Nicolas Perry

Rapid prototyping: energy and environment in the spotlight

Purpose – To discuss integration of the rapid prototyping environmental aspects with the primary focus on electrical energy consumption.Design/methodology/approach – Various manufacturing parameters have been tested on three rapid prototyping systems: Thermojet (3DS), FDM 3000 (Stratasys) and EOSINT M250 Xtended (EOS). The objective is to select sets of parameters for reduction of electrical energy consumption. For this, a part is manufactured in several orientations and positions in the chamber of these RP systems. For each test, the electrical power is noted. Finally, certain rules are proposed to minimize this electrical energy consumption during a job.Findings – It is important to minimize the manufacturing time but there is no general rule for optimization of electrical energy consumption. Each RP system must be tested with energy consumption considerations under the spotlight.Research limitations/implications – The work is only based on rapid prototyping processes. The objective is to take into cons...

Integration of CAD and rapid manufacturing for sand casting optimisation

In order to reduce the time and costs of the products development in the sand casting process, the SMC Colombier Fontaine company has carried out a study based on tooling manufacturing with a new rapid prototyping process. This evolution allowed the adequacy of the geometry used for the simulation to the tooling employed physically in the production. This allowed a reduction of the wall thickness to 4 mm and retained reliable manufacturing process.

Processing Knowledge to Support Knowledge-based Engineering Systems Specification

During design phase, engineering activities typically involve large groups of people from different domains and disciplines. These differences often generate important information flows that are difficult to manage. To face these difficulties, a knowledge engineering process is necessary to structure the information and its use This article, presents a deployment of a knowledge capitalization process based on the enrichment of Methodology and tools Oriented to Knowledge based engineering Applications methodology to support the integration of Process Planning knowledge in a CAD System. Our goal is to help different actors to work collaboratively by proposing one referential view of the domain, the context and the objectives assuming that it will help them in better decision-making.

Generic PLM system for SMEs: application to an equipment manufacturer

For several years, digital engineering has increasingly taken a more important place in the strategic issues of mechanical engineering companies. Our proposition is an approach that enables technical data to be managed and used throughout the product life-cycle. This approach aims to provide assistance for costing, development and industrialization of the product, and for the capitalization, the reuse and the extension of fundamental knowledge. This approach has been experimented within several companies. This paper presents the case in a company environment that designs and produces families of ship equipment parts.

Fundamental concepts of product/technology/process informational integration for process modelling and process planning

The aim of this paper is to summarize the main basic concepts for data integration during a products life cycle. This integration is necessary in order to favour a more efficient communication between collaborators from inside or outside the company, in a distributed design or e-design context. The information is based on models that structure the concepts and allow their re-use due to the memorization of design history. The current evolutions extend the prospective fields of this approach both to earlier stages (functional aspects, etc) and to later stages (logistics, recycling, etc). There remain, in a global vision of the enterprise, many prospective fields that should allow the total traceability of products during their life cycle.

Proposal for tool-based method of product cost estimation during conceptual design

Abstract The undertaken project aims at offering a support for the manufacturing cost estimation of products in the conceptual design phase. This need for dedicated tools for designers emerges from the lack of means to determinate the best technical solution that permits one to save costs and to reach safe quality. The main objective of this tool is to assist the designer in the process of manufacturing cost calculation of a product that is defined by little and inaccurate information in the preliminary design. This paper presents a procedure to develop such a tool.

Customised high-value document generation

Contributions of different experts to innovation projects improve enterprise value, captured in documents. A subset of them is the centre of expert constraint convergence. Their production needs to be tailored case by case. Documents are often considered as knowledge transcription. As the base of a structured knowledge-based information environment, this paper presents a global approach that helps knowledge-integration tool deployment. An example, based on process plan in aircraft manufacturing, indicates how fundamental understanding of domain infrastructure contributes to a more coherent architecture of knowledge-based information environments. A comparison with an experiment in insurance services generalised the application of presented principles.

Virtual engineering based on knowledge integration

The current paper presents major issues on actual approaches on virtual engineering, both about methods and tools but also regarding knowledge integration. The main actual strategic way of usage is based on knowledge formalisation, one of the strategic issues of next generation design environments. The evolution of the market has necessitated for new products the reduction of time-to-market, essentially because the product lifecycle is shorter, but also because it is very important to proceed more rapidly from an initial conception to a mass production object. As a result of newly evolved software environments, knowledge-based systems for integrated design and manufacturing is applied for complex systems obtained thanks to complex virtual extended enterprises. Owing to this evolution of virtual engineering technologies and their integration within extended companies, it has become possible today to validate parts representative of customised production within a very short time. The present paper provides an overview of the actual methods and tools in different components that affect speed and efficiency of product development, from the earliest stages of a products lifecycle. An example of knowledge formalisation is also provided, with concrete aspects of expertise reuse and traceability.

LC universal model for the enterprise information system structure

The analysis of the product lifecycle processes is one of the crucial industrial concerns. It highlights the role of knowledge capitalization and valorization. In this work, a generic model is proposed: the FBS-PPRE model (Function, Behav- ior, Structure - Process, Product, Resource, external Effect). The main scientific contribution consists in a conceptual unification making it possible to increase the homogeneity of the represented objects as well as the completeness of the modeling, when addressing all the life-cycle situations of the product, the tech- nologies and the enterprise. In order to allow a description of the various objects handled by the company according to the same formalism, the approach high- lights the distinction between the concepts of nature (material, temporal, soft- ware, organizational or energy) and of role. Four different roles are distin- guished: the role of product (object resulting from the process), of resource (means used in a process), of process (temporal, spatial and hierarchical organi- zation of activities) and of external effect (constraints influencing the course of a process). The same object can play successively various roles during its lifecy- cle. In addition, an effective management of behaviors is proposed: a behavior of an object is always combined with a process element, which makes it possible to define the context. It then becomes easier to manage the evolution of the object and of its representations, namely their transformational dynamic. This approach was implemented within the framework of a demonstrator of information system of a company designing and producing vehicles.

Whole life-cycle costs: a new approach

The last few years have seen significant improvements in the concepts, methods and the general approaches to calculating costs. ABC, Target Costing, Strategic Cost Management, functional analysis and costing are mobilising attention. Regardless of which of these approaches we consider, it is always from the point of view of one player whose intention is to benefit from increased knowledge of costs in order to achieve an increased control over their value-chain and profit-margins. This self-centred vision is also present in the Product Life Cycle (PLC) costing or the cost of the PLC concept, which is firmly anchored in product marketing. We are of the opinion that this type of economic calculation no longer fits our current industrial systems, which are based on networks of partners contributing to R&D, manufacturing and services. The network of the organisations represents a growing complexity, necessitating even more complex costing and management methods than the recent innovations.