Andrea Bettoni

Modeling and Simulation Tool for Sustainable MC Supply Chain Design and Assessment

Supply chain design, management and assessment are key success drivers in nowadays globalised economy. With the advent of new paradigms such as sustainability and mass customization, a new generation of tools is required. This work presents a supply chain simulation tool that allows to take into account the specificity of mass customized markets, efficiently dealing with the adjustable product physical structure and the complexity of handling customized Lot Size One orders. Moreover, this tool is integrated with a sustainable Assessment Engine that allows to configure, since the product design phase, the entire supply chain in a lifecycle perspective. In order to ensure a wide applicability of the tool, this is developed using a client-server architecture and exploiting a Shared Data Model that facilitates the integration of many applications coming from different providers thus giving a powerful decision support tool to companies’ decision makers.

Toward Human-Centric Factories: Requirements and Design Aspects of a Worker-Centric Job Allocator

The new point of view in which factory and workers are seen is the person at the centre of the production system, so employees should be involved in job design and task balancing processes. The advantages coming by this paradigm shift, from the task-centric organization to the worker-centric factory is doubtless the high correlation among job and worker in terms of skill, experience, and worker’s features. Human-centric system is useful to improve the knowledge and the capabilities of workers regardless of age and role, and in this kind of model the job suits the worker and his needs. In this context, it is of paramount importance to design and develop a worker-centric job allocator tool in which the human dimension is a key factor. This study therefore addresses the requirements and design aspects of a worker-centric job allocator as an enabler for human-centric workplaces of the future.

Towards sustainability assessment: Reference data model for integrated product, process, supply chain design

Sustainability is an emerging factor companies are called for considering in their business according to the growing people-awareness about the impact of their behaviour as customers against environmental, social and economic issues. However, companies seldom manage to focus on sustainability all along the design and decisional process due to lack of proper sustainability measurement systems and/or inability to propagate this analysis on all the actors involved in the extended production system definition. This paper presents a novel approach aimed at supporting an integrated product, production system and supply chain design for sustainability. This goal will be pursued by, first, providing the system architecture of a system that supports the design activities taking place at the abovementioned three levels and, second, a data model encompassing all the required entities of the design for implementing the sustainability assessment.

Anthropocentric Workplaces of the Future Approached through a New Holistic Vision

The human dimension is growing in importance in the cul- tural and scientific debate surrounding the arising of workplace and fac- tory of the future visions. Having people at the centre of the factory is already recognized as a main enabler for making the most out of their skills and capacities while at the same time achieving an environment that can both motivate employed workers and attract new skilled ones. The present paper proposes a novel concept aimed at defining new so- cially sustainable workplaces that adapt to workers’ anthropometric di- mensions within worker-aware production systems that are designed and operated to capitalize on workers’ skills and experience while at the same time promoting their development. Moreover it envisions the integration of the factory in the social and environmental context by promoting the creation and provision of worker-centric services that turn the factory from a society-affecting entity into an integration-promotion body.

Sustainability Assessment Model

The concept of sustainability, in the way we understand the term now, first appeared in 1987, within the Brundtland Report, defined as “to meet the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Later, as the concept gained popularity, hundreds of definitions were proposed, in academic debates and business arenas, referring to a more ethical, more green, and more transparent way of doing business. Today, the label of “sustainable” is a bottom-line requirement: as a matter of fact, Sustainability has become a common basic goal for many national and international organizations including industries, governments, NGOs, and universities. However, in spite of the nearly universal recognition that Sustainability has received, companies still struggle with the full understanding of the concept and with its financial viability.

Mass Customization Theory and Implementation Framework

The term “mass customization,” abridged with MC, was anticipated by Stan Davis in the book, “Future Perfect,” in 1987: “the same large number of customers can be reached as in mass markets… and simultaneously they can be treated individually as in the customized markets of pre-industrial economies.”

Use of Laser Scanners in Machine Tools to Implement Freeform Parts Machining and Quality Control

This work illustrates the results obtained integrating the most recent laser scanner within machine tools for precision machining. The main aspects addressed include an in-depth analysis of currently available devices and their test on a specially adapted measuring machine, the use of the same axis that move the tool to achieve the scan and the use of sensors that provide different measurements types combined together. Achieved results demonstrated the possibility, for the chosen measurement system, to directly measure the position of geometric features with an accuracy of less than 2 μm and to identify their position through 3D matching with an error, calculated along repeatability tests, always less than 18 µm.

Software Support for Sustainable Supply Chain Configuration and Management

A methodology for the inclusion of sustainability assessment in the design of supply chains is introduced, with the aim of taking into account a sustainability perspective in logistics and industrial allocation choices. The presented approach is based on the initial collection and organization of data related to all stages of the product life cycle and of the possible alternative choices to be made for each production and transport stage. An optimization algorithm is then used to prune the space of alternative solutions and an advanced and flexible graphical user interface allows the exploration of the solution space.

Hic Sunt Dracones: Here Be Dragons

Mass Customization refers to customer co-design process of products and services, which meets the needs of each individual customer with regard to certain product features. All operations are performed within a fixed solution space, characterized by stable but still flexible and responsive processes.

Connecting Humans to the Loop of Digitized Factories’ Automation Systems

Emerging factory digitization, along with the increased automation levels it promotes, represents a unique opportunity that manufacturing enterprises must seize. By distributing once centralized decision-making through an ecosystem of smart factory objects, enterprises will be able to increase their productivity, responsiveness and quality levels. However, for continued effective management, humans must adapt to production systems whose behavior is defined by the interactions that take place between these smart objects and the overall automation layers and automatic control functions. These interactions can occur in different ways across many levels of abstraction and complexity, and across many timescales. As a result, it is extremely hard for humans to preserve reliable mental models and this raises the risk of the out-of-the-loop condition. This paper proposes a human-centered automation framework for improved workers’ well-being, safety and psychological health. Particularly, the dynamic real time interactions among closed loop control functions and human workers are addressed so as to properly include humans in the feedback loops. Experimental cases of the proposed framework application are presented in the white-goods and in the furniture sectors.