A New Method for Manufacturing Process Autonomous Planning in Intelligent Manufacturing System

This paper presents a new method for autonomous computer-aided process planning (A-CAPP) in an intelligent manufacturing system, in which the related input and output of the system are discussed on the basis of comparative analysis of traditional CAPP. The crucial functional components of the A-CAPP system, such as event scheduling management, manufacturing process planning, operation process/step planning, numerical control machining program planning, process simulation and evaluation, are introduced; and the methods of process knowledge management, including process feature knowledge, manufacturing resource knowledge and process method knowledge, are discussed as well. A-CAPP applied for intelligent manufacturing system can effectively support the production line reconstruction dynamically; shorten the time of production line configuration modification in accordance with customers’ requirement change or market requirement fluctuation, and furthermore to balance the production lines load

Understanding Changeability Enablers and Their Impact on Performance in Manufacturing Companies

Part 5: Smart Production for Mass CustomizationInternational audienceManaging and capitalizing on product variety, customization, personalization, decreasing batch sizes, as well as rapid new product introductions are prevailing challenges facing today’s manufacturing companies. Changeable and reconfigurable manufacturing systems have been widely accepted as means to respond to these challenges, due to their ability to accommodate continuous and cost-efficient change in functionality and capacity. However, enablers of reconfigurability that should be selected during manufacturing system design are in current research rarely regarded in terms of their inherent relations and impact on manufacturing performance. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to explore implementation relations between physical enablers of reconfigurability on system and equipment level and their effect on manufacturing performance. For this purpose, a quantitative questionnaire-based survey has been conducted in various Danish manufacturing companies. The findings suggest that most reconfigurability enablers correlate strongly in their implementation and their extent of implementation generally correlates with critical performance aspects such as profitability, ramp-up time, and life-time of production systems

Reconfigurable Manufacturing:Lesson Learnt from the COVID-19 Outbreak

To compete in the current volatile and unpredictable context, manufacturing firms increasingly need reconfigurability, i.e. the capability to adapt the production capacities and functionalities of their manufacturing systems according to evolving product families. To be attractive for practitioners, reconfigurability should require a reasonably low effort. In 2020, the COVID-19 outbreak has quickly twisted market requirements: in an unexpected market context, many firms have been reconfiguring their plants and networks to satisfy, with low efforts, the surge in the demand for very specific products. This paper analyses the reaction upheld by specific Italian manufacturing firms to the outbreak, to derive practical insights on possible ways to achieve reconfigurability in manufacturing. As for results, four insights are provided, regarding: the pre-existing know how held by firms; their network configuration; the modularity of products; and the use of smart and digital technologies. Additionally, remarking the relevance of collaboration between different firms, this paper sows the seeds for linking the reconfigurability theory with the dynamic capabilities theory