Fangming Gu

Simulation-Based Energy Efficiency Improvement for Sustainable Manufacturing Systems

Energy efficiency improvement as well as carbon footprint reduction in the manufacturing industry becomes increasingly important for a green world from the point of sustainability. However, because of the complexity of modern manufacturing systems, most of the existing research efforts in energy efficiency improvement only focus on either single-machine system or process level. Seldom work has been performed to study the potential of energy consumption reduction for typical manufacturing systems with multiple machines and buffers. In this paper, a simulation-based method is proposed to study various strategies for energy efficiency improvement of complex manufacturing systems. This study provides an initial framework to study the real time energy control of multi-machine manufacturing systems, and demonstrates the energy efficiency improvement and energy saving potentials by adjusting the machines’ power level according to their operation states while maintaining the system throughput. Comparison between the results with and without power level adjustment is performed to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.Copyright

Functional safety certification: Practice and issues

As the increasing use of programmable electronic systems to carry out safety functions of automation control systems, there is an emerging need for functional safety certification in order to protect people, equipment and work in progress (WIP) from injuries and damages. The current practice of functional safety certification and other existing control logic verification methods that could be used for functional safety certification are compared, and issues are identified. With that, a new approach and the associated technical challenges for its implementation are discussed. It aims to improve the certification process by significantly reducing setup cost, saving certification time, and improving certification quality. The paper concludes with a future research plan for solving identified challenges.

Math-Based Control Logic Development for Automotive Industrial Applications: Issues, Challenges and Solution

Intensive global competition forces automotive manufacturers to develop and produce vehicles at lower cost with shorter life cycles and better quality. Faster Vehicle Development Process (VDP) improve profitability by reducing the time and cost related to designing, engineering and launching a new vehicle model. More importantly, it enables automotive makers to react quickly to trend shift in market, e.g., recent shift from SUV (Sports Utility Vehicle) to small fuel efficient vehicle. However, the current manufacturing system design (especially control logic design), key part of VDP, is labor intensive and time consuming, and design quality and performance are highly dependent on the designer’s knowledge and experience. This paper discusses the issues and challenges identified in the current logic development process. A new method to automatically generate control logic using formal method is proposed. In this approach, the required information is collected and modeled as Automata. Possible control logic sequences are then calculated and the optimal one is identified from a set of alternative solutions. This paper also discusses how to implement and integrate the proposed method into the automotive manufacturing engineering process. The method is applied to automotive industry examples, and results are presented. Based on these case studies, this math-based approach can improve the quality of controls logic codes, and reduce ramp-up time and engineering cost significantly.Copyright

Virtual Launch & Validation of Manufacturing Automation Controls

In the automotive industry an integrated set of manufacturing engineering activities lie on the critical path of the Vehicle Development Process (VDP). After the product integration design is finalized, the Production Tool Design and Build (PTDB) processes becomes the VDP critical path. It is in the PTDB where virtual launch and validation activities are performed. To increase throughput of the engineering factory and reduce product development cost, we propose a research initiative in the area of Virtual Launch & Validation (VLV) of Manufacturing Automation Controls (MAC). VLV of MAC is composed of a series of PTDB launch and pre-launch activities in a virtual environment using physical, emulated, and simulated hardware and software. It encompasses the testing of MAC, its interactions with MAC analysis tools, and its interfaces with IT systems and related business processes. VLV of MAC also supports the development and testing of new IT systems and business processes as well as its hardware and software plant floor systems constituents. The mission of VLV of MAC is to minimize the duration of the launch and ramp up activities by reducing the implementation and execution times for plant floor systems and equipments via a priori system emulation, validation and testing. Based on our findings, we conclude that the most pressing needs for VLV of MAC lie in the thrust areas of object-oriented standard logic, auto-generation of virtual models, logic validation and system wide emulation. In summary, we conservatively estimate that a successful VLV of MAC implementation will reduce the VDP duration by several weeks hence providing automakers with savings in the order of hundreds of millions of dollars per year.