Emilia Brad

A Literature Survey on Reconfigurable Industrial Robotic Work Cells

As the unpredictability of market needs and the mass customization trends increase, employing reconfigurable industrial robotic work cells becomes a viable solution for manufacturers. A reconfigurable manufacturing system is a system designed for a quick change in structure, both in hardware and software, in order to rapidly adjust production capacity and functionalities. However, the approach is quite general; a simple search within scientific literature, patent databases or the world-wide-web returns thousands of results, covering a time period from the 80s to date. Among the results, different approaches on reconfigurable industrial robotic work cell implementations can be easily noticed. This paper surveys the literature in reconfigurable industrial robotic work cells, aiming to identify, besides the most important approaches on this topic, also performance criteria associated to robotic workcell reconfigurability and means of measuring the reconfigurability degree of such cells. The survey also aims to identify command and control architectures used to achieve various levels of reconfigurability. The survey was conducted by using a specific search methodology, which is also presented in the paper.

Framework for eco-innovative design with application in low-voltage electric appliance industry

Following several years of incremental improvements in green-design, nowadays, step changes have to be considered for developing competitive environmentally friendly products. However, many companies still see environmental issues as economical burden because eco-innovations usually require new capital investments as well as changes in product design and the related production processes and after-sale services. In this respect, a methodology for guiding decision-makers towards a superior balance between quality, cost and environmental issues in product design is introduced in this paper. A case study on a product from the family of electric appliances reveals the effectiveness of the methodology.

Design of smart connected manufacturing resources to enable changeability, reconfigurability and total-cost-of-ownership models in the factory-of-the-future

The fourth industrial revolution requires higher capabilities of changeability and reconfigurability (C–R) of the future factories (FoF), as well as a higher focus on business models that are based on total-cost-of-ownership (TCO) paradigm. Up to date, there are little scientific contributions to deploy C–R into TCO models, as well as to systematic plan and design manufacturing resources such as to facilitate FoF ecosystem. In order to address this issue, this paper introduces research results that show how to deploy C–R, connectivity, smartness and TCO requirements into the technical solutions of manufacturing resources of FoF. Contributions emerging from this research include an index to measure C–R capability of manufacturing resources, a model to assess economic feasibility of a FoF over its lifecycle, as well as a methodology and related tools to design smart connected manufacturing resources with embedded features to facilitate changeability and reconfigurability in a FoF. Theoretical contributions are explained through a case study of a fast reconfigurable robotic manufacturing cell. Preliminary results demonstrate that it is possible to rapid design smart connected manufacturing resources and integrate them into FoF architectures that support convertibility, integrability, modifiability, adaptability, serviceability, scalability, integration of resources from various producers, service clustering and cloud-based services.

Economic development of peripheral/lagging zones through smart innovation

In a globalised world, macro-economic policies are insufficient to properly handle the complex game of economic development and stabilisation. Significant differentiations and specificities are visible at the regional level due to new ways of communication, mobility, education, and access to information. A change of focus is therefore necessary from a macro- to a meso-economic approach. The meso level of analysis reveals significant imbalances between knowledge hubs, industrial zones and rural areas. Of special concern are rural areas, which in most cases fall into the category of lagging zones where local social capital and other basic factors show little potential to break down vicious circles in economic development. Under these circumstances, this paper introduces the concept of smart innovation as a means of supporting accelerated economic development within lagging zones. Innovation can be defined as smart when it embraces nonlinear paths to economic growth in areas with poor active endowments. An approach for operationalising smart innovation is also presented in this paper. Its potentiality is demonstrated using the example of a rural lagging zone with 25,000 inhabitants, a low level of economic activity, and significant structural gaps.

Managing Emotional Aspects of PSS Functionalities for Sustainability

For an organization to become sustainable, turning towards PSSs seems appealing. However, the PSS approach is rather a support in this respect, not the solution itself. Although there has been lately a strong focus on methodologies and approaches of designing competitive PSSs, tackling with emotional aspects of functionalities to be provided is still a challenge. This paper addresses this issue by introducing a mean of sketching such unique functionalities and even triggering customer desires. Thus, sustainability is envisaged in two ways: (one) by making customers loyal in a constructive and creative way, and (second) by fitting up the SME with a distinctive (and difficult-to-copy) offer. The approach in this paper is applied within a case study in the domain of railway modelling, in which customers - apart from willing to spend much money for their hobby - are extremely demanding, and the emotional component of their buying behaviour is predominant.

Knowledge Modelling of E-Maintenance in Industrial Robotics

Nowadays providers of maintenance and support related to industrial robotics are facing major challenges. Equipment producers around the world are urged to make significant efforts in order to provide high value added services in addition to their traditional product development and manufacturing business. A focal problem with maintenance as well as support of industrial robotics is the need to manage the ever-increasing information flow and system complexity of production cells that incorporate equipment from different producers. In this context, a novel ontology-based representation model is developed for the sharing and use of maintenance knowledge in the robotic field.

Method for Planning Multitasking Robot Application Programs in RAPID

In order to set up well-structured multitasking robot application programs careful planning is required. Robot programming languages (e.g. Karel, RAPID, Melfa, SimPro, etc.) vary from robot to robot constructor. General planning tools used in software development (e.g. UML, IDEF, etc.) require adequate professional skills and a special way of thinking such that robot programmers to apply and adapt them to the specificity of each robot programming language. Customized and intuitive planning tools of robot applications with regard to each particular programming language seem to be preferred by ordinary robot programmers and operators when facing with the development of complex robot tasks. This paper introduces such a tool in relation to the RAPIDTM programming language, specific to ABB robot models. Its effectiveness is revealed in a case study.