David S. Cochran

A decomposition approach for manufacturing system design

Successful manufacturing system designs must be capable of satisfying the strategic objectives of a company. There exist numerous tools to design manufacturing systems. Most frameworks, however, do not separate objectives from means. As a result, it is difficult to understand the interactions among different design objectives and solutions and to communicate these interactions. The research described in this paper develops an approach to help manufacturing system designers: (1) clearly separate objectives from the means of achievement, (2) relate low-level activities and decisions to high-level goals and requirements, (3) understand the interrelationships among the different elements of a system design, and (4) effectively communicate this information across a manufacturing organization. This research does so by describing a manufacturing system design decomposition (MSDD). The MSDD enables a firm to simultaneously achieve cost, quality, delivery responsiveness to the customer, and flexibility objectives. The application section illustrates how the MSDD can be applied in conjunction with existing procedural manufacturing engineering.

Manufacturing System Design

Abstract To achieve the desired goals of a manufacturing enterprise, manufacturing systems must be designed to satisfy a specific set of functional requirements (FRs) and constraints (C). Such a design can be achieved based on axiomatic design theory. A hypothetical manufacturing system that has to produce a mix of products in large numbers in highly competitive industry is designed to illustrate the methodology. This design, albeit hypothetical, may be an ideal and practical design for many manufacturing firms competing in consumer-oriented industries with worldwide over-capacity of manufacturing facilities.

The application of axiomatic design and lean management principles in the scope of production system segmentation

Systematic design and evaluation of segmented production system structures is the subject of this paper. Recently emerged paradigms of Lean Management and Business Process Re-engineering call for adaptation of a production systems organizational structure to be more reactive to a volatile and diversified market behaviour. One opportunity to optimize production system design is segmentation of the manufacturing enterprise into small, flexible and decentralized production units. The presented segmentation procedure utilizes an Axiomatic Design framework and supports Lean Management practices following strategic, organizational, and technological design aspects. A case study exemplifies the developed methodology to improve the competitiveness of a manufacturing company.

Big data analytics with applications

In this paper, recent developments on the Internet of Things (IoT) and its applications are surveyed, and the impact of newly developed Big Data (BD) on manufacturing information systems is especially discussed. Big Data analytics (BDA) has been identified as a critical technology to support data acquisition, storage, and analytics in data management systems in modern manufacturing. The purpose of the presented work is to clarify the requirements of predictive systems, and to identify research challenges and opportunities on BDA to support cloud-based information systems.

Simulation and production planning for manufacturing cells

Simulation is used to verify the feasibility of the design of manufacturing cells for a major automotive company. The cell design, which combines new and existing machines in a component manufacture, is presented, showing the difficulties that can result with such a system. Simply changing the layout (arranging machines into cells) could provide some benefits, but these benefits were offset by a high level of required investment. The reasons for the increased costs include poorly matched cycle times, machine downtimes, complex material handling and long changeovers. Improvements in machine and material handling designs were found to be necessary in order to increase cell performance and reduce investment to a feasible level.

The Production System Design and Deployment Framework

This session keynote paper presents a framework for designing and deploying production systems. The framework enables the communication and determination of objectives and design solutions from the highest level to the lowest level of a manufacturing enterprise. The design methodology ensures that the physical implementation, called Design Parameters (DPs), meets the objectives or Functional Requirements (FRs) of the production system design. This paper presents a revolutionary approach to determine the objectives and the implementation of a “lean” production system design for a manufacturing business as guided by the design axiom of independence.

Use of the manufacturing system design decomposition for comparative analysis and effective design of production systems

The focus of this paper is on the use of the Manufacturing System Design Decomposition (MSDD) to make effective cost and production system design decisions. A comparative study is conducted to illustrate how and why the total cost is reduced when the functional requirements defined by the MSDD are achieved. The ultimate goal of this research was to advance manufacturing and production system development to being guided by engineering science and design rather than the common practice of duplicating another person’s or entity’s notion of the best physical implementation.

Evaluating manufacturing system design and performance using the manufacturing system design decomposition approach

Abstract This paper uses the Manufacturing System Design Decomposition (MSDD) approach to contrast the design of the manufacturing systems at two North American automative component manufacturing plants. Instead of characterizing a manufacturing system on name alone as “mass” or “lean,” a system should be described in terms of the achievement of the manufacturing system requirements. The following analysis quantifies the performance of a “lean” plant relative to the performance of a “mass” plant based on the achievement of the system design requirements that are decomposed by the MSDD.

Using axiomatic design to support the development of a balanced scorecard

This paper shows how the principles of axiomatic design can be used to develop a balanced scorecard. To develop a balanced scorecard, companies usually use cause-effect diagrams to link the strategic plan with the enterprise scorecard, and the performance of every worker to the enterprises overall performance. Using axiomatic design to make these links and develop performance measures is proposed. A brief example is presented to show how this method avoids highly coupled designs, provides guidance in terms of how the objectives can be achieved, and facilitates the tracking and linking of measures across various levels of the scorecard hierarchy.

Modelling of human–machine interaction in equipment design of manufacturing cells

ABSTRACT This paper proposes a systematic approach to model human–machine interactions (HMIs) in supervisory control of machining operations; it characterises the coexistence of machines and humans for an enterprise to balance the goals of automation/productivity and flexibility/agility. In the proposed HMI model, an operator is associated with a set of behavioural roles as a supervisor for multiple, semi-automated manufacturing processes. The model is innovative in the sense that (1) it represents an HMI based on its functions for process control but provides the flexibility for ongoing improvements in the execution of manufacturing processes; (2) it provides a computational tool to define functional requirements for an operator in HMIs. The proposed model can be used to design production systems at different levels of an enterprise architecture, particularly at the machine level in a production system where operators interact with semi-automation to accomplish the goal of ‘autonomation’ – automation that augments the capabilities of human beings.