Short term production scheduling of an automated manufacturing facility

Bibliography: p. 36."February, 1984."Contract DAAK11-82-K-0018.Stanley B. Gershwin, Ramakrishna Akella, and Yong Choong

A framework of justification criteria for advanced manufacturing technology implementation in small and medium enterprises

Today in order to stay in businesses and prosper, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are seeking higher electiveness and competitiveness across the entire cycle of marketing, product design, manufacture, test and sales. SMEs play an increasingly important role in all aspects of competitiveness: both products and production techniques, but also management methods, the organization of the firm and human resources training. One of the ways by which SMEs can achieve a competitive advantage in manufacturing is through the implementation of Advanced Manufacturing Technology (AMT). An increasing number of them have chosen and are choosing various levels of AMT as the solution. Realizing the importance of SMEs, an attempt has been made in this paper to review the application of AMT in SMEs. Also, a framework has been offered for the implementation of AMT in SMEs. Finally, a summary of findings and conclusions are presented

Enhanced cell controller for aerospace manufacturing

Aerospace manufacturing industry is unique in that production typically focuses on high variety and quality but extremely low volume. Manufacturing processes are also sometimes unique and not repeatable and, hence, costly. Production is getting more expensive with the introduction of industrial robots and their cells. This paper describes the development of the Flexa Cell Coordinator (FCC), a system that is providing a solution to manage resources at assembly cell level. It can control, organise and coordinate between the resources and is capable of controlling remote cells and resources because of its distributed nature. It also gives insight of a system to the higher management via its rich reporting facility and connectivity with company systems e.g., Enterprise Resource Planner (ERP). It is able to control various kinds of cells and resources (network based) which are not limited to robots and machines. It is extendable and capable of adding multiple numbers of cells inside the system. It also provides the facility of scheduling the task to avoid the deadlocking in the process. In FCC resources (e.g., tracker) can also be shared between cells

Heuristic Solutions for Loading in Flexible Manufacturing Systems

Production planning in flexible manufacturing system deals with the efficient organization of the production resources in order to meet a given production schedule. It is a complex problem and typically leads to several hierarchical subproblems that need to be solved sequentially or simultaneously. Loading is one of the planning subproblems that has to addressed. It involves assigning the necessary operations and tools among the various machines in some optimal fashion to achieve the production of all selected part types. In this paper, we first formulate the loading problem as a 0-1 mixed integer program and then propose heuristic procedures based on Lagrangian relaxation and tabu search to solve the problem. Computational results are presented for all the algorithms and finally, conclusions drawn based on the results are discussed

Conclusions and implications of automation in space

Space facilities and programs are reviewed. Space program planning is discussed

Communication and control in small batch part manufacturing

This paper reports on the development of a real-time control network as an integrated part of a shop floor control system for small batch part manufacturing. The shop floor control system is called the production control system (PCS). The PCS aims at an improved control of small batch part manufacturing systems, enabling both a more flexible use of resources and a decrease in the economical batch size. For this, the PCS integrates various control functions such as scheduling, dispatching, workstation control and monitoring, whilst being connected on-line to the production equipment on the shop floor. The PCS can be applied irrespective of the level of automation on the shop floor. The control network is an essential part of the PCS, as it provides a real-time connection between the different modules (computers) of the PCS, which are geographically distributed over the shop floor. An overview of the requirements of such a control network is given. The description of the design includes the services developed, the protocols used and the physical layout of the network. A prototype of the PCS, including the control network, has been installed and tested in a pilot plant. The control network has proven that it can supply a manufacturing environment, consisting of equipment from different vendors with different levels of automation, with a reliable, low cost, real-time communication facility

Intelligent systems in manufacturing: current developments and future prospects

Global competition and rapidly changing customer requirements are demanding increasing changes in manufacturing environments. Enterprises are required to constantly redesign their products and continuously reconfigure their manufacturing systems. Traditional approaches to manufacturing systems do not fully satisfy this new situation. Many authors have proposed that artificial intelligence will bring the flexibility and efficiency needed by manufacturing systems. This paper is a review of artificial intelligence techniques used in manufacturing systems. The paper first defines the components of a simplified intelligent manufacturing systems (IMS), the different Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to be considered and then shows how these AI techniques are used for the components of IMS

Lean implementation to improve scheduling for a multi-cell manufacturing facility

Includes bibliographical references