Flexible human-robot cooperation models for assisted shop-floor tasks

The Industry 4.0 paradigm emphasizes the crucial benefits that collaborative robots, i.e., robots able to work alongside and together with humans, could bring to the whole production process. In this context, an enabling technology yet unreached is the design of flexible robots able to deal at all levels with humans' intrinsic variability, which is not only a necessary element for a comfortable working experience for the person but also a precious capability for efficiently dealing with unexpected events. In this paper, a sensing, representation, planning and control architecture for flexible human-robot cooperation, referred to as FlexHRC, is proposed. FlexHRC relies on wearable sensors for human action recognition, AND/OR graphs for the representation of and reasoning upon cooperation models, and a Task Priority framework to decouple action planning from robot motion planning and control.Comment: Submitted to Mechatronics (Elsevier

Analisis Perhitungan Biaya Standar Guna Meningkatkan Efisiensi Biaya Produksi (Studi Pada Perusahaan Makanan Ringan “Mawar” Malang)

In the period of 2012 the company showed a loss occurs the difference in production costs consist of the cost of raw materials ,direct labor costs, factory overhead costs , then you should immediately conduct necessary management improvements standard cost and production cost planning carefully before making the production process so that the company can works efficiently and can reduce production costs in order to remain cost competitive with market prices. Snacks Company "MAWAR" in setting the standard cost improvements still need to be held. It is given the magnitude of the deviation between standard costs with actual costs. The difference between planned and realized rarely evaluated and allowed to go - late, even if there is less evaluated further treatment so that companies do not know the weaknesses in the planning period of the previous and repeated again in the next period. In order to achieve cost-efficiency of production, then the cost of production planning required maximum control

Applications of linear programming to corporate farm planning in developing countries : a case study for NAFCO Farms in Tanzania : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Agricultural Business and Administration at Massey University

The economic development of most of the developing countries depends, almost entirely, on the agricultural industry. Measures to speed-up the development of the agricultural sector to increase productivity in such countries are therefore imperative. In Tanzania, one of the actions the government has taken to achieve this is the establishment of agricultural Corporations which operate large scale mechanized farms. To achieve maximum productivity from scarce resources, such Corporations must be operated efficiently and this can only be achieved with appropriate planning of the corporate farms. This study has dealt with one such Corporation in Tanzania called National Agricultural and Food Corporation (NAFCO). The objective of the study has been to illustrate how such a Corporation can be operated efficiently so that maximum food production can be achieved from scarce resources. Linear programming has been evaluated as a planning tool for a single representative farm of NAFCO. The aim was to develop a suitable LP model for the farm, use this model to determine the optimal farm plans and associated information and evaluate whether the technique would form a suitable planning tool for NAFCO farms. The linear programing model developed demonstrated that the profits of the farm under study could be increased substantially by allocating the farm scarce resources more optimally. Repeating the optimisations of the model by changing the various assumptions proved to be quite useful in providing additional information on which to base management decisions. These results provided a better understanding of the effects and implications on what would happen if the anticipated yields, prices and certain policy decisions were changed. These are discussed in detail. The optimum plan computed should with minor changes be both acceptable and realizable. It is argued that, because under corporate farm structure, specific data relevant to individual farms is more readily available than under peasant farm situations and that because of the large scale nature of the corporate farms, the availability of wide choice of activities and resources as well as the necessary skills and defined objectives; linear programming would form a suitable planning tool for NAFCO farms

Perencanaan Dan Pengendalian Biaya Produksi Sebagai Suatu USAha Untuk Meningkatkan Efisiensi Biaya Produksi (Studi Pada PT. Pabrik Gula Krebet, Malang)

An attempt to increase efficiency production cost in planning and control production cost namely by pressing charges efficient possible to obtain maximum profit that the company management had to manage production activity effectively and efficiently. The objective of research is to explain the planning and control of production cost as an effort to increase production cost efficiency at PT. Pabrik Gula Krebet, Malang. Type of research is descriptive with case study approach at PT. Pabrik Gula Krebet, Malang. Data are collected with interview and documentation. From the results of research and analysis that has been done can be inferred that the budget cost of production at PT. Pabrik Gula Krebet, Malang factory is still not efficient. A causal factor is lacking of monitoring against production cost. This monitoring shall be improved to reduce the possibility of fraud on production cost by the deviating actors. Company should improve the supervision of the use of production costs overall budget and revise back production cost more accurate in forebode total production costs happened

Planning and scheduling in the digital factory

Production planning and scheduling with the aid of software tools in today’s manufacturing industries have become a common practice which is indispensable for providing high level customer service, and at the same time to utilize the production resources, like workforce, machine tools, raw materials, energy, etc., efficiently. To meet the new requirements, problem modeling tools, optimization techniques, and visualization of data and results have become part of the software packages. In this chapter some recent developments in problem modeling and optimization techniques applied to important and challenging industrial planning and scheduling problems are presented. We will focus on new problem areas which are still at the edge of current theoretical research, but they are motivated by practical needs. On the one hand, we will discuss project based production planning, and on the other hand, we will tackle a resource leveling problems in a machine environment. We will present the problems, some modeling and solution approaches, and various extensions and applications

Production planning and scheduling optimization model: a case of study for a glass container company

Based on a case study, this paper deals with the production planning and scheduling problem of the glass con-tainer industry. This is a facility production system that has a set of furnaces where the glass is produced in order to meet the demand, being afterwards distributed to a set of parallel molding machines. Due to huge setup times involved in a color changeover, manufacturers adopt their own mix of furnaces and machines to meet the needs of their customers as flexibly and efficiently as possible. In this paper we proposed an optimization model that maximizes the fulfillment of the demand considering typical constraints from the planning production formulation as well as real case production constraints such as the limited product changeovers and the minimum run length in a machine. The complexity of the proposed model is assessed by means of an industrial real life problem

The poverty impact of rural roads : evidencefrom Bangladesh

The rationale for public investment in rural roads is that households can better exploit agricultural and nonagricultural opportunities to use labor and capital more efficiently. But significant knowledge gaps remain as to how opportunities provided by roads actually filter back into household outcomes and their distributional consequences. This paper examines the impacts of rural road projects using household-level panel data from Bangladesh. Rural road investments are found to reduce poverty significantly through higher agricultural production, higher wages, lower input and transportation costs, and higher output prices. Rural roads also lead to higher girls'and boys'schooling. Road investments are pro-poor, meaning the gains are proportionately higher for the poor than for the non-poor.Transport Economics Policy&Planning,Rural Roads&Transport,Economic Theory&Research,Rural Transport,Rural Poverty Reduction

Achieving cost competitiveness with an agent based integrated process planning and production scheduling system

From a manufacturing perspective, the efficiency of manufacturing operations (such as process planning and production scheduling) are the key element for enhancing manufacturing competence. Process planning and production scheduling functions have been traditionally treated as two separate activities, and have resulted in a range of inefficiencies. These include infeasible process plans, non-available/overloaded resources, high production costs, long production lead times, and so on. Above all, it is unlikely that the dynamic changes can be efficiently dealt with. Despite much research has been conducted to integrate process planning and production scheduling to generate optimised solutions to improve manufacturing efficiency, there is still a gap to achieve the competence required for the current global competitive market. In this research, the concept of multi-agent system (MAS) is adopted as a means to address the aforementioned gap. A MAS consists of a collection of intelligent autonomous agents able to solve complex problems. These agents possess their individual objectives and interact with each other to fulfil the global goal. This paper describes a novel use of an autonomous agent system to facilitate the integration of process planning and production scheduling functions to cope with unpredictable demands, in terms of uncertainties in product mix and demand pattern. The novelty lies with the currency-based iterative agent bidding mechanism to allow process planning and production scheduling options to be evaluated simultaneously, so as to search for an optimised, cost-effective solution. This agent based system aims to achieve manufacturing competence by means of enhancing the flexibility and agility of manufacturing enterprises