, knowledge-based systems and intelligent tools have the ability to address the key intellectual activities required for effective process redesign. The research described in this article addresses an intelligent redesign tool called KOPeR. The article describes the KOPeR design and implementation and highlights its use and mechanics in the context of a manufacturing supply-chain example. It then turns to application of KOPeR as a redesign tool in the field, through an industrial-strength reengineering engagement, to redesign major supply-chain processes. The field results reveal insights into the use, utility, and potential of this tool in procurement, manufacturing, and beyond. The article closes with a number of promising future directions for related research.     

A novel representation of tandem systems with inter-stage storage applied to on-line system monitoring

One of the goals of operating a tandem manufacturing system with finite inter-stage storage and asynchronous operations is to meet the demand without over-producing, under-producing or carrying large quantities of material in storage. We believe that analysing the operation of such a system on a real-time basis helps achieve this goal. The first step in this real-time analysis would be to quantitatively associate the causes and effects of over-production or under-production as they occur. This requires determining the cumulative effect that the performance that any stage has on the system, based on its history, the current system state and the interrelationships between the stages. This paper proposes a method which first represents uniquely and completely each stage and surrounding storage as an element. While this system, which consists only of this simple type of element functions in exactly the same way as the original one, each element is put into an ideal world for decoupled measurement. Though an element behaves in exactly the same way whether it is in the ideal world or in the real world, the elapsed times in the two worlds since the beginning of production can be different, since the responses (occurrences and durations of the blockings and starvations) of the two worlds can be different. A phase parameter is introduced for each element to represent this difference. Once the formation of the phase parameter of the output element is formulated, quantitative relationships between causes and effects of over-producing or under-producing can be explained as they occur.     

A Coordinate Detector for Studying Horizontal Fluxes of Cosmic Rays

A DECOR coordinate detector is a multilayer system of plastic streamer tube chambers located around a NEVOD Cerenkov water calorimeter. The basic characteristics of the detector are as follows: the area is 100 m², the angular resolution is 1°, and the space resolution is 1 cm. The structure of the detector, data acquisition and trigger systems, and results obtained during the operation of a pilot assembly (8 chamber layers and a working area of 8.4 m²) are given.     

Expert system based placement sequence identification for surface mount PCB assembly

Component placement is a critical and time consuming task in the assembly of surface mount printed circuit boards (PCBs). The past decade has witnessed the need for high speed, accurate, and repeatable placement procedures in the PCB assembly domain. At the same time, manufacturing engineers are faced with demands to reduce flow-time and increase throughput rates in order to increase productivity. A consequence of these trends has been the need to identify acceptable (possibly optimal) placement sequences during surface mount PCB assembly.The focus of this research was the identification of near optimal solutions for the placement sequence identification problem while considering machine and process constraints in a manufacturing environment. Expert (or knowledge-based) systems were used as the solution method for this problem. PROLOG, a popular language for artificial intelligence applications, was used in this research. The prototype knowledge-based system developed in this research identifies solutions in (almost) real-time.     

Automated Devices for the Testing of Mill Rolls

Multichannel -type devices developed at TsNIITMASh for the automated ultrasonic inspection of cylindrical objects, such as mill rolls, shafts of turbines and compressor units, circular welded joints of thick-walled shell rings, etc., are described. These devices feature from two to eight acoustoelectronic channels. Acoustic contact occurs through industrial water. The testing is performed under workshop conditions; the object being inspected is rotated by a turning lathe or any other handling mechanism. Sonication is simultaneously performed by piezoelectric transducers (PETs) with input angles of 0, 40, 50, 60, and 70° and also by surface and head waves in order to reveal surface and subsurface flaws. A wide-span eddy-current transducer of special design is also used for this purpose. All data are stored in flash memory and retrieved on a PC located in an office. The inspection results are displayed as C- and B-type scanning defectograms. Moreover, it is possible to obtain an isometric image of flaw zones. -type devices have been used for over one and a half years in two workshops at OAO Severstal'.     

Polarimetric Video Impulse Radar for Landmine Detection

A full-polarimetric ultra wideband GPR front-end has been developed. The technical specifications of the radar have been determined based on the analysis of different GPR scenarios and based on user-oriented demands. The radar has been designed to meet most of these specifications and at the same time to be within a limited budget. The front-end comprises a generator section, a multi-static antenna system and a receiving unit based on a multi-channel sampling converter. The novelty aspects of the radar are: principally new antenna system, use of multiple pulse generators and compensation circuits to improve stability of the system. In comparison with commercially available video impulse GPR systems the key advantages of the front-end are the considerably larger bandwidth, the ability to measure the polarimetric structure of the scattered field and the high precision of scattered field measurements. The front-end is suitable for subsurface imaging with 3D resolution sufficient for antipersonnel mine detection and recognition.     

Knowledge-based workcell attribute oriented dynamic schedulers for flexible manufacturing systems

The economy of production in flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) depends mainly on how effectively the production is planned and how the resources are used. This requires efficient and dynamic factory scheduling and control procedures. This paper addresses two knowledge-based scheduling schemes (work cell attribute oriented dynamic schedulers WCAODSs) to control the flow of parts efficiently in real-time for FMS in which the part-mix varies continually with the planning horizon. The present work employs a hybrid optimisation approach in the generalised A1 framework. A genetic algorithm that provides an optimal combination of a set of priority dispatching rules, one for each work cell WC (WCwisepdr set), for each of the problem instances characterised by their WC attributes, is used for generating examples. The WC attributes reflect the information about the operating environment of each individual WC. Two inductive learning algorithms are employed to learn the examples, and scheduling rules are formulated as a knowledge base. The learning algorithms employed are: the Genetic CID3 (Continuous Interactive Dichotomister3 algorithm extended with genetic program for weight optimisation) and the Classification Decision Tree algorithm. The knowledge base obtained through the above learning schemes generates robust and effective schedules intelligently with respect to the part-mix changes in real-time, for makespan criteria. The comparison made with a GA-based scheduling methodology shows that WCAODSs provide solutions closer to the optimum.     

Local High-Frequency Magnetron Reactive-Ionic Quartz Etching

A high-frequency magnetron reactive-ion etching system for the high-speed quartz glass surface treatment is described. The scanning assembly of the magnetron is located in a separate chamber pumped down to a pressure of 10^–2 Pa. This ensures a highly uniform etching and a high magnetic induction on samples, making it possible to reduce the cathode thickness. The quartz etching was studied in SF₆, CF₄, and CHF₃ with the magnetron operation with and without scanning. The maximum etching rates of 1.6 m/min (with scanning) and 4.2 m/min (without scanning) were attained in CHF₃ with a 1-Pa pressure and 700-W discharge power. 150-m-depth 4-mm-diameter pits were obtained by the quartz etching without scanning. With an increase in the pit depth from 150 to 250 m, the etching rate was reduced from 4.2 to 2.5 m/min.     

A knowledge-based system for operations management in a small to medium sized enterprise

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the mechanisms and structure of scheduling in a computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) environment. This has led to the development of new scheduling models, such as Petri nets, time-augmented Petri nets, fuzzy scheduling models and neural net scheduling models. A fundamental objective of any scheduling system is event synchronisation and optimisation of command, communication and control C³ between each active node of the overall CIM structure. CIM scheduling can be regarded as a nonlinear dynamic control process, whereby, the feed forward or feedback elements are the scheduling priorities that enable the manufacturing organisation to remain within a steady-state profit margin. However, in each different hierarchy level of the organisation, randomness phenomena in the C³ environment can be observed, i.e. events in a particular department or organisational level cause a perturbation elsewhere in the manufacturing organisation. Furthermore, these changes are constrained by the framework of rules pre-set by the organisational structure and business corporate strategy. To a first approximation, these cause-and-effect phenomena can be viewed as deterministic changes which may result in deterministic chaos. In this paper, a self-organising compensating information system (SOCIS) is presented. This system is designed utilising knowledge control modelling (KCM) topology with its architecture based on the principles of client-server and a second-order proportional-integral-differential knowledge-based management system (PID-KBMS).     

Emulating concurrency in a circuit card assembly system

Typical component-placement systems for populating surface mount technology printed circuit boards now exhibit a high degree of concurrency in their functional operations. This concurrency ideally yields high burst-rate estimates of throughput. However, if the concurrency is not properly understood and exploited, the burst rate is severely degraded, as exhibited by process rates observed in the actual production environment. This discernment requires an experimental characterization of the system's functional operation, which must also reflect the peculiarities of the controller. Such an experimental analysis is an essential precursor to performance-optimization procedures of numerically controlled flexible manufacturing systems. This article describes our analysis of an extremely complex workcell with a high degree of concurrency. Due to its enveloping complexity, the methodological framework for the analysis should be applicable to a broad class of concurrent systems. Empirically verifying the characterization required the development of an emulator that quantitatively defines the system to be modeled. As such, it is a numerical, off-line design and analysis tool. It has been utilized to obtain the process rate for particular products, preevaluate proposed engineering changes, interactively construct setups and sequences, and obtain parameters required for line-balancing procedures.     

Microtribological Studies of Different Nanocomposite TiC/a-C:H Coatings Using a Modified Nanoindentation Setup

The microtribological behavior of different nanocomposite TiC/a-C:H coatings against 100Cr6 (AISI 52100) balls with 250 m radius has been studied using a modified nanoindentation setup and was compared to the results of macroscopic pin-on-disc (POD) experiments. First results reveal significant differences between macroscopic friction coefficients _POD determined using POD tests and microscopic friction coefficients _micro. On the macroscopic scale low friction coefficients can be obtained for high hardness coatings. On the microscopic scale the high hardness samples induce considerable wear on the steel counterbody leading to high microscopic friction coefficients of around 0.3. For samples with lower hardness no wear has been observed and low microscopic friction coefficients (< 0.2) can be acheieved.     

A comparison of approaches to concurrent engineering

In this paper, various approaches to the successful implementation of concurrent engineering are presented. Approach 1 addresses the information and software requirements of an integrated manufacturing information system. Two sets of data requirements for the design of mechanical products are discussed. Approach 2 uses feature based design as the impetus behind CAD/CAM integration. A conceptual framework leading to the development of a knowledge-based management system (KBMS) is proposed. KBMS is capable of representing multiple and concurrent views of features. Approach 3 considers product design concerns from inception to disposal in a unified life cycle engineering (ULCE) environment. Approach 4 focuses on assembly as an integrative function of all manufacturing activities. Approach 5 emphasises organisational and cultural issues and proposes that effective dialogue between design and manufacturing engineers is essential for abandoning the over-the-wall design concept. In conclusion, a critique of various approaches to concurrent engineering is provided.     

An activity-based predicate/transition net model of operational control planning for a flexible manufacturing system

An effective flexible manufacturing system (FMS) relies on a hierarchy of decisions, including the control of the FMS operation. The FMS operation usually is dynamically constrained by the limited resources such as pallets, machines, tools, carts, etc. Most analytical models make many assumptions and oversimplify the complicated decision problems. This study proposes the predicate/transition (Pr/Tr) net, a high level petri net, as a model for operational control planning. Firstly, the activities (modes) and their resources usage in FMS were analysed and aggregated into activity sets. Then, the flow of parts among activities was traced to obtain the mode transition diagram, and then the Pr/Tr net model was introduced. We incrementally defined the predicates and transitions into this model. Finally, a comprehensive FMS Pr/Tr net model was derived. By implementing it into a rule-based simulation model, it is well suited for FMS operational control planning because of its inclusiveness and high flexibility.     

Real-time control and scheduling of flexible manufacturing systems: An ordinal optimisation based approach

A unique real-time control and scheduling framework for flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) is presented in this paper. The framework enables the adoption of different scheduling policies for short-term intervals when responding to the dynamic changes of the FMS shop floor status. Each time when rescheduling is called for, standard clock (SC) simulation is first employed to evaluate the performance of a set of scheduling policies for a short planning horizon. The ordinal optimisation concept is then used to choose quickly the most desirable scheduling policy. Owing to the use of the standard clock technique and the ordinal optimisation concept, this framework accomplishes a dramatic reduction in the time needed for decision making, the essential requirement for real-time control. It is also found that as the scale of the problem increases, the decision-making time increases linearly rather than exponentially. These two important features indicate that this framework has the potential for being successfully implemented in real FMS settings. Although the framework cannot always guarantee the global best performance, the case study indicates that satisfactory performance results are always achieved by using this framework.     

A formal model for incorporating shop floor controls into plant information systems

The high cost and long development cycle of shop floor controls (SFC) have prevented many small, medium, and even large-size manufacturers from deploying plant-wide, real-time information systems. In order to stay competitive in a make-to-order business model, such systems are essential. In addressing the obstacles to such systems, this article proposes a formal method that ensures that a built SFC can be applicable to a plant-wide, real- time information system. By taking advantage of both the linear growth of the complexity function in a structured adaptive supervisory control model, and the real-time responses of a virtual production line based e-Manufacturing system, a formal method for creating an integration-ready structured adaptive supervisory control model (iSASC) for a discrete manufacturing system is introduced. An iSASC-based SFC prototype system was successfully tested and evaluated in an industrial site.     

An integral method for measuring the <Emphasis Type="Italic">P</Emphasis>-odd asymmetry on a reactor at neutron polarization switching frequencies higher than the frequencies of the main spectrum of the neutron noise power

P-odd asymmetry is measured when frequencies of switching neutron polarization exceed the frequencies of the reactor power fluctuations that govern the spectral density of noise power. A principle for recording the current signals in these measurements is described. This method was used for the first time at the Konstantinov Institute of Nuclear Physics in Gatchina (Russia). The results suggest that the accuracy of measurements at an increased equipment-switching frequency is even higher than the accuracy obtained using compensation for reactor power fluctuations; hence, this compensation becomes superfluous. Following this method, it is possible to take measurements with a single detector and to dispense with a monitor, thereby rendering the equipment and the measuring technique less complex. A strategy of measurements was developed. An experimental model of the facility was produced and tested with a small-amplitude calibration signal in the presence of reactor power fluctuations caused by rays from reaction ¹⁰B(n )⁷ Li* ⁷Li + . The results from the test measurements of the P-odd effect in reaction ³⁵Cl(n, )³⁶Cl are presented.Translated from Pribory i Tekhnika Eksperimenta, No. 1, 2005, pp. 62–71.Original Russian Text Copyright ¢ 2004 by Vesna, Shulgina.