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Industrial robots have been around since the 1960s and their introduction into the manufacturing industry has helped in automating otherwise repetitive and unsafe tasks, while also increasing the performance and productivity for the companies that adopted the technology. As the majority of industrial robotic arms are deployed in repetitive tasks, the pose accuracy is much less of a key driver for the majority of consumers (e.g. the automotive industry) than speed, payload, energy efficiency and unit cost. Consequently, manufacturers of industrial robots often quote repeatability as an indication of performance whilst the pose accuracy remains comparatively poor. Due to their lack in accuracy, robotic arms have seen slower adoption in the aerospace industry where high accuracy is of utmost importance. However if their accuracy could be improved, robots offer significant advantages, being comparatively inexpensive and more flexible than bespoke automation.

The small commercial vehicle business is driven by demand in logistic, last mile transportation and white goods market. And to cater these businesses operational and safety needs, they require closed container on vehicle. As of now, very few OEM’s provide regulatory certified container vehicle because of constrains to meet inertia class of the vehicle. This paper focuses on design of a durable and extremely reliable container, made of the low-cost economy class glass fibre & core material. The present work provides the means to design the composite container for the N1 category of the vehicle. The weight of after-market metal container ranges between 300-350 Kg for this category of vehicle, which affects the overall fuel economy and emission of the vehicle. A detailed CAE analysis is done to design composite container suitable to meet inertia class targets and to achieve weight reduction of 30-40% as compared to metal container.

A major barrier, preventing RFSSW from use by manufacturers, is the long cycle time that has been historically associated with making a weld. In order for RFSSW to become a readily implementable welding solution, cycle times must be reduced to an acceptable level, similar to that of well developed, competing spot joining processes. In the present work, an investigation of the RFSSW process is conducted to evaluate factors that have traditionally prevented the process from achieving fast cycle times. Within this investigation, the relationship between cycle time and joint quality is explored, as is the meaning and measurement of cycle time in the RFSSW process. Claims and general sentiment found in prior literature are challenged regarding the potential for high-speed RFSSW joints to be made.

Collaborative robots are more and more used in smart manufacturing because of their capability to work beside and collaborate with human workers. With the deployment of these robots, manufacturing tasks are more inclined to be accomplished by multiple humans and multiple robots (MH-MR) through teaming effort. In such MH-MR collaboration scenarios, the task distribution among the multiple humans and multiple robots is very critical to efficiency. It is also more challenging due to the heterogeneity of different agents. Existing approaches in task distribution among multiple agents mostly consider humans with assumed or known capabilities. However human capabilities are always changing due to various factors, which may lead to suboptimal efficiency. Although some researches have studied several human factors in manufacturing and applied them to adjust the robot task and behaviors.

We studied the relationship between disc thickness variation (DTV) and casting material properties and clarified that the circumferential homogeneity of brake discs has significant effects on brake judder. As a solution, we established an integrated system for developing and manufacturing homogeneous brake discs to reduce judder by making the most of our integrated business process from R&D through manufacturing, including our in-house foundries. The system we developed consists of the following elements: foundry engineering to obtain homogeneous discs, an original flake graphite structure index (K-FGI) to measure the homogeneity of our products, and accelerated wear tests on a brake dynamometer to estimate the potential on-brake DTV growth.

The key to efficient production of commercial aircraft is the development of a manufacturing system which allows the production of many different versions at the lowest possible cost and in the shortest possible throughput time. AIRBUS has accepted this challenge and implemented such a system in the form of a “moving line” at its Hamburg plant for the equipment installation of the A320 family. This new production system, which was designed in accordance with the flow principle, has been validated and optimised by means of a process simulation. With the application of this technique, the duration of the ramp-up phase has been decidedly shortened by early detection and reduction of faulty process sequences. In parallel with this development, the production and logistic system has been optimised with respect to the required target parameters.

The Boeing Company has recently developed a portable positioning system based upon its patented flexible vacuum track technology, in support of its commitment to lean manufacturing techniques. The positioning system, referred to as Mini Flex Track, was initially developed as an inexpensive drilling system that minimizes machine setup time, does not require extensive operator training due to its simple user interface, is general purpose enough to be used in varying airplane applications, and meets strict accuracy requirements for aircraft manufacturing. The system consists of a variable length vacuum track that conforms to a range of contours, a two-axis numerically-controlled positioning carriage that controls machine motion, an additional rail perpendicular to the vacuum rail that provides transverse motion, and an end effector that can perform various tasks.

Currently there is a heavy reliance on computer tools for part design in the Indian automobile industry. But when a part goes past the design approval stage to planning of the manufacturing process, there is a tendency to rely on personnel expertise and past experiences in the design of the manufacturing system. Modifications made to a manufacturing process at a later stage can prove to be costly and time-consuming. Key factors to remain competitive in the manufacturing business are the effective and efficient operation of installed manufacturing systems, as well as the ability to quickly and readily reconfigure these systems in the case of product line modifications. This paper looks at the usage of simulation tools to aid process planners in decision-making and presents some of the advantages offered by its usage prior to taking the manufacturing process online. Digital Manufacturing is becoming an indispensable tool in streamlining the design to implementation process.

The cooling of equipment and products is an integral part of many manufacturing processes. This paper describes typical process cooling systems used in manufacturing and the approximate cost of cooling for each system. The paper then describes the inside out approach to energy efficiency, which recommends sequential evaluation of end use, distribution and primary energy conversion systems, as it relates to process cooling. General methods for improving the energy efficiency of cooling processes, organized according to the inside-out approach, are described. These methods include adding insulation and heat exchangers, improving process control, avoiding mixing, employing variable-speed and low friction pumping systems, and using cooling towers in place of chillers. The fundamental equations for estimating savings, and examples, are presented for these methods.

Manufacturing industry worldwide has been facing unprecedented challenges brought by global competition and rapidly customer requirements which cause major changes in the production style and configuration of manufacturing enterprises. Networked Manufacturing enables rapid and efficient product development by equipment sharing which is a key component of networked manufacturing platform. The problems of poor transparency and low efficiency that the traditional way of equipment sharing faces, effectively overcome by leveraging the Internet, This paper proposes architecture for equipment sharing over the networked manufacturing platform involving the layer of resource sharing and the cooperative layer. An experimental case study has been carried out in a firm in the die-casting industry in order to demonstrate the features and the potential industrial application of the equipment sharing systems outlined in the current paper.

This paper aims to present a productive capacity analysis in a manufacturing assembly line of an automotive industry. To perform this work the main tool used was Computer Simulation, using a software named ProModel, that works on Discrete Event Simulation (DES) and also using Design of Experiments (DOE), with a software named MINITAB. The first task of the project was problem definition followed by the related process mapping. This was the main element to develop the entire model. In validation process it was not used only quantitative methods, but also “hypothesis test” (1 sample-t), which is a quantitative method, using MINITAB. The study object was focused on the first shift and only for the most complex product assembled in the referred line. According to the inputs of the sub processes it was possible to identify those ones with highest potential to impact the output variable (quantity of products assembled).

Brazil has registered, year after year, a large increase in the production and sales of automotive vehicles. This growth drives the demand for the products of the automotive industries, which needs investments for improving its productive capacity to follow these developments. In real life is very difficult to evaluate various alternatives for improvement in manufacturing systems. That's because testing in real productive areas - such as changes in equipments, layouts and operations - generate disturbances in the production system, generating costs, inefficient allocation of investments and reduced productivity. In this sense the objective of this paper is to present a collection of success applications of simulation projects. The applications were developed or collected through consultancy projects of the Belge Engenharia, or presented in recent Congresses Innovation.

Nowadays, auto-parts companies spend a lot of efforts in trying to improve their manufacturing performance, which can be easily explained by the influence of many competitors, and also due to strong pressure besides their costumers to reduce prices of their products. Normally, the investments to buy new machines and contract new labors to respond customer demands gets lower as day goes by, due to this, the manufacturing team must use the best techniques available to get the maximum of their manufacturing system in an effort to meet flexibility, by the way, there is a constant effort to eliminate waste and variation in manufacturing system, for such work, many companies have adopted lean manufacturing principles in order to eliminate waste as a good response to produce more with less, and aligned with this thinking, Six Sigma methodology comes to add to lean manufacturing a robust way to eliminate variation on manufacturing process.

In an era of global manufacturing and reduced costs, it is imperative that the manufacturing floor is visible to top management in a boardroom to enable them to make key decisions. Manufacturing Execution System (MES) is a method of connecting the shop floor to the top floor covering the complete gamut of activities from production sequence to finished goods. It aims to reduce the delay in transmitting production related data by linking the Production environment, Quality management, IT systems and Delivery. At Ashok Leyland’s Commercial Vehicle manufacturing facility in Ennore, India, an engine and axle components machine shop have been networked and data pertaining to production of Cylinder Block, Cylinder Head, Camshaft, Crankshaft, Axle Arm and Axle Beam components are accessible from anywhere in the company irrespective of location.

This paper looks at a method for decomposing a manufactured product into what is called an “activity space.” The method uses an activity based costing scheme to structure the model and organize the information. It is discussed how the activity space is used to perform sustainability assessments of a manufactured product and the manufacturing process from different viewpoints and perspectives. The way in which the activity space is used to perform an assessment from several viewpoints is discussed.

Organizations spend millions of dollars on analytical and simulation inventory models to optimize inventory across the supply chain. However, these methods are expensive, difficult to implement and fail to capture all the requirements for defining inventory levels across supply chain. The effect of planned and unplanned equipment downtime, a key factor, is not properly utilized in these models. Many methods use standard statistical distributions, which do not fully capture downtime characteristics of an operation. This may lead to inaccurate computation of inventory sizes. The purpose of this paper is to communicate a new analytical approach of defining inventory levels which is robust enough to consider non-normal distributions associated with equipment downtime. The proposed method is easy to use, less time consuming and can be adapted quickly with changing operational dynamics. The method is based on utilizing equipment performance data to scientifically compute inventory levels.

The emphasis placed on statistical process control over the past few decades has significantly aided manufacturers in measuring and monitoring dimensional parameters of production parts, and inferring process behavior from control charting. However, current manufacturing quality control methods fail to incorporate technologically innovative measurement solutions and rely on traditional coordinate measuring machines and laser point measurements. Based on the current trend, three-dimensional laser scanning seems to be the future of manufacturing measurement systems, and has already achieved considerable success in providing one-to-one comparisons between as-built products and original computer aided design (CAD) models via point cloud measurements. However, these methods only provide product-by-product information, and fail to provide any information on the state of the manufacturing process.

Product development process (PDP) is a strategic element for organization's success, linking the market to the company. In spite of this, manufacturing can be considered as PDP's first customer, with requirements and constraints in order to maximize new product fabrication efficiency. In a wide range of manufacturing elements, production systems availability is critical for operation performance. To this end, companies have invested resources on Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) implementation, in which its main purpose consists in policies, practices and activities to improve efficiency through manufacturing system life cycle management approach. However, some TPM concepts have not been investigated accurately yet, one of them is to explore how to integrate TPM into PDP through a structured method.

Actual necessities in the automotive industry are the reduction of fuel consumption and pollution emissions, engine efficiency improvement, as well as cost reduction in manufacturing. Light weight engineering in the powertrain and especially in the motor engineering is a key to fulfill most of these requirements. A very promising technology is the reinforcement of the inner surface of cylinder liners in aluminum crankcases using thermally sprayed coatings. In order to achieve a cost effective, reliable and flexible solution for series production, as well as the maintenance of high quality standards, an interdisciplinary cooperation between material science and robot assisted engineering and manufacturing technology has to take place.

This paper is a case study of a successful application of a particular type of machine vision system to an aerospace manufacturing operation. The task for the vision system is to find holes very accurately. The system performs this task using a novel combination of laser triangulation and grayscale area analysis. Using a custom sensor, incorporating a high resolution digital camera, structured and unstructured illumination, together with advanced image processing algorithms has resulted in a measurement system which has excellent accuracy and repeatability.