Collaborative and intelligent networks and decision systems and services for supporting engineering and production management

Collaborative networks and systems (CNS) have received much attention in recent decades to reach a competitive advantage [...]This work was supported by national funds through the FCT-Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia, through the R&D Units Project Scopes: UIDB/00319/2020, UIDB/50014/2020, and EXPL/EME-SIS/1224/2021

Formal description technique SDL for manufacturing systems specification and description

This paper addresses the formal specification and description of manufacturing systems. It is considered the use of SDL (Specification and Description Language), a standard FDT (Formal Description Technique), to model the behaviour, data and structure aspects of a manufacturing system. SDL was originally developed for telecommunication systems (protocol specification and data processing). The adequacy of FDTs, namely SDL, for the manufacturing systems domain is investigated by developing the SDL specification of part of a Distributed/Virtual Manufacturing System cell installation (D/V MS Project), and analysing it

How environment dynamics affects production scheduling: requirements for development of CPPS models

Production scheduling can be affected by many disturbances in the manufacturing system, and consequently, the feasible schedules previously defined became obsolete. Emerging of new technologies associated with Industry 4.0, such as Cyber-Physical Production Systems, as a paradigm of implementation of control and support in decision making, should embed the capacity to simulate different environment scenarios based on the data collected by the manufacturing systems. This paper presents the evaluation of environment dynamics effect on production scheduling, considering three scheduling models and three environment scenarios, through a case study. Results show that environment dynamics affect production schedules, and a very strong or strong positive correlation between environment dynamics scenarios and total completion time with delay, over three scheduling paradigms. Based on these results, the requirement for mandatory inclusion of a module for different environment dynamics scenarios generation and the corresponded simulations, of a Cyber-Physical Production Systems architecture, is confirmed.This work has been supported by FCT -Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia within the R&D Units Project Scope: UIDB/00319/2020

The concept of collaborative engineering: a systematic literature review

Collaborative engineering is not a new subject but it assumes a new importance in the Industry 4.0 (I4.0). There are other concepts frequently mismatched with collaboration. Thus, the main objective of this paper is to put forward a collaborative engineering concept, along its sub concepts, supported by an extensive systematic literature review. A critical analysis and discussion about the fundamental importance of learning, and the central human role in collaboration, in the I4.0, is presented, based on the main insights brought through the literature review. This study also enables to realize about the importance of collaboration in the current digitalization era, along with the importance of recent approaches and technology for enabling or promoting collaboration. Main current practices of human centered and autonomous machine-machine approaches and applications of collaboration in engineering, namely in manufacturing and management, are presented, along with main difficulties and further open research opportunities on collaboration.This work was supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia [UIDB/00319/2020, UIDB/50014/2020, and EXPL/EME-SIS/1224/2021]

BM_Virtual Enterprise Architecture Reference Model for Concurrent Engineering: An experiment

In order to test the potential of Virtual Enterprise (VE) organizational principles for Concurrent Engineering (CE) team work organization, an experiment applying the BM_Virtual Enterprise Architecture Reference Model (BM_VEARM) is organized. Three CE teams are asked to create a web site. The teams have been organized as follows: 1) CE distributed team (virtual team according to literature); 2) CE agile team (agile organization according to BM_VEARM) and 3) CE virtual team (virtual organization according to BM_VEARM), in order to complete the required task. The main objective of the experiment is to show that the three organization models of CE teams work effectively, and analyse the performance according to previously defined criteria. In this paper the results in terms of product quality are presented. The experiment has shown that better product quality, for the product quality aspects analysed, is achieved in cases when VE organization is applied

Intelligent collaborative decision-making models, methods, and tools

[Excerpt] Problems in engineering are usually hard to be modeled and solved through mathematical approaches, due to the complex nature of these problems and the need for specifying efective, efcient, and proper models to consider and approach reallife or empirical and emulated problem scenarios. Many proposals are constantly being put forward, based on diferent kind of models, specially referring to mathematical models, and formalization approaches, in the context of this journal, ranging from purely linear programming models, algebra or diferential equations based models to artifcial intelligent (AI) oriented models or based on agents or neural networks. These include a great number of AI tools, such as fuzzy theory, grey theory, neural network model, Genetic Algorithms, and expert systems. [...

Man-Machine interface for remote programming and control of NC machine-tools at the task level: an example

This paper presents an example of Man-Machine Interface for remote programming and control of NC machine tools. The system is based on a computer virtual panel which substitutes the machine control panel and in telematics interfaces which establishes the basis for geographical independence between the physical equipment and human operator

Using formal description technique ESTELLE for manufacturing systems specification or description

Usually the description of a system is given in natural language or in diagrams. It is very hard to make this kind of informal description clear, concise and unambiguous. Implementations based on informal specifications are usually prone to errors, omissions and incompatibilities. This paper presents an attempt to introduce Formal Description Techniques (FDT's), originally developed for the area of telecommunications and data transfer, as a mean for the specification/description of manufacturing systems. A brief introduction on standard FDT's, LOTOS, ESTELLE and SDL is given. Several concepts were behind the development of these techniques and this paper exploits the extended finite state machine (EFSM) concept as a suitable form for specification/description of manufacturing systems using FDT ESTELLE

Collaborative portal for supporting manufacturing resources selection in a global market

In the last decades the manufacturing industry has shifted from largely single location centralized manufacturing towards networked manufacturing spread over multiple sites. Companies have either established new production sites in multiple locations or established strategic partnerships to respond to market changes more rapidly as well as for more efficient and effective sharing of resources, through the so-called integrated manufacturing systems environments. In this context, proper collaboration among different locations and/or partners becomes more critical. Thus, development of appropriate integrated tools, to enable clients or network partners to accurately select appropriate manufacturing resource from the widened global market context, becomes emergent. Therefore, this work is aimed at providing a contribution to maximize overall benefit of businesses, in the context of a networked scenario, and subject to a set of configurations and restrictions on part of the manufacturing resources providers and searchers. Thus, the authors propose a collaborative portal to enable to perform a better manufacturing resources selection, based on technologies integration for supporting accurate orders processing.The authors wish to acknowledge the support of the Foundation for Science and Technology – FCT, under the scope of the financed Project with reference: PEst20152020, as well as the FCT Doctoral grant referenced SFRH/BD/62313/2009.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Investigation of degradation and upgradation models for flexible unit systems: a systematic literature review

Research on flexible unit systems (FUS) with the context of descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analysis have remarkably progressed in recent times, being now reinforced in the current Industry 4.0 era with the increased focus on integration of distributed and digitalized systems. In the existing literature, most of the work focused on the individual contributions of the above mentioned three analyses. Moreover, the current literature is unclear with respect to the integration of degradation and upgradation models for FUS. In this paper, a systematic literature review on degradation, residual life distribution, workload adjustment strategy, upgradation, and predictive maintenance as major performance measures to investigate the performance of the FUS has been considered. In order to identify the key issues and research gaps in the existing literature, the 59 most relevant papers from 2009 to 2020 have been sorted and analyzed. Finally, we identify promising research opportunities that could expand the scope and depth of FUS.The project is funded by the Department of Science and Technology, Science & Engineering Research Board (DST-SERB), Statutory Body Established through an Act of Parliament: SERB Act 2008, Government of India with Sanction Order No ECR/2016/001808, and also by FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia through the R&D Units Project Scope: UIDB/00319/2020