Logistics engineering curriculum integrated through student projects

This paper describes an innovative curriculum developed for new Logistics Engineering degree programs at the Faculty of Engineering Management, Poznan University of Technology. The core of the program is based on a sequence of four major courses, which focus on the Product Development, Process Analysis and Optimization, Logistic Processes and Service Engineering. Each course is built around a practical team project. With the project effort as the background, the courses introduce students to key issues in global engineering competence, including collaboration and teamwork, work organization and management, engineering ethics, cross-cultural communication, critical thinking and problem solving, and integration strategies for design, manufacturing and marketing. Projects also introduce entrepreneurial components, as the teams have to develop their concepts in the context of a start-up company. The first course in the series, introduces 2nd year students to basic concepts of consumer product development. It covers the principles of design and innovation process, and also explains essential design tools, such as Quality Function Deployment and Pugh Matrices. It also reviews key manufacturing methods and systems. Students work in small teams to develop their own product ideas from initial concepts to a business plan for a start-up. The course is offered in English. The second course, offered to 3rd year students, introduces fundamental concepts related to industrial process analysis and improvement. Students learn necessary data collection and analysis techniques (such as, for example, Value Stream Mapping) and also the basics of process simulation using a commercial software package. Student teams work with industrial sponsors and develop competing innovative ideas for process transformation and improvement. While the first two courses have already been offered for the first time in the past year in the engineering program (level 1), the third course is still in the planning phase. It will be offered to 4th year students in the first year of their master\u27s program. It will focus on Supply Chain processes, assessment of their performance, lifecycle analysis and management. The student group project will be carried out in an industrial setting, dealing with real-life assignments. The final course, integrating knowledge acquired by the students in the preceding sequence, is focused on the issues of service engineering. It covers such topics as, for example, organizational design, global issues and design of service operations

Reconfigurable web service integration in the extended logistics enterprise

Transportation and warehousing logistics are activities that require strong information systems and computer support. This requirement has grown with the advent of e-commerce. Companies such as FedEx and UPS now allow their customers to track and monitor the fulfilment of their requested services on the Internet. In order for such a system to be effective, the goods need to be handled by the one corporation, with an integrated system. This is rare in the case of Small to Medium sized Enterprise (SME). With the advent of Business to Business (B2B), and Partner to Partner (P2P) e-commerce, there has been an increasing tendency for SMEs to set up consortia that represent several players in a given field in order to contend with larger competitors. This paper deals with the concept of an extended logistics enterprise and explores the software engineering issues underlying the development of such complex systems

The Impact of Operation Revitalisation Strategies in Power Generation Plants on Customer Satisfaction

Purpose: The purpose of this manuscript is to examine the influence of operation revitalization strategies and management reforms on customer satisfaction in the power plant industry.   Theoretical framework: The conceptual model for this study was developed based on previous research in the field of project management in Malaysia and globally. The conceptual model has three operations revitalization variables that affect customer satisfaction.   Design/methodology/approach: A survey instrument in the form of a structured questionnaire was designed based on a careful review of pertinent literature. This study collected empirical data from 196 respondents. Multiple regression analysis is used to test the significance of the research model.   Findings: The regression results reveals that business process reengineering, agile and lean manufacturing and reconfigurable manufacturing system effects customer satisfaction.   Research, Practical & Social implications: The implication drawn from this study aids project managers in providing a focus on the key variables that affect customer satisfaction in the power plant industry.   Originality/value: The key value of this research lies in its findings of the key variables influencing customer satisfaction in the power plant industry in Malaysia which is currently under researched

An introduction of small-scale intelligent manufacturing system

Embargoed OA, manuscript version after 24 months from publishing date. Link to publishers version: http://doi.org/10.1109/SIMS.2016.7802896Manufacturing companies in Northern Peripheral and Arctic region are predominately small and medium-sized and face considerable challenges like geographical isolation and a lack of benefits offered by industrial clusters. For the ultimate goal of enhancing their competitiveness in a global market, it is imperative for companies to innovate or adopt innovations in order to quickly response to changes in market, meet customer demands, reduce time-to-market and lower cost. A novel concept for small-scale intelligent manufacturing systems (SIMS) is introduced, in which diverse methods and innovative technologies can be applied and integrated. This paper gives an introduction of SIMS, defines its design objectives, and summarizes major relevant tools, techniques and paradigms for the development of SIMS, to generate a facilitative environment for small and medium-scale manufacturing enterprises to embrace new and innovative technologies

Mass Production Processes

It is always hard to set manufacturing systems to produce large quantities of standardized parts. Controlling these mass production lines needs deep knowledge, hard experience, and the required related tools as well. The use of modern methods and techniques to produce a large quantity of products within productive manufacturing processes provides improvements in manufacturing costs and product quality. In order to serve these purposes, this book aims to reflect on the advanced manufacturing systems of different alloys in production with related components and automation technologies. Additionally, it focuses on mass production processes designed according to Industry 4.0 considering different kinds of quality and improvement works in mass production systems for high productive and sustainable manufacturing. This book may be interesting to researchers, industrial employees, or any other partners who work for better quality manufacturing at any stage of the mass production processes

Tactical Production Planning for Customer Individual Products in Changeable Production Networks

The requirements of future production are characterized by increasing demand volatility as well as very short delivery times and high timeliness in the order-based production environment. Furthermore, the trend to customer individual products leads to additional production planning challenges. Therefore, to react fast to these market trends, changeable production networks is a key to success. This technical contribution describes a method for tactical production planning for customer individual products in changeable production networks. The design of the method contains three main process modules (1) order-capability-comparison, (2) capacity planning, and (3) order-specific network structure. Underlying the former described modules, a data model is necessary and introduced. Furthermore, the simulation of the applied system on a prototypical implementation at BSH Hausgeräte GmbH, the largest home appliances manufacturer in Europe, is shown and explained. Finally, limitations are discussed and an outlook into future work for the research field in production planning of production networks is given

Re-configurable VoiP interactive response

Organizational alliances are rapidly being formed as a means for effective cooperation with a common goal within a targeted value chain. The combination of such communication, coordination and cooperation leads to new organisational forms and scenarios within the Digital Ecosystem space that require technological support. Convergence refers to the move towards concurrently coupled telecommunications services with enterprise and internet data.Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a telecommunications solution that uses a data network such as the internet to transport voice traffic. VoIP data is transported alongside other data over an existing network. VoIP has introduced significant cost savings, functionality and convenience that is functionally comparable to traditional telecommunication offerings. However, current IT&T solutions have failed to use this powerful technology beyond simple telephony applicattoos.This paper presents a flexible VoIP Interactive Voice Response (IVR) interface that offers simplified convergence of telecommunications services that are coupled with enterprise and internet data

TRANSFORMING A CIRCULAR ECONOMY INTO A HELICAL ECONOMY FOR ADVANCING SUSTAINABLE MANUFACTURING

The U.N. projects the world population to reach nearly 10 billion people by 2050, which will cause demand for manufactured goods to reach unforeseen levels. In order for us to produce the goods to support an equitable future, the methods in which we manufacture those goods must radically change. The emerging Circular Economy (CE) concept for production systems has promised to drastically increase economic/business value by significantly reducing the world’s resource consumption and negative environmental impacts. However, CE is inherently limited because of its emphasis on recycling and reuse of materials. CE does not address the holistic changes needed across all of the fundamental elements of manufacturing: products, processes, and systems. Therefore, a paradigm shift is required for moving from sustainment to sustainability to “produce more with less” through smart, innovative and transformative convergent manufacturing approaches rooted in redesigning next generation manufacturing infrastructure. This PhD research proposes the Helical Economy (HE) concept as a novel extension to CE. The proposed HE concepts shift the CE’s status quo paradigm away from post-use recovery for recycling and reuse and towards redesigning manufacturing infrastructure at product, process, and system levels, while leveraging IoT-enabled data infrastructures and an upskilled workforce. This research starts with the conceptual overview and a framework for implementing HE in the discrete product manufacturing domain by establishing the future state vision of the Helical Economy Manufacturing Method (HEMM). The work then analyzes two components of the framework in detail: designing next-generation products and next-generation IoT-enabled data infrastructures. The major research problems that need to be solved in these subcomponents are identified in order to make near-term progress towards the HEMM. The work then proceeds with the development and discussion of initial methods for addressing these challenges. Each method is demonstrated using an illustrative industry example. Collectively, this initial work establishes the foundational body of knowledge for the HE and the HEMM, provides implementation methods at the product and IoT-enabled data infrastructure levels, and it shows a great potential for HE’s ability to create and maximize sustainable value, optimize resource consumption, and ensure continued technological progress with significant economic growth and innovation. This research work then presents an outlook on the future work needed, as well as calls for industry to support the continued refinement and development of the HEMM through relevant prototype development and subsequent applications

Termelési struktúrák, mint komplex, adaptív rendszerek = Production structures as Complex Adaptive Systems

A kutatás során fontos lépéseket tettünk a dinamikus, rugalmas termelési struktúrák modellezésének, tervezésének, irányításának és menedzsmentjének elméleti megalapozása terén. Figyelembe vettük a termelési hierarchia különböző szintjeit, a műhelyektől a vállalatokon át a termelési hálózatokig, szinergiákra törekedve az optimálás, az autonómia és a kooperáció tekintetében. Az OTKA-támogatás feltüntetésével 47 publikáció született, melyek közül 17 folyóiratcikk (köztük 13 impaktos, 19,546-os összimpakttal), 1 könyvfejezet és 29 konferenciacikk. Megkezdődött az eredmények ipari bevezetése (GE, Hitachi, Audi, GAMESA, Bosch, Knorr Bremse, Bosch-Rexroth, stb.)) az MTA SZTAKI keretében működő Fraunhofer Termelésirányítás és –informatika Projektközpont (http://www.fraunhofer.hu) keretében. | Significant steps were made towards the theoretical foundation of modelling, planning, control and management of dynamic, flexible production structures. Levels from shop floors through enterprises to the production networks were considered, and a synergy between the aspects of optimization, autonomy, and cooperation was aimed at. With indications to the OTKA support, as a whole, 47 papers have been published, i.e., 17 journal papers (among them 13 in journals with impact factors, with a cumulative impact factor of 19,546), 1 book chapter and 29 conference papers. The industrial deployment of the results was partly started in GE, Hitachi, Audi, GAMESA, Bosch, Knorr Bremse, Bosch-Rexroth, etc., mainly in the framework of the SZTAKI-Fraunhofer Production Management and –Informatics Project Center (http://www.fraunhofer.hu)