An early-stage decision-support framework for the implementation of intelligent automation

The constant pressure on manufacturing companies to improve productivity, reduce the lead time and progress in quality requires new technological developments and adoption.The rapid development of smart technology and robotics and autonomous systems (RAS) technology has a profound impact on manufacturing automation and might determine winners and losers of the next generation’s manufacturing competition. Simultaneously, recent smart technology developments in the areas enable an automation response to new production paradigms such as mass customisation and product-lifecycle considerations in the context of Industry 4.0. New paradigms, like mass customisation, increased both the complexity of the tasks and the risk due to smart technology integration. From a manufacturing automation perspective, intelligent automation has been identified as a possible response to arising demands. The presented research aims to support the industrial uptake of intelligent automation into manufacturing businesses by quantifying risks at the early design stage and business case development. An early-stage decision-support framework for the implementation of intelligent automation in manufacturing businesses is presented in this thesis.The framework is informed by an extensive literature review, updated and verified with surveys and workshops to add to the knowledge base due to the rapid development of the associated technologies. A paradigm shift from cost to a risk-modelling perspective is proposed to provide a more flexible and generic approach applicable throughout the current technology landscape. The proposed probabilistic decision-support framework consists of three parts:• A clustering algorithm to identify the manufacturing functions in manual processes from task analysis to mitigate early-stage design uncertainties• A Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) informed by an expert elicitation via the DELPHI method, where the identified functions become the unit of analysis.• A Markov-Chain Monte-Carlo method modelling the effects of uncertainties on the critical success factors to address issues of factor interdependencies after expert elicitation.Based on the overall decision framework a toolbox was developed in Microsoft Excel. Five different case studies are used to test and validate the framework. Evaluation of the results derived from the toolbox from the industrial feedback suggests a positive validation for commercial use. The main contributions to knowledge in the presented thesis arise from the following four points:• Early-stage decision-support framework for business case evaluation of intelligent automation.• Translating manual tasks to automation function via a novel clustering approach• Application of a Markov-Chain Monte-Carlo Method to simulate correlation between decision criteria• Causal relationship among Critical Success Factors has been established from business and technical perspectives.The implications on practise might be promising. The feedback arising from the created tool was promising from the industry, and a practical realisation of the decision-support tool seems to be desired from an industrial point of view.With respect to further work, the decision-support tool might have established a ground to analyse a human task automatically for automation purposes. The established clustering mechanisms and the related attributes could be connected to sensorial data and analyse a manufacturing task autonomously without the subjective input of task analysis experts. To enable such an autonomous process, however, the psychophysiological understanding must be increased in the future.</div

Optimized fuzzy decision tree data mining for engineering applications

Manufacturing organizations are striving to remain competitive in an era of increased competition and every-changing conditions. Manufacturing technology selection is a key factor in the growth of an organization and a fundamental challenge is effectively managing the computation of data to support future decision-making. Classification is a data mining technique used to predict group membership for data instances. Popular methods include decision trees and neural networks. This paper investigates a unique fuzzy reasoning method suited to engineering applications using fuzzy decision trees. The paper focuses on the inference stages of fuzzy decision trees to support decision-engineering tasks. The relaxation of crisp decision tree boundaries through fuzzy principles increases the importance of the degree of confidence exhibited by the inference mechanism. Industrial philosophies have a strong influence on decision practices and such strategic views must be considered. The paper is organized as follows: introduction to the research area, literature review, proposed inference mechanism and numerical example. The research is concluded and future work discussed.</p

Experience-based decision support methodology for manufacturing technology selection: a fuzzy-decision-tree mining approach

Manufacturing companies must invest in new technologies and processes to succeed in a rapidly changing global environment. Managers have the difficulty of justifying capital investment in adopting new, state-of-the-art technology. Technology investment accounts for a large part of capital spending and is a key form of improving competitive advantage. Typical approaches focus on the expected return of investment and financial reward gained from the implementation of such equipment. With an increasingly dynamic market environment and global economic model, forecasting of financial payback can be argued to become increasingly less accurate. Subsequently, less quantifiable factors are becoming increasingly important. For example, the alignment of a technology with an organisations objective to fulfil future potential and gain competitive advantage is becoming as crucial as economic evaluation. In addition, the impact on human operators and skill level required must be considered. This research was motivated by the lack of decision methodologies that understand why a technology is more successful within an environment rather than re-examining the underlying performance attributes of a technology. The aim is to create a common approach where both experts and non-experts can use historical decision information to support the evaluation and selection of an optimal manufacturing technology. This form of approach is based on the logic in which a decision maker would irrationally recall previous decisions to identify relationships with new problem cases. The work investigates data mining and machine learning techniques to discover the underlying influences to improve technology selection under a set of dynamic factors. The approach initially discovers the practices to which an expert would conduct the selection of a manufacturing technology within industry. A defined understanding of the problem and techniques was subsequently concluded. This led to an understanding of the structure by which historical decision information is recalled by an expert to support new selection problems. The key attributes in the representation of a case were apparent and a form of characterising tangible and intangible variables was justified. This led to the development of a novel, experience-based manufacturing technology selection framework using fuzzy-decision-trees. The methodology is an iterative approach of learning from previously implemented technology cases. Rules and underlying knowledge of the relationships in past cases predicts the outcome of new decision problems. The link of information from a multitude of historical cases may identify those technologies with technical characteristics that perform optimally for projects with unique requirements. This also indicates the likeliness of technologies performing successfully based on the project requirements. Historical decision cases are represented through original project objectives, technical performance attributes of the chosen technology and judged project performance. The framework was shown to provide a comprehensive foundation for decision support that reduces the uncertainty and subjective influence within the selection process. The model was developed with industrial guidance to represent the actions of a manufacturing expert. The performance of the tool was measured by industrial experts. The approach was found to represent well the decision logic of a human expert based on their developed experience through cases. The application to an industrial decision case study demonstrated encouraging results and use by decision makers feasible. The model reduces the subjectivity in the process by using case information that is formed from multiple experts of a prior decision case. The model is applied in a shorter time period than existing practices and the ranking of potential solutions is well aligned to the understanding of a decision maker. To summarise, this research highlights the importance of focusing on less quantifiable factors and the performance of a technology to a specific problem/environment. The arrangement of case information thus represents the experience an expert would acquire and recall as part of the decision process

Experience-based decision support methodology for manufacturing technology selection: a fuzzy-decision-tree mining approach

Manufacturing companies must invest in new technologies and processes to succeed in a rapidly changing global environment. Managers have the difficulty of justifying capital investment in adopting new, state-of-the-art technology. Technology investment accounts for a large part of capital spending and is a key form of improving competitive advantage. Typical approaches focus on the expected return of investment and financial reward gained from the implementation of such equipment. With an increasingly dynamic market environment and global economic model, forecasting of financial payback can be argued to become increasingly less accurate. Subsequently, less quantifiable factors are becoming increasingly important. For example, the alignment of a technology with an organisations objective to fulfil future potential and gain competitive advantage is becoming as crucial as economic evaluation. In addition, the impact on human operators and skill level required must be considered. This research was motivated by the lack of decision methodologies that understand why a technology is more successful within an environment rather than re-examining the underlying performance attributes of a technology. The aim is to create a common approach where both experts and non-experts can use historical decision information to support the evaluation and selection of an optimal manufacturing technology. This form of approach is based on the logic in which a decision maker would irrationally recall previous decisions to identify relationships with new problem cases. The work investigates data mining and machine learning techniques to discover the underlying influences to improve technology selection under a set of dynamic factors. The approach initially discovers the practices to which an expert would conduct the selection of a manufacturing technology within industry. A defined understanding of the problem and techniques was subsequently concluded. This led to an understanding of the structure by which historical decision information is recalled by an expert to support new selection problems. The key attributes in the representation of a case were apparent and a form of characterising tangible and intangible variables was justified. This led to the development of a novel, experience-based manufacturing technology selection framework using fuzzy-decision-trees. The methodology is an iterative approach of learning from previously implemented technology cases. Rules and underlying knowledge of the relationships in past cases predicts the outcome of new decision problems. The link of information from a multitude of historical cases may identify those technologies with technical characteristics that perform optimally for projects with unique requirements. This also indicates the likeliness of technologies performing successfully based on the project requirements. Historical decision cases are represented through original project objectives, technical performance attributes of the chosen technology and judged project performance. The framework was shown to provide a comprehensive foundation for decision support that reduces the uncertainty and subjective influence within the selection process. The model was developed with industrial guidance to represent the actions of a manufacturing expert. The performance of the tool was measured by industrial experts. The approach was found to represent well the decision logic of a human expert based on their developed experience through cases. The application to an industrial decision case study demonstrated encouraging results and use by decision makers feasible. The model reduces the subjectivity in the process by using case information that is formed from multiple experts of a prior decision case. The model is applied in a shorter time period than existing practices and the ranking of potential solutions is well aligned to the understanding of a decision maker. To summarise, this research highlights the importance of focusing on less quantifiable factors and the performance of a technology to a specific problem/environment. The arrangement of case information thus represents the experience an expert would acquire and recall as part of the decision process