Danfang Chen

Software Tools for the Digital Factory – An Evaluation and Discussion

This paper presents an evaluation and discussion of the digital factory tools, based on various software applications. The aim is to map the software tools within the digital factory and evaluate t ...

A decision support tool for the energy efficient selection of process plans

Energy management has become one of the top priorities in all sectors of the economy originating from both legislative obligations and energy cost. The manufacturing sector accounts for more than 30% of the total energy demand. Industrial practice relies on methods such as energy auditing, energy monitoring and control. However, this approach can be considered as reactive, since the energy requirements for manufacturing a specific part are not considered during the planning of the production. A proactive approach is lacking that would allow the design and planning of the process plan strategy with the energy efficiency of the processes being one of the decision-making criteria. The objective of the present paper is to propose and validate a decision support tool for assessing the energy efficiency of alternative process plans. The decision support is based on energy auditing, life-cycle assessment and TOPSIS method for ranking various alternative process plans. The tool has been validated in a high pressure ceramics casting plant.

Production pilot for co-operation in factory development

This paper is dedicated to the factory development where management of established knowledge and company practice is a big challenge because its process involves many competence domains such as process planning, production investment and building construction, etc. This article presents an in-house developed production pilot for a better cooperation and support in factory development. Details about methodologies and the thinking behind the pilot will be presented in the paper. The pilot aims to ease the sharing and reuse of knowledge and experiences, create a valueadding working process, and ease the collaboration and semantic interpretation between disciplines within factory development.

User friendly development architecture for standardised modelling : STEP Toolbox

Standardised information modelling is currently an important solution of enhancing the interoperability of computer-aided technology (CAx) systems in the manufacturing industry. The success of this solution is critically dependent on the complexity of data structure and implementation methodology. This study presents development architecture, STEP toolbox, which enables users to implement information standards via a simplified process with minimised knowledge requirements. This study starts with an analysis of relevant user groups for different types of tasks and knowledge requirements. Then STEP toolbox is presented as the simplified development architecture that consists of conceptual modelling and an object-oriented application programming interface (API). It is more convenient for typical developers than the conventional implementation methodology. Based on results from test cases for implementing three prototypes, a two-month learning process required for average developers of the information standards is expected to be eliminated.