Benchmark experiment of large-angle scattering reaction cross section of iron at 14 MeV using two shadow bars – Comparison of experimental results with ENDF/B-VIII –

ABSTRACT

It is important to perform neutron transport simulations with accurate nuclear data in the neutronics design of a fusion reactor. However, absolute values of large-angle scattering cross sections vary among nuclear data libraries even for well-examined nuclide of iron. Benchmark experiments focusing on large-angle scattering cross sections were thus performed to confirm the correctness of nuclear data libraries. The series benchmark experiments were performed at a DT neutron source facility, OKTAVIAN of Osaka University, Japan, by the unique experimental system established by the authors’ group, which can extract only the contribution of large-angle scattering reactions. This system consists of two shadow bars, target plate (iron), and neutron detector (niobium). Two types of shadow bars were used and four irradiations were conducted for one experiment, so that contribution of room-return neutrons was effectively removed and only large-angle scattering neutrons were extracted from the measured four Nb reaction rates. The obtained experimental results were compared with calculations for five nuclear data libraries including JENDL-4.0, JEFF.-3.3, FENDL-3.1, ENDF/B- VII, and recently released ENDF/B-VIII. It was found from the comparison that ENDF/B-VIII showed the best result, though ENDF/B-VII showed overestimation and others are in large underestimation at 14 MeV.     

Industry 4.0: a supply chain innovation perspective

The Fourth Industrial Revolution – also known as Industry 4.0 (i4.0) – comprises the digitalisation of the industrial sector. This paper uses the theoretical lens of supply chain innovation (SCI) to investigate the implications of i4.0 on supply chain management. For these purposes, the method of structured content analysis is applied to more than 200 use cases of i4.0-enabled SCI introduced by both established and startup companies. i4.0-enabled SCI manifests along three dimensions: process, technology, and business architecture. The key findings of this study can be summarised as follows: first, i4.0-enabled SCI extends the initial focus on productivity improvements in SC processes towards scalability and flexibility. Second, extant i4.0 solutions rely mostly on analytics and smart things while omitting smart people technology and the human-centric approach associated with the i4.0 paradigm. Third, established companies adopt i4.0 merely to sustain their existing business architectures while startup companies radically change their operating models, relying heavily on data analytics and the platform economy. Consequently, established companies pursue a problem-driven, engineering-based approach to SCI while startup companies follow an ‘asset-light’, business-driven approach. Lastly, there are two distinct approaches to digitalising operational SC processes: platform-based crowdsourcing of standard processes and on-demand provision of customised services.     

Knowledge-Based Virtual Modeling and Simulation of Manufacturing Processes for Industry 4.0

Abstract

Industry 4.0 aims at providing a digital representation of a production landscape, but the challenges in building, maintaining, optimizing, and evolving digital models in inter-organizational production chains have not been identified yet in a systematic manner. In this paper, various Industry 4.0 research and technical challenges are addressed, and their present scenario is discussed. Moreover, in this article, the novel concept of developing experience-based virtual models of engineering entities, process, and the factory is presented. These models of production units, processes, and procedures are accomplished by virtual engineering object (VEO), virtual engineering process (VEP), and virtual engineering factory (VEF), using the knowledge representation technique of Decisional DNA. This blend of the virtual and physical domains permits monitoring of systems and analysis of data to foresee problems before they occur, develop new opportunities, prevent downtime, and even plan for the future by using simulations. Furthermore, the proposed virtual model concept not only has the capability of Query Processing and Data Integration for Industrial Data but also real-time visualization of data stream processing.     

Ageing workforce management in manufacturing systems: state of the art and future research agenda

The workforce ageing phenomenon is recently affecting most of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries, due to a general ageing of their populations and a higher average retirement age of the workforce. In this paper, the topic of ageing workforce management is addressed from a production research standpoint, with the aim of understanding how older workers can be supported and involved in a manufacturing system. First, the current state of the art related to the ageing workforce in production systems is presented. This is structured according to four main topics: (1) analysis and evaluation of ageing workers’ functional capacities, (2) consideration of ageing workers’ capacities in industrial system modelling and management, (3) analysis and exploitation of ageing workers’ expertise, (4) acknowledgement, analysis, design and integration of supporting technologies. Next, the discussion on the impact of the ageing workforce on manufacturing systems’ performances leads to the comparison of some technological advances that are related to the Industry 4.0 paradigms. Finally, a future research agenda on this topic is proposed, based on the same topics classification proposed for the literature analysis. Five different research areas are derived, suggesting future directions for appropriate research concerning the employ of older workers in production environments.     

Smart control of the assembly process with a fuzzy control system in the context of Industry 4.0

Assembly line balancing is important for the efficiency of the assembly process, however, a wide range of disruptions can break the current workload balance. Some researchers explored the task assignment plan for the assembly line balancing problem with the assumption that the assembly process is smooth with no disruption. Other researchers considered the impacts of disruptions, but they only explored the task re-assignment solutions for the assembly line re-balancing problem with the assumption that the re-balancing decision has been made already. There is limited literature exploring on-line adjustment solutions (layout adjustment and production rate adjustment) for an assembly line in a dynamic environment. This is because real-time monitoring of an assembly process was impossible in the past, and it is difficult to incorporate uncertainty factors into the balancing process because of the randomness and non-linearity of these factors. However, Industry 4.0 breaks the information barriers between different parts of an assembly line, since smart, connected products, which are enabled by advanced information and communication technology, can intelligently interact and communicate with each other and collect, process and produce information. Smart control of an assembly line becomes possible with the large amounts of real-time production data in the era of Industry 4.0, but there is little literature considering this new context. In this study, a fuzzy control system is developed to analyze the real-time information of an assembly line, with two types of fuzzy controllers in the fuzzy system. Type 1 fuzzy controller is used to determine whether the assembly line should be re-balanced to satisfy the demand, and type 2 fuzzy controller is used to adjust the production rate of each workstation in time to eliminate blockage and starvation, and increase the utilization of machines. Compared with three assembly lines without the proposed fuzzy control system, the assembly line with the fuzzy control system performs better, in terms of blockage ratio, starvation ratio and buffer level. Additionally, with the improvement of information transparency, the performance of an assembly line will be better. The research findings shed light on the smart control of the assembly process, and provide insights into the impacts of Industry 4.0 on assembly line balancing.     

Cloud based cyber-physical systems: Network evaluation study

In recent years, the Industry 4.0 concept brings new demands and trends in different areas; one of them is distributing computational power to the cloud. This concept also introduced the Reference Architectural Model for Industry 4.0 (RAMI 4.0). The efficiency of data communications within the RAMI 4.0 model is a critical issue. Aiming to evaluate the efficiency of data communication in the Cloud Based Cyber-Physical Systems (CB-CPS), this study analyzes the periods and data amount required to communicate with individual hierarchy levels of the RAMI 4.0 model. The evaluation of the network properties of the communication protocols eligible for CB-CPS is presented. The network properties to different cloud providers and data centers’ locations have been measured and interpreted. To test the findings, an architecture for cloud control of laboratory model was proposed. It was found that the time of the day; the day of the week; and data center utilization have a negligible impact on latency. The most significant impact lies in the data center distance and the speed of the communication channel. Moreover, the communication protocol also has impact on the latency. The feasibility of controlling each level of RAMI 4.0 through cloud services was investigated. Experimental results showed that control is possible in many solutions, but these solutions mostly cannot depend just on cloud services. The intelligence on the edge of the network will play a significant role. The main contribution is a thorough evaluation of different cloud providers, locations, and communication protocols to provide recommendations sufficient for different levels of the RAMI 4.0 architecture.     

Automated manufacturing system discovery and digital twin generation

The latest developments in industry involved the deployment of digital twins for both long and short term decision making, such as supply chain management, production planning and control. Modern production environments are frequently subject to disruptions and consequent modifications. As a result, the development of digital twins of manufacturing systems cannot rely solely on manual operations. Recent contributions proposed approaches to exploit data for the automated generation of the models. However, the resulting representations can be excessively accurate and may also describe activities that are not significant for estimating the system performance. Generating models with an appropriate level of detail can avoid useless efforts and long computation times, while allowing for easier understanding and re-usability. This paper proposes a method to automatically discover manufacturing systems and generate adequate digital twins. The relevant characteristics of a production system are automatically retrieved from data logs. The proposed method has been applied on two test cases and a real manufacturing line. The experimental results prove its effectiveness in generating digital models that can correctly estimate the system performance.     

The HORSE framework: A reference architecture for cyber-physical systems in hybrid smart manufacturing

In the Industry 4.0 era, manufacturers strive to remain competitive by using advanced technologies such as collaborative robots, automated guided vehicles, augmented reality support and smart devices. However, only if these technological advancements are integrated into their system context in a seamless way, they can deliver their full potential to a manufacturing organization. This integration requires a system architecture as a blueprint for positioning and interconnection of the technologies. For this purpose, the HORSE framework, resulting from the HORSE EU H2020 project, has been developed to act as a reference architecture of a cyber-physical system to integrate various Industry 4.0 technologies and support hybrid manufacturing processes, i.e., processes in which human and robotic workers collaborate. The architecture has been created using design science research, based on well-known software engineering frameworks, established manufacturing domain standards and practical industry requirements. The value of a reference architecture is mainly established by application in practice. For this purpose, this paper presents the application and evaluation of the HORSE framework in 10 manufacturing plants across Europe, each with its own characteristics. Through the physical deployment and demonstration, the framework proved its goal to be basis for the well-structured design of an operational smart manufacturing cyber-physical system that provides horizontal, cross-functional management of manufacturing processes and vertical control of heterogeneous technologies in work cells. We report on valuable insights on the difficulties to realize such systems in specific situations. The experiences form the basis for improved adoption, further improvement and extension of the framework. In sum, this paper shows how a reference architecture framework supports the structured application of Industry 4.0 technologies in manufacturing environments that so far have relied on more traditional digital technology.     

Towards sustainable industry 4.0: A green real-time IIoT multitask scheduling architecture for distributed 3D printing services

As the keystones of the personalized manufacturing, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) consolidated with 3D printing pave the path for the era of Industry 4.0 and smart manufacturing. By resembling the age of craft manufacturing, Industry 4.0 expedites the alteration from mass production to mass customization. When distributed 3D printers (3DPs) are shared and collaborated in the IIoT, a promising dynamic, globalized, economical, and time-effective manufacturing environment for customized products will appear. However, the optimum allocation and scheduling of the personalized 3D printing tasks (3DPTs) in the IIoT in a manner that respects the customized attributes submitted for each model while satisfying not only the real-time requirements but also the workload balancing between the distributed 3DPs is an inevitable research challenge that needs further in-depth investigations. Therefore, to address this issue, this paper proposes a real-time green-aware multi-task scheduling architecture for personalized 3DPTs in the IIoT. The proposed architecture is divided into two interconnected folds, namely, allocation and scheduling. A robust online allocation algorithm is proposed to generate the optimal allocation for the 3DPTs. This allocation algorithm takes into consideration meeting precisely the customized user-defined attributes for each submitted 3DPT in the IIoT as well as balancing the workload between the distributed 3DPs simultaneously with improving their energy efficiency. Moreover, meeting the predefined deadline for each submitted 3DPT is among the main objectives of the proposed architecture. Consequently, an adaptive real-time multi-task priority-based scheduling (ARMPS) algorithm has been developed. The built ARMPS algorithm respects both the dynamicity and the real-time requirements of the submitted 3DPTs. A set of performance evaluation tests has been performed to thoroughly investigate the robustness of the proposed algorithm. Simulation results proved the robustness and scalability of the proposed architecture that surpasses its counterpart state-of-the-art architectures, especially in high-load environments.     

Real-time integrated production-scheduling and maintenance-planning in a flexible job shop with machine deterioration and condition-based maintenance

The introduction of modern technologies in manufacturing is contributing to the emergence of smart (and data-driven) manufacturing systems, known as Industry 4.0. The benefits of adopting such technologies can be fully utilized by presenting optimization models in every step of the decision-making process. This includes the optimization of maintenance plans and production schedules, which are two essential aspects of any manufacturing process. In this paper, we consider the real-time joint optimization of maintenance planning and production scheduling in smart manufacturing systems. We have considered a flexible job shop production layout and addressed several issues that usually take place in practice. The addressed issues are: new job arrivals, unexpected due date changes, machine degradation, random breakdowns, minimal repairs, and condition-based maintenance (CBM). We have proposed a real-time optimization-based system that utilizes a modified hybrid genetic algorithm, an integrated proactive-reactive optimization model, and hybrid rescheduling policies. A set of modified benchmark problems is used to test the proposed system by comparing its performance to several other optimization algorithms and methods used in practice. The results show the superiority of the proposed system for solving the problem under study. The results also emphasize the importance of the quality of the generated baseline plans (i.e., initial integrated plans), the use of hybrid rescheduling policies, and the importance of rescheduling times (i.e., reaction times) for cost savings.