Simulating an automation plan in a 3D Printing manufacturing factory

Additive manufacturing technologies are growing in interest and it is clear that in a short time they have improve enormously. From being a lab technology for fast and small prototyping to enabling stable manufacturing of high-volume products. Every year, more manufacturers choose to adopt 3D printing technologies to produce end-user parts and sell them to compete with other more traditional methods. In this context, this thesis shows the path of using the HP MJF 5200 3D printing technology to scale up a 3D printing manufacturing plant and optimizing to achieve the highest profitability possible. To do so, a twin model and a cost model are built to allow fast and precise simulation and economic analysis of each scenario that the manufacturer would like to improve, providing production KPI’s and seeing the results before building and buying new equipment. The twin model will be validated with theoretical calculations to make sure it is accurate and it works as expected and all the simulation results will be presented and explained. At the end, when the plant is optimized using existing HP solutions, an automation plan will be defined to select the best automation projects in order to further increase the productivity and profitably of the factor

Perspectives of Integrated “Next Industrial Revolution” Clusters in Poland and Siberia

Rozdział z: Functioning of the Local Production Systems in Central and Eastern European Countries and Siberia. Case Studies and Comparative Studies, ed. Mariusz E. Sokołowicz.The paper presents the mapping of potential next industrial revolution clusters in Poland and Siberia. Deindustrialization of the cities and struggles with its consequences are one of the fundamental economic problems in current global economy. Some hope to find an answer to that problem is associated with the idea of next industrial revolution and reindustrialization initiatives. In the paper, projects aimed at developing next industrial revolution clusters are analyzed. The objective of the research was to examine new industrial revolution paradigm as a platform for establishing university-based trans-border industry clusters in Poland and Siberia47 and to raise awareness of next industry revolution initiatives.Monograph financed under a contract of execution of the international scientific project within 7th Framework Programme of the European Union, co-financed by Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education (title: “Functioning of the Local Production Systems in the Conditions of Economic Crisis (Comparative Analysis and Benchmarking for the EU and Beyond”)). Monografia sfinansowana w oparciu o umowę o wykonanie projektu między narodowego w ramach 7. Programu Ramowego UE, współfinansowanego ze środków Ministerstwa Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego (tytuł projektu: „Funkcjonowanie lokalnych systemów produkcyjnych w warunkach kryzysu gospodarczego (analiza porównawcza i benchmarking w wybranych krajach UE oraz krajach trzecich”))

The impact of the industry 4.0 (as a whole) in supply chains

In the business world of today, costumers increasing demands are pushing the companies to take advantage of technology to optimise their operations, products and services. We are now watching live as the Fourth Industrial Revolution takes place built on the ongoing digital revolution. This paper studies the Industry 4.0 and its possible practical applications in the Supply Chain Management. The concepts of Industry 4.0 and Supply Chain 4.0 and its different components will be scrutinised, and potential benefits and future of this trends exhibited. Additionally, an investigation will be conducted to better understand the level of awareness of the current industrial workforce for these ongoing trends

Next generation supply chains: making the right decisions about digitalisation

This white paper is based on research carried out by the IfM’s Centre for International Manufacturing and insights emerging from our work with industrial partners. In it we share our latest findings to help global companies consider their digital supply chain strategies

A Multi-Robot Cooperation Framework for Sewing Personalized Stent Grafts

This paper presents a multi-robot system for manufacturing personalized medical stent grafts. The proposed system adopts a modular design, which includes: a (personalized) mandrel module, a bimanual sewing module, and a vision module. The mandrel module incorporates the personalized geometry of patients, while the bimanual sewing module adopts a learning-by-demonstration approach to transfer human hand-sewing skills to the robots. The human demonstrations were firstly observed by the vision module and then encoded using a statistical model to generate the reference motion trajectories. During autonomous robot sewing, the vision module plays the role of coordinating multi-robot collaboration. Experiment results show that the robots can adapt to generalized stent designs. The proposed system can also be used for other manipulation tasks, especially for flexible production of customized products and where bimanual or multi-robot cooperation is required.Comment: 10 pages, 12 figures, accepted by IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, Key words: modularity, medical device customization, multi-robot system, robot learning, visual servoing, robot sewin

A Multi-Robot Cooperation Framework for Sewing Personalized Stent Grafts

This paper presents a multi-robot system for manufacturing personalized medical stent grafts. The proposed system adopts a modular design, which includes: a (personalized) mandrel module, a bimanual sewing module, and a vision module. The mandrel module incorporates the personalized geometry of patients, while the bimanual sewing module adopts a learning-by-demonstration approach to transfer human hand-sewing skills to the robots. The human demonstrations were firstly observed by the vision module and then encoded using a statistical model to generate the reference motion trajectories. During autonomous robot sewing, the vision module plays the role of coordinating multi-robot collaboration. Experiment results show that the robots can adapt to generalized stent designs. The proposed system can also be used for other manipulation tasks, especially for flexible production of customized products and where bimanual or multi-robot cooperation is required.Comment: 10 pages, 12 figures, accepted by IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, Key words: modularity, medical device customization, multi-robot system, robot learning, visual servoing, robot sewin

Feature selection for constructing datasets toward automated lifecycle assessment for additive manufacturing

Abstract: Additive Manufacturing (AM) is considered an innovative technology to fabricate goods with green characteristics. In comparison to conventional manufacturing (CM) approaches, AM technologies have shown impressive results in enhancing sustainability in production systems. Various research has been conducted to assess the environmental impacts of AM based on the well-known life cycle assessment (LCA) framework. However, this approach requires intensive domain knowledge to build the environmental impact model and interpret the impacts of input variances. This knowledge barrier may cause delays and challenges in the selection of the optimal design and process parameters for additively manufactured parts in the product design and planning stages due to the iterative designevaluation process. As such, the research community demands an automated LCA tool for supporting AM toward elevated sustainability. To achieve this ambitious goal, this paper particularly investigates the fundamental question – “What are the key influential parameters that pose an impact on the environmental sustainability of AM?”. A methodological framework for identifying the key influential parameters for AM is proposed. The framework was demonstrated by taking the fused filament fabrication (FFF) process as an example. Based on instantiation, LCA of over 200 AM instances, and correlation analysis, the key influential parameters are identified. Finally, a dataset with the identified features could be constructed. This dataset is expected to establish a common base for scale-up with joint efforts from the AM community.ommunication présentée lors du congrès international tenu conjointement par Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering (CSME) et Computational Fluid Dynamics Society of Canada (CFD Canada), à l’Université de Sherbrooke (Québec), du 28 au 31 mai 2023

An overview of Smart manufacturing for competitive and digital global supply chains

This research study aims to examine and review the key advantages of smart manufacturing to achieve and improve performance within global supply chain environments. In recent years supply chain has been arisen as one of the major areas to gain a competitive edge in manufacturing industries. The current business methodologies of short product life cycle, increased outsourcing, expanding product variety, improved customer focus and improved technologies has led supply chain to be some challenging and complex tasks. Smart Manufacturing has been considered as a successful advancement in industrial revolution featuring resource efficiency, adaptability, agitability with wide application of internet and other innovative engineering technologies integrating of customers and business value processes creating a better manufacturing environment. The research is at its preliminary stages and will aim to examine and evaluate existing literature within the areas of smart and digital manufacturing and compare examples of best practices and methods towards creating a detailed comprehensive and systematic finding of the key research studies. This paper is a literature review which aims to review the benefits of smart manufacturing and its influence to achieve an improved performance in supply chain

Towards Sustainable Production Processes Reengineering: Case Study at INCOM Egypt

INCOM Egypt has undergone automation in some processes where critical aspects of its operations are transformed and automated. This paper presents an overview of INCOM Egypt processes using Ould Riva and analyses the process of ‘handling a product’. It aims to demonstrate effective automation of the production of wires and cables process accompanied to Industry 4.0 while considering environmental and economic sustainability goals that were inhibited by COVID-19 restrictions. Ould’s Riva method is used to analyse the production process of wires and cables to propose improvements for automating the process. Business process modelling is utilised to study the processes for clearer understating. The flow of information within the process is also analysed to integrate the production process with other processes and supply chains, which helps to identify which production activities can be automated and mainstreamed into the information flow to achieve environmental and economic sustainability. The context of INCOM Egypt, as a case study, is presented along with the Riva model of its operations. The paper identifies the before, i.e., As-Is process, and after, i.e., To-Be Process, automation of the ‘handle a product’ process using the Role Activity Diagram (RAD). The process involved redesigning and improving different activities to increase resource-use efficiency to participate in achieving the goals of sustainability. The focus of this paper is to investigate the negative impact of COVID-19 on sustainability and to examine the accomplishments of process automation of wire production towards environmental and economic sustainability. The results of the research reveal a relationship between business process modelling and sustainability. Moreover, automation of processes (Industry 4.0) is found to reduce the negative effect of COVID-19 on production. A triangulation between process modelling, process automation (Industry 4.0), and sustainability was determined. Each one is reinforcing and impacting one another. The RAD model demonstrates that automation of the activities in the process reduces waste, time, cost, and redundant processes as factors of sustainability, which may also help to lessen the unfavorable effects of the pandemic. The results proved generalisation on other organisations in the same line of business

Automated Additive Construction (AAC) for Earth and Space Using In-situ Resources

Using Automated Additive Construction (AAC), low-fidelity large-scale compressive structures can be produced out of a wide variety of materials found in the environment. Compressionintensive structures need not utilize materials that have tight specifications for internal force management, meaning that the production of the building materials do not require costly methods for their preparation. Where a certain degree of surface roughness can be tolerated, lower-fidelity numerical control of deposited materials can provide a low-cost means for automating building processes, which can be utilized in remote or extreme environments on Earth or in Space. For space missions where every kilogram of mass must be lifted out of Earth’s gravity well, the promise of using in-situ materials for the construction of outposts, facilities, and installations could prove to be enabling if significant reduction of payload mass can be achieved. In a 2015 workshop sponsored by the Keck nstitute for Space Studies, on the topic of Three Dimensional (3D) Additive Construction For Space Using In-situ Resources, was conducted with additive construction experts from around the globe in attendance. The workshop explored disparate efforts, methods, and technologies and established a proposed framework for the field of Additive Construction Using In-situ Resources. This paper defines the field of Automated Additive Construction Using In-situ Resources, describes the state-of-the-art for various methods, establishes a vision for future efforts, identifies gaps in current technologies, explores investment opportunities, and proposes potential technology demonstration missions for terrestrial, International Space Station (ISS), lunar, deep space zero-gravity, and Mars environments