Factories of the Future

Engineering; Industrial engineering; Production engineerin

Proposition d’une architecture holonique auto-organisée et évolutive pour le pilotage des systèmes de production

The manufacturing world is being deeply challenged with a set of ever demanding constraints where from one side, the costumers are requiring products to be more customizable, with higher quality at lower prices, and on other side, companies have to deal on a daily basis with internal disturbances that range from machine breakdown to worker absence and from demand fluctuation to frequent production changes. This dissertation proposes a manufacturing control architecture, following the holonic principles developed in the ADAptive holonic COntrol aRchitecture (ADACOR) and extending it taking inspiration in evolutionary theories and making use of self- organization mechanisms. The use of evolutionary theories enrich the proposed control architecture by allowing evolution in two distinct ways, responding accordingly to the type and degree of the disturbance that appears. The first component, named behavioural self- organization, allows each system’s entity to dynamically adapt its internal behaviour, addressing small disturbances. The second component, named structural self-organization, addresses bigger disturbances by allowing the system entities to re-arrange their rela- tionships, and consequently changing the system in a structural manner. The proposed self-organized holonic manufacturing control architecture was validated at a AIP-PRIMECA flexible manufacturing cell. The achieved experimental results have also shown an improvement of the key performance indicators over the hierarchical and heterarchical control architecture.Le monde des entreprises est profondément soumis à un ensemble de contraintes toujours plus exigeantes provenant d’une part des clients, exigeant des produits plus personnalisables, de qualité supérieure et à faible coût, et d’autre part des aléas internes auxentreprises, comprenant les pannes machines, les défaillances humaines, la fluctuation de la demande, les fréquentes variations de production. Cette thèse propose une architecture de contrôle de systèmes de production, basée sur les principes holoniques développées dans l’architecture ADACOR (ADAptive holonic COntrol aRchitecture), et l’étendant en s’inspirant des théories de l’évolution et en utilisant des mécanismes d’auto-organisation. L’utilisation des théories de l’évolution enrichit l’architecture de contrôle en permettant l’évolution de deux manières distinctes, en réponse au type et au degré de la perturbation apparue. Le premier mode d’adaptation, appelé auto-organisation comportementale, permet à chaque entité qui compose le système d’adapter dynamiquement leur comportement interne, gérant de cette façon de petites perturbations. Le second mode, nommé auto-organisation structurelle, traite de plus grandes perturbations, en permettant aux entités du système de ré-organiser leurs relations, et par conséquent modifier structurellement le système. L’architecture holonique auto-organisée de contrôle de systèmes de production proposée dans cette thèse a été validée sur une cellule de production flexible AIP-PRIMECA. Les résultats ont montré une amélioration des indicateurs clés de performance par rapport aux architectures de contrôle hiérarchiques et hétérarchiques

Autonomous Finite Capacity Scheduling using Biological Control Principles

The vast majority of the research efforts in finite capacity scheduling over the past several years has focused on the generation of precise and almost exact measures for the working schedule presupposing complete information and a deterministic environment. During execution, however, production may be the subject of considerable variability, which may lead to frequent schedule interruptions. Production scheduling mechanisms are developed based on centralised control architecture in which all of the knowledge base and databases are modelled at the same location. This control architecture has difficulty in handling complex manufacturing systems that require knowledge and data at different locations. Adopting biological control principles refers to the process where a schedule is developed prior to the start of the processing after considering all the parameters involved at a resource involved and updated accordingly as the process executes. This research reviews the best practices in gene transcription and translation control methods and adopts these principles in the development of an autonomous finite capacity scheduling control logic aimed at reducing excessive use of manual input in planning tasks. With autonomous decision-making functionality, finite capacity scheduling will as much as practicably possible be able to respond autonomously to schedule disruptions by deployment of proactive scheduling procedures that may be used to revise or re-optimize the schedule when unexpected events occur. The novelty of this work is the ability of production resources to autonomously take decisions and the same way decisions are taken by autonomous entities in the process of gene transcription and translation. The idea has been implemented by the integration of simulation and modelling techniques with Taguchi analysis to investigate the contributions of finite capacity scheduling factors, and determination of the ‘what if’ scenarios encountered due to the existence of variability in production processes. The control logic adopts the induction rules as used in gene expression control mechanisms, studied in biological systems. Scheduling factors are identified to that effect and are investigated to find their effects on selected performance measurements for each resource in used. How they are used to deal with variability in the process is one major objective for this research as it is because of the variability that autonomous decision making becomes of interest. Although different scheduling techniques have been applied and are successful in production planning and control, the results obtained from the inclusion of the autonomous finite capacity scheduling control logic has proved that significant improvement can still be achieved

Factories of the Future

Engineering; Industrial engineering; Production engineerin

Use of bio-inspired techniques to solve complex engineering problems: industrial automation case study

Nowadays local markets have disappeared and the world lives in a global economy. Due to this reality, every company virtually competes with all others companies in the world. In addition to this, markets constantly search products with higher quality at lower costs, with high customization. Also, products tend to have a shorter period of life, making the demanding more intense. With this scenario, companies, to remain competitive, must constantly adapt themselves to the market changes, i.e., companies must exhibit a great degree of self-organization and self-adaptation. Biology with the millions of years of evolution may offer inspiration to develop new algorithms, methods and techniques to solve real complex problems. As an example, the behaviour of ants and bees, have inspired researchers in the pursuit of solutions to solve complex and evolvable engineering problems. This dissertation has the goal of explore the world of bio-inspired engineering. This is done by studying some of the bio-inspired solutions and searching for bio-inspired solutions to solve the daily problems. A more deep focus will be made to the engineering problems and particularly to the manufacturing domain. Multi-agent systems is a concept aligned with the bio-inspired principles offering a new approach to develop solutions that exhibit robustness, flexibility, responsiveness and re-configurability. In such distributed bio-inspired systems, the behaviour of each entity follows simple few rules, but the overall emergent behaviour is very complex to understand and to demonstrate. Therefore, the design and simulation of distributed agent-based solutions, and particularly those exhibiting self-organizing, are usually a hard task. Agent Based Modelling (ABM) tools simplifies this task by providing an environment for programming, modelling and simulating agent-based solutions, aiming to test and compare alternative model configurations. A deeply analysis of the existing ABM tools was also performed aiming to select the platform to be used in this work. Aiming to demonstrate the benefits of bio-inspired techniques for the industrial automation domain, a production system was used as case study for the development of a self-organizing agent-based system developed using the NetLogo tool. Hoje em dia os mercados locais desapareceram e o mundo vive numa economia global. Devido a esta realidade, cada companhia compete, virtualmente, com todas as outras companhias do mundo. A acrescentar a isto, os mercados estão constantemente à procura de produtos com maior qualidade a preços mais baixos e com um grande nível de customização Também, os produtos tendem a ter um tempo curto de vida, fazendo com que a procura seja mais intensa. Com este cenário, as companhias, para permanecer competitivas, têm que se adaptar constantemente de acordo com as mudanças de mercado, i.e., as companhias têm que exibir um alto grau de auto-organização e auto-adaptação. A biologia com os milhões de anos de evolução, pode oferecer inspiração para desenvolver novos algoritmos, métodos e técnicas para resolver problemas complexos reais. Como por exemplo, o comportamento das formigas e das abelhas inspiraram investigadores na descoberta de soluções para resolver problemas complexos e evolutivos de engenharia. Esta dissertação tem como objectivo explorar o mundo da engenharia bio-inspirada. Isto é feito através do estudo de algumas das soluções bio-inspiradas existentes e da procura de soluções bio-inspiradas para resolver os problemas do dia-a-dia. Uma atenção especial vai ser dada aos problemas de engenharia e particularmente aos problemas do domínio da manufactura. Os sistemas multi-agentes são um conceito que estão em linha com os princípios bio-inspirados oferecendo uma abordagem nova para desenvolver soluções que exibam robustez, flexibilidade, rapidez de resposta e reconfiguração. Nestes sistemas distribuídos bio-inspirados, o comportamento de cada entidade segue um pequeno conjunto de regras simples, mas o comportamento emergente global é muito complexo de perceber e de demonstrar. Por isso, o desenho e simulação de soluções distribuídas de agentes, e particularmente aqueles que exibem auto-organização, são normalmente uma tarefa árdua. As ferramentas de Modelação Baseada de Agentes (MBA) simplificam esta tarefa providenciando um ambiente para programar, modelar e simular, com o objectivo de testar e comparar diferentes configurações do modelo. Uma análise mais aprofundada das ferramentas MBA foi também efectuada tendo como objectivo seleccionar a plataforma a usar neste trabalho

Manufacturing Value Modelling, Flexibility, and Sustainability: from theoretical definition to empirical validation

The aim of this PhD thesis is to investigate the relevance of flexibility and sustainability within the smart manufacturing environment and understand if they could be adopted as emerging competitive dimensions and help firms to take decisions and delivering value

Designing supplementary space in multi-family housing

La démographie et les modes de vie ont considérablement évolué au cours des dernières décades. De tels changements sont destinés à influencer la conception de l’habitation et ils incluent notamment une série de besoins émergents: s’en suivent des besoins additionnels en espace pour répondre à l’arrivée de ces activités additionnelles au niveau du logement. La planification en vue de répondre à ces besoins émergeants constitue le principal thème de la présente thèse. Dans le cas de la maison unifamiliale détachée, le sous-sol est disponible pour offrir des espaces appropriés à ces besoins émergents. Par contre, une telle ressource n’est normalement pas présente dans le cas d’un édifice multifamilial. La thèse propose un espace additionnel spécifique en vue de répondre à ces besoins émergents : l’espace supplétif. Même si un tel espace n’est pas envisagé dans les publications du domaine, des précédents existent quant à sa présence en planification multifamiliale. Le but de la présente étude est d’offrir des lignes directrices quant à la conception et l’intégration d’un tel espace supplétif. Elle va s’appuyer sur l’approche systémique en raison de la logique de déduire la solution à partir d’une analyse de l’objectif. L’application de l’approche systémique implique donc que tous les critères correspondant à la nature spécifique de l’espace supplétif seront extrapolés à partir de l’objectif. Dans le cas la présente étude, ce sont les critères du bureau à domicile qui seront d’abord précisés car il s’agit de l’activité émergente la plus exigeante. Les critères seront traités comme vecteurs d’un modèle générique indicatif de la manière d’organiser l’espace supplétif. Ce modèle visera le bureau à domicile en vue d’offrir les solutions pertinentes et il se concentrera principalement sur les critères d’intimité visuelle et spatiale. La contribution du modèle sera de suggérer des lignes directrices en vue d’incorporer l’espace supplétif à l’intérieur des édifices résidentiels de type multifamilial, ce que la planification conventionnelle n’offre pas. C’est le concept d’adaptabilité qui est à la base de toute stratégie visant à permettre le changement en architecture et en habitation, d’autant plus lorsqu’il s’agit d’un espace supplétif. À cet effet, l’espace supplétif va recourir à l’approche Open Building afin d’appliquer le concept d’adaptabilité, en raison de ses avantages majeurs tant au niveau conceptuel que constructif. Différentes applications de l’approche Open Building, telles que le projet NEXT21 et le protocole KSI (Kikou support and Infill), offrent des exemples susceptibles de constituer d’efficaces lignes directrices pour la conception d’un espace supplétif. La faisabilité du modèle d’espace supplétif proposé est vérifiable et démontrable dans le monde réel. Les systèmes constructifs industrialisés sont en mesure de permettre le changement sans démolition car leurs joints mécaniques « à sec » rencontrent généralement les normes DfD (Design for Disassembly), non seulement en ce qui concerne l’espace supplétif mais pour l’ensemble du logement.Demographics and lifestyles have changed considerably in the past few decades. These changes are bound to influence the design of housing and they notably include a series of emerging needs: additional spatial needs due to additional activities brought to the traditional housing premises. Planning for those emerging needs is the main theme of this thesis. In a typical single-family detached house, the basement is available to accommodate the spatial requirements for these emerging needs. However, such a provision does not typically exist in multi-family housing. This thesis proposes a specific additional space to accommodate these emerging needs: the supplementary space. Although such a space has not been explored in the literature, there are precedents for its application in multi-family floor planning. The objective of this study is to provide guidelines for the design and the integration of this supplementary space. It relies on the systems approach as the design-decision methodology due to its logic of deducting the solution from the analysis of the objective. Applying the systems approach means that all the criteria corresponding to the specific purpose of the supplementary space will be extrapolated from the objective. However, once the supplementary space is being used to deal with emerging needs, it will then introduce its own relevant criteria. This study will start with the criteria for designing a home office because this is the most demanding emerging needs activity. The criteria are organized as vectors of a generic model indicating how the supplementary space can be formulated. The model will target the workplace at home and subsequently offer solutions to them. This study focuses on the planning provisions dealing mainly with visual and spatial privacy. The overall outcome of the model is to suggest guidelines to incorporate the supplementary space within multi-family residential buildings, a feature not offered in traditional planning. The concept of adaptability is the key design strategy to accommodate change in architecture and housing, even more in the case of a supplementary space. Therefore, the supplementary space model will apply the concept of adaptability through the Open Building (OB) approach; elaborating more on the practical design and construction features. Different OB applications, such as the NEXT21 project and the KSI (Kikou Support and Infill) protocol in Japan, are examples that can be used as efficient guidelines to design a supplementary space. The feasibility of the supplementary space model can be validated and served in the real world. Industrialized building systems are capable of accommodating change without demolition as their dry mechanical joints are generally at meeting the DfD (design for disassembly) standards, not only for the supplementary space but also for the whole dwelling unit