Emmanuel Francalanza

A knowledge-based tool for designing cyber physical production systems

Changing production systems and product requirements can trace their origin in volatile customer behaviour and evolving product requirements. This dynamic nature of customer requirements has been described as a constantly moving target, thus presenting a significant challenge for several aspects of product development. To deal with this constant and sometimes unpredictable product evolution, cyber physical production systems (CPPS) that employ condition monitoring, self-awareness and reconfigurability principles, have to be designed and implemented. This research contributes a CPPS design approach that proactively provides the required CPPS design knowledge. This approach aims to minimise or avoids future consequences and disruptions on the CPPS. This knowledge needs to be provided at the right time whilst not being intrusive to the production system designers cognitive activity. To effectively deal with the complexity of the cyber physical production system design activity with a manual method would lead to a time consuming, and complex support tool which is hard to implement, and difficult to use. The CPPS design approach has therefore been implemented in a prototype digital factory tool. This paper describes in detail the system requirements and system architecture for this tool. In order to establish the effectiveness of the proposed approach for designing cyber physical production systems, the prototype digital factory tool has been evaluated with a case study and a number of semi-structured interviews with both industrial and scientific stakeholders. The encouraging results obtained from this research evaluation have shown that such an approach for supporting the CPPS design activity makes stakeholders aware of their decision consequences and is useful in practice. This result can lead the way for the development and integration of such knowledge-based decision-making approaches within state-of-the-art digital factory and Computer Aided Engineering Design (CAED) tools.

An Integrated Product Development Approach to Improving Sustainability Using Simulated Experiments: Manufacturing Case Study

Sustainable Manufacturing (SM) and Integrated Product Development (IPD) have both been identified as important drivers of an organization’s competitiveness and agility. However, their multi-faceted nature requires organizations to make manufacturing decisions without compromising any of the pillars contained within SM (economy, environment and society) and IPD (product, production and business). Achieving the aims of both IPD and SM increases this complexity even further and results in the need for high-level tools and systems for decision-making. This paper presents the use of digital factory simulation, as a tool to support the integrated development of sustainable products and processes. To evaluate this approach, a case study involving an existing manufacturing line was performed. The aim of the study was to generate a platform for the testing of experimental scenarios giving predictive results on the impact of IPD decisions on the manufacturing sustainability of the process. Together with the limitations and difficulties encountered, the validity and feasibility of using digital factory simulation for the integrated development of sustainable products and processes is discussed.

An Approach Framework Supporting Manufacturing System Design for a Range of Products

Mass customization and the evolution of products provide significant challenges to manufacturing system designers. Paradigms such as changeability, product process co-evolution and product platform development have been developed over the years to tackle these challenges. This research work identifies the synthesis decision-making activity in manufacturing system design to be a critical aspect of the development cycle, since many factors have to be taken into consideration. These include technical factors such as machine capability, but also uncertainty due to changing business and product elements. This research therefore aims to provide manufacturing system designers with an insight of the consequences of synthesis decisions on the range of products that can be manufactured by the evolving manufacturing system by contributing a manufacturing capability measure based on product range capability.

A Computational Framework for Supporting Innovation in Product Development Through Collaboration and Simulation

This paper deals with the development of a computational framework that aims to facilitate innovative endeavours during product development. A problem analysis carried out revealed that both stakeholder collaboration and artefact simulation are considered important for supporting innovation, the first through the availability of more ideas and the latter for analysing the feasibility of these ideas prior to their implementation in practice. However, it was observed that the use of collaboration tools and simulation tools is still lacking in practice mainly due to lack of awareness or perceived lack of necessity. This research thus aims to develop a framework that helps support innovation in product development through the use of these tools. From the preliminary evaluation of the solution developed, it was found that the portal and its underlying framework are indeed useful for supporting innovation.© 2012 ASME