Marco Sacco

Virtual reality and hypermedia in learning to use a turning lathe

A Virtual reality environment with hypermedia was designed to help undergraduates understand the structure and functioning of a turning lathe. Study 1 was carried out with 30 novice students and Study 2 involved 24 students attending a machining course. These studies demonstrated that the virtual lathe can foster the comprehension of some core machining concepts. Further, the studies suggest that novice students benefit most from earlier free navigation of the virtual environment whereas expert students benefit from an analysis of the hypermedia.

Virtual Factory Framework: Key Enabler For Future Manufacturing

The global market with increasing competition calls for new strategies that strengthen the future manufacturing systems. This paper presents the underlying models and ideas enabling a new conceptual framework for the next generation of Virtual Factory implementations. The approach fosters four pillars: a standard extensible data model; decoupled functional modules, based on an object oriented Virtual Factory paradigm; an event driven paradigm at the core of abstract objects management; the integration of knowledge at different layers for the decoupled functional modules. The implementation of a Virtual Factory based on the presented framework, points to the usefulness when developing future manufacturing systems.

A survey of RDF store solutions

This paper analyzes the potential of Semantic Web technologies to support innovation in industrial scenarios. The study focuses in particular on RDF stores, the software components dedicated to the storage, representation and retrieval of semantic information. Starting from a literature review, a qualitative analysis is carried out considering a set of these systems. RDF stores are evaluated to find the implementations that are best suited to play the role of backbone in a software architecture sharing information between the software tools adopted by the various stakeholders. This can be achieved if the architecture overcomes the problems deriving from the lack of integration between the involved software applications, providing in this way an integrated view on relevant engineering knowledge.

VFF: Virtual Factory Framework

The current complex market highlights the need of software tools supporting product engineering and manufacturing during the various stages of product and factory lifecycles. These are designed focusing on specific tasks, thus missing to satisfy the requirements of networked collaboration and concurrent engineering for the design and management of products, processes and production systems. A major challenge consists in the integration and harmonisation of the knowledge related to the factory of industrial companies by using a variety of multidisciplinary software tools. The topic is addressed by software providers and the scientific community, as demonstrated by the European project “Virtual Factory Framework” (VFF) that aims at developing an integrated framework to implement the next generation virtual factory. This paper describes the motivations behind the VFF concepts, together with the goals and the first results. Finally, it is presented how the Virtual Factory will be permanently synchronised with the Real Factory to validate its expected time and cost savings during the factory lifecycle phases.

Integrated computer aided design for assembly systems

Assembly being the last step of the production cycle of a product, it is normally submitted to the constraints of the precedent step. Techniques like Design for Assembly have been developed to try to take into consideration the peculiarities of the assembly process and reduce costs. The paper present the research and development of an integrated computer aided design for assembly system. The project main aim is to obtain methodologies and tools to design and manage a complete flexible assembly system but in this paper we will describe a CAAP (Computer Aided Assembly Planning) for the determination of gripping features, gripper and finger configuration, assembly sequence, simulation of the assembly system for the design of management rules, three dimensional simulation of robots (serial and parallel) for the design of each single assembly and control cell. The results of the project is tested in a specifically designed and implemented system for the assembly of electro-mechanical components.

Virtual factory manager

The current challenges in manufacturing engineering are the integration of the product/process/factory worlds (data and tools) and the synchronization of their lifecycles. Major ICT players already offer all-comprehensive Product Lifecycle Management suites supporting most of the processes. However, they do not offer all the required functionalities and they lack of interoperability. An answer will be given by the development of a Virtual Factory Framework (VFF): an integrated virtual environment that supports factory processes along all the phases of its lifecycle. This paper will focus on the Virtual Factory Manager (VFM) that acts as a server supporting the I/O communications within the framework for the software tools needing to access its data repository. The VFM will ensure data consistency and avoid data loss or corruption while different modules access/modify partial areas of the data repository at different times. Finally, an industrial case study will show the potentiality of the VFM.

Virtual reality as a support tool in the shoe life cycle

The life cycle of an industrial product goes through several stages, from the initial idea to the finished product, and on to the purchase and recycling. Virtual reality environments (VRE) allow the user to interact with a digital representation of a product, and so can be used to perform aesthetical, ergonomic, functional tests as well to support customer decisions in the selling process; mainly for customized products. In this contribution, ITIA-CNR presents two important applications in the shoes context: VRShoe and MagicMirror. VRShoe is a VRE for designing shoe aesthetics. MagicMirror, currently under development, is an augmented reality (AR) system for supporting the decision-making processes of customer customized shoes.

Process planning and scheduling for mass customised shoe manufacturing

In the scenario of mass customization, production is a crucial phase of the whole product life cycle. Production planning and scheduling must therefore evolve and adopt new tools that help to obtain a deeper control of what has to be produced in order to satisfy efficiently customer’ needs. This is very important in the clothing and footwear (fashion) industry where customers taste and choices change rapidly according to fashion dictates. In this paper an application in the footwear sector is presented and tested on a prototype of a new factory – an agile production unit – based on the concepts of agile and flexible production. The planning and scheduling module proposed is mainly focused on the short term in order to respond quickly to market needs and changes in a flexible manner. The module is composed of a finite capacity scheduler integrated with a new software based on the Analytical Hierarchy Process decision support system, which considers all the aspects related to order importance as complexity or urgency and assign each order a priority. This SW is able to take into account many intangible factors, as trademark, that are usually submitted to the subjective judge of the production manager (planner) and is completely configurable according to user’ needs. The result of the elaboration, that is the priority value, constitutes a fundamental input for the scheduler in addition to the due date of the order. The scheduler has a daily horizon because it is unnecessary to cover a long-time period if things can change every day following market requirements. The scheduler is configured to create all cycle operations for each single item even in order to manage orders composed of one pair or even one single shoe. This is a fundamental condition under a custom-made production focus. This also allows operation fine control and monitoring of the manufacturing process because the control system can identify exactly where each item at each time is in the system. Concluding, further developments are considered within a more integrated ad extended scenario applied to the automated production system in a new project where the full product life cycle including the customer, retailer shop and suppliers are taken into consideration.

An Ontology-based Framework for Sustainable Factories

ABSTRACTThe problem of factory sustainability is commonly addressed by focusing on specific aspects related to products, processes or production resources, while the impact of the building and facilities is usually neglected even though it counts for 40% of the total worlds energy consumption. This paper presents a holistic framework based on an integrated collaborative virtual environment that facilitates the sharing of the complete factory information and knowledge between various software tools, supporting the sustainable design and management of all the factory entities. In particular, the attention is focused on the Semantic Data Model that provides a semantic representation of the data and knowledge required for sustainability assessment.

A networked engineering portal to support distributed supply chain partnership

In this paper, the authors discuss the latest advancement of supply chain management (SCM) that leads to the development of a networked supply chain partnership (SCP). A deep insight is given into the nature, motivation and implementation of the SCP as a value-added component in the forefront of SCM. The role of the Internet in SCP is examined, and the current situation of SCP in China is analysed. Compared with available e-portals in the global market, a web-based DRAGON Engineering Portal (DEP) across geographical borders and cultural barriers is proposed to support European and Chinese industrial partners in developing strategic manufacturer–supplier partnerships. E-partnering and cultural repository are in-built to support a dislocated supply chain partnership for collaborative product development, starting with the location of partners and the implementation of contact initiation.