An Institutional Approach To Operations Management In Internet Based Production Concepts

An important change in the socio-economic environment of industrial firms is the increasing dif­fusion of Internet Technologies in production processes. Applications of Internet Technologies may be directly implemented on the shop floor, e.g. in networking dislocated assembly lines, as well as in assisting management processes, e.g. in production planning and control. This leads to a strong approximation of the traditional production and operation systems and the Internet Technologies. While traditional production concepts, such as Lean Production, World Class Manufacturing and Agile Manufacturing, inevitably disregard this development, new production concepts arise that fundamentally consider the application of Internet Technologies on the shop floor. However, from a business management perspective, industrial firms have to accomplish new operating requirements deriving from this technological change. This paper provides a discussion of the consequences of Internet Technologies on operations management, as well as of production concepts based on Internet Technologies from an institutional point of view

Worker-robot cooperation and integration into the manufacturing workcell via the holonic control architecture

Cooperative manufacturing is a new field of research, which addresses new challenges beyond the physical safety of the worker. Those new challenges appear due to the need to connect the worker and the cobot from the informatics point of view in one cooperative workcell. This requires developing an appropriate manufacturing control system, which fits the nature of both the worker and the cobot. Furthermore, the manufacturing control system must be able to understand the production variations, to guide the cooperation between worker and the cobot and adapt with the production variations.Die kooperative Fertigung ist ein neues Forschungsgebiet, das sich neuen Herausforderungen stellt. Diese neuen Herausforderungen ergeben sich aus der Notwendigkeit, den Arbeiter und den Cobot aus der Sicht der Informatik in einem kooperativen Arbeitsplatz zu verbinden. Dies erfordert die Entwicklung eines geeigneten Produktionskontrollsystems, das sowohl der Natur des Arbeiters als auch der des Cobots entspricht. Darüber hinaus muss die Fertigungssteuerung in der Lage sein, die Produktionsschwankungen zu verstehen, um die Zusammenarbeit zwischen Arbeiter und Cobot zu steuern

Coalition based approach for shop floor agility – a multiagent approach

Dissertation submitted for a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering, speciality of Robotics and Integrated Manufacturing from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências e TecnologiaThis thesis addresses the problem of shop floor agility. In order to cope with the disturbances and uncertainties that characterise the current business scenarios faced by manufacturing companies, the capability of their shop floors needs to be improved quickly, such that these shop floors may be adapted, changed or become easily modifiable (shop floor reengineering). One of the critical elements in any shop floor reengineering process is the way the control/supervision architecture is changed or modified to accommodate for the new processes and equipment. This thesis, therefore, proposes an architecture to support the fast adaptation or changes in the control/supervision architecture. This architecture postulates that manufacturing systems are no more than compositions of modularised manufacturing components whose interactions when aggregated are governed by contractual mechanisms that favour configuration over reprogramming. A multiagent based reference architecture called Coalition Based Approach for Shop floor Agility – CoBASA, was created to support fast adaptation and changes of shop floor control architectures with minimal effort. The coalitions are composed of agentified manufacturing components (modules), whose relationships within the coalitions are governed by contracts that are configured whenever a coalition is established. Creating and changing a coalition do not involve programming effort because it only requires changes to the contract that regulates it

Improving materials management in electronics manufacturing

The aim of this thesis is to determine how in-plant materials management in electronics manufacturing can be improved and to show how a strategy for improvement can be developed for Celestica Limited's Kidsgrove plant. The literature was reviewed to bring out the current issues and topics of interest in materials management. An industrial analysis, through company visits and case studies, was carried out. A number of "best practices" were identified from the literature and the case studies. The "best practices" identified were prioritisation methods, outsourcing of value added services, shop floor control systems, focused stores, tailored logistics, use of computers, trace ability, use of technology or automation, automatic identification, maintaining data integrity, internet-enabled supply-chain, JIT or hybridised JIT-MRP, Kanban, linking and communication of MPS's, application of technology, kitting and recording actual usage of material. [Continues.

Changes in Operations Management due to Internet based Production Concepts — An Institution Economical Perspective

Currently we have to realize a major change in the technological basis of manufacturing or even all production processes: The diffusion of new information and communication technologies, especially Internet Technologies, on the shop floor. Applications of Internet Technologies may be directly implemented on the shop floor, e.g. in networking dislocated assembly lines, as well as in assisting management processes, e.g. in production planning and control. Both, formal and empirical studies have verified a significant increase in productivity of manufacturing processes by intraorganizational applications of modern information and communication technologies (Barua/Lee 2001, pp. 37). Therefore, this change has a high influence on operations management. While traditional Production Concepts such as Lean Production, World Class Manufacturing and Agile Manufacturing inevitably disregard this development, new Production Concepts arise that fundamentally consider the application of Internet Technologies on the shop floor. However, from a business management perspective, industrial firms have to accomplish new operating requirements deriving from this technological change. This paper provides a discussion of the consequences of Internet Technologies on operations management, as well as of production concepts based on Internet Technologies from an institutional point of view.Production/Operations Management; automation; Internet; New Institutional Economics

Gyroscope Assembly Process Improvement Analysis

The gyro is a fundamental portion of many assemblies that Company S, a directional drilling company, manufactures. The gyro assembly is a highly sensitive and complex process, and it was paramount to establish efficiency and quality guidelines to base management decisions. The first guideline succeeded by increasing throughput by means of a simulation using ProModel. Next, non-value and value added activities were identified through a value stream map. Lastly, a database was developed in order to capture high integrity quality control data, or key performance indicators, such as, throughput, first-pass inspection yields at every test performed, and defects found. This work increases the assembly management team’s understanding of the gyro assembly and serves as the foundation for future six sigma process improvements

Summary of Research Conducted by the Manufacturing Systems Team 1994-2002

The Manufacturing Systems team was one of the research teams within the Lean Aerospace Initiative (LAI) whose goal was to document, analyze and communicate the design attributes and relationships that lead to significant performance improvements in manufacturing systems in the defense aerospace industry. This report will provide an integrated record of this research using the Production Operations Transition to Lean Roadmap as its organizing framework

Comparisons & analyses of U.S. & global economic data & trends

Issued as final reportSRI Internationa