Generic Design Methodology for Smart Manufacturing Systems from a Practical Perspective, Part I—Digital Triad Concept and Its Application as a System Reference Model

Rapidly developed information technologies (IT) have continuously empowered manufacturing systems and accelerated the evolution of manufacturing system paradigms, and smart manufacturing (SM) has become one of the most promising paradigms. The study of SM has attracted a great deal of attention for researchers in academia and practitioners in industry. However, an obvious fact is that people with different backgrounds have different expectations for SM, and this has led to high diversity, ambiguity, and inconsistency in terms of definitions, reference models, performance matrices, and system design methodologies. It has been found that the state of the art SM research is limited in two aspects: (1) the highly diversified understandings of SM may lead to overlapped, missed, and non-systematic research efforts in advancing the theory and methodologies in the field of SM; (2) few works have been found that focus on the development of generic design methodologies for smart manufacturing systems from the practice perspective. The novelty of this paper consists of two main aspects which are reported in two parts respectively. In the first part, a simplified definition of SM is proposed to unify the existing diversified expectations, and a newly developed concept named digital triad (DT-II) is adopted to define a reference model for SM. The common features of smart manufacturing systems in various applications are identified as functional requirements (FRs) in systems design. To model a system that is capable of reconfiguring itself to adapt to changes, the concept of IoDTT is proposed as a reference model for smart manufacturing systems. In the second part, these two concepts are used to formulate a system design problem, and a generic methodology, based on axiomatic design theory (ADT), is proposed for the design of smart manufacturing systems

CPPS-3D: a methodology to support cyber physical production systems design, development and deployment

Master’s dissertation in Production EngineeringCyber-Physical Production Systems are widely recognized as the key to unlock the full potential benefits of the Industry 4.0 paradigm. Cyber-Physical Production Systems Design, Development and Deployment methodology is a systematic approach in assessing necessities, identifying gaps and then designing, developing and deploying solutions to fill such gaps. It aims to support and drive enterprise’s evolution to the new working environment promoted by the availability of Industry 4.0 paradigms and technologies while challenged by the need to increment a continuous improvement culture. The proposed methodology considers the different dimensions within enterprises related with their levels of organization, competencies and technology. It is a two-phased sequentially-stepped process to enable discussion, reflection/reasoning, decision-making and action-taking towards evolution. The first phase assesses an enterprise across its Organizational, Technological and Human dimensions. The second phase establishes sequential tasks to successfully deploy solutions. Is was applied to a production section at a Portuguese enterprise with the development of a new visual management system to enable shop floor management. This development is presented as an example of Industry 4.0 technology and it promotes a faster decision-making, better production management, improved data availability as well as fosters more dynamic workplaces with enhanced reactivity to problems

IMPROVEMENT OF GENERAL DESIGN THEORY AND METHODOLOGY WITH ITS APPLICATION TO DESIGN OF A RETRACTOR FOR VENTRAL HERNIA REPAIR SURGERY

Open surgery is an efficient way to cure massive ventral hernias in the clinic. During the surgical process, a spatula is used to prevent intestine tissues from damage of suture passer, possibly causing damage and taking time to address the spatula. Therefore, a new prototype, which could address both issues, is under consideration. In order to design the new prototype that satisfies clinical use, this study was based on the retractor design by Dr. Luo (Luo’s retractor for short), which nevertheless had many shortcomings. An observation was made to these shortcomings that they are partially due to the ad-hoc design process taken to result in Luo’s retractor). This drove the research of this thesis into a close examination of the general design theory and methodology (DTM) in literature, aiming at improvements of DTM so that it is possible to apply the DTM to improve Luo’s retractor. In this thesis, the general design theory and methodology, such as Axiomatic Design Theory (ADT) and Systematic Design Procedure (SDP), was examined closely. Several problems with them, e.g., missing a guideline to identify the so-called general function in SDP, missing a guideline to handle constraints in ADT, lack of a more formal model to capture design requirements, etc., were identified and studied. Specifically, a novel model to represent a design more formally was proposed, and a new general design process model was developed. The design of the retractor was then carried out by following the proposed general design process model with the improved DTM, which resulted in an improved retractor. The prototype of the new retractor was tested clinically with the help of surgeon (Dr. Luo) as well as simulated with the help of the finite element software. Several conclusions can be drawn from this study and they are: (1) the new retractor is a viable device and is promising for further commercialization; (2) the general design theory and methodology is now more rational, formal and robust, ready for applications and for further development towards automating the general design process. This thesis has made the following contributions to the field of medical device and to the field of general design theory and methodology. In the first field, a new medical device, i.e., retractor, is created and it will improve the ventral hernia repair surgery in terms of efficiency (time reduction by 37.5%). In the second field, this thesis provided a revised design theory and methodology that combines ADT and SDP, which may be called ADT-SDP, and has provided guidelines of how the ADT-SDP can be used for practical design problems