Intelligent Product and Mechatronic Software Components Facilitating Mass Customization in Collaborative Manufacturing Systems

Conventional Product Data Management (PDM) supports aspects of information management but don’t promote the application of target oriented design methodologies like ‘Axiomatic Design’. For Manufacturing System Design PDM has to manage the actual targets, to direct a target-oriented procedure, and to manage objects for evaluation. Targets result from customers and manufacturers. The definition of ‘Functional Requirements’ and ‘Design Parameters’ has to be organized between different core competencies at different times and places. The goal is the configuration of a PDM framework supporting distributed collaborative manufacturing system design in a ‘Axiomatic Design’ oriented way. Based on an axiomatic approach, the implementation of this methodology in a distributed PDM framework is presented. For this, the necessary procedure and controls of ‘manufacturing system design’, information architecture and data interfaces to other software tools are considered and then the paper describes necessary metamodel.

A novel collaborative manufacturing model requiring both geometric and physical evaluations of spiral bevel gears by design for six sigma

AR-assisted digital twin-enabled robot collaborative manufacturing system with human-in-the-loop

Optimal layout planning for human robot collaborative assembly systems and visualization through immersive technologies

The network based intelligent agent (NBIA) system consists of intelligent software components. The framework of an NBIA system warrants reliable and stable network connection with real-time response between software components. Intelligent software components work on the resources distributed on the network, and the NBIA uses the results from the resources. In this way, the NBIA can provide high-quality intelligent service to users. Thus, a TCP/IP-based interface is designed to integrate software components into an NBIA system. This interface uses the server-client architecture to solve the bottleneck problem with the transfer rate of a wireless LAN.KeywordsNetwork based intelligent agentUbiquitous environment

Collaborative manufacturing is central to agile, intelligent, and cloud-based manufacturing paradigms. This paper presents the design and implementation of a web-based collaborative manufacturing system based on a knowledge graph (KG). The system achieves the full spectrum of knowledge extraction, fusion, and reasoning across the industrial chain, thereby enhancing efficiency and reducing operational costs. The proposed system constructs an industrial chain KG and multi-agent systems, offering comprehensive digital services across the manufacturing value chain. It supports the integration of business processes, data, and standard information for enterprise groups, presenting collaborative manufacturing data of the industrial chain in real-time visualization. The paper further discusses a method for real-time perception of anomalies in the collaborative manufacturing process, utilizing expert knowledge and data-driven insights to construct an operational risk KG. The system’s architecture, workflow, and functional design are detailed, along with application cases in visual dynamic management. The conclusion underscores the system’s potential to improve supply-demand chain management and operational efficiency in collaborative manufacturing.

Southern California's manufacturing economy is currently facing a major crisis of deindustrialization and job loss. The emerging electric vehicle industry represents a possible new growth pole for the region, and a number of private and public initiatives have already been taken to encourage the development of the industry in the local area. I argue that policy can significantly enhance this development process by focussing on specifically regional sources of industrial productivity, innovativeness, and competitive advantage. I argue also that the existing industrial assets of Southern California, combined with policy of this sort, could indeed foster the growth of a major cluster of electric vehicle and parts producers in the region. To be successful, policy needs to be concentrated in particular on fostering flexible and collaborative manufacturing systems together with various services (for example, in the areas of technological research, labor training, venture capital provision, and so on) that enhance the region's overall stock of external economies. I conclude by suggesting that there are significant parallels between the growth of the aircraft industry in Southern California before World War 2, and the development of the electric vehicle industry in the region today.

To produce an assembled electronic product, the components are manufactured with certain manufacturing operations and then assembled with the required assembly operations. In the manufacturing operations, each component must be manufactured within the allocated working tolerances such that the assembly operations can be performed to build the final product. In a collaborative manufacturing system, the components are assigned to the available manufacturing operations with different tolerance and cost characteristics at different plants. In this research, a multi-plant tolerance allocation model for assembled electronic products is presented. Firstly, given the blueprint dimensions and tolerances of a product, a tolerance allocation model is presented to determine the working tolerance of each of the components to maximize the cumulative sum of the working tolerances. Finally, a mathematical programming model is presented to assign the components to the suitable plants with minimized multi-plant manufacturing costs. An example product is tested and illustrated.

The team design becomes increasingly important to future manufacturing industry. This paper focus on the key issues of collaborative 3D design system through Internet or Intranet in CSCW(Computer Support for Cooperative Work). In the paper, we propose our solutions of concurrency control tactics, collaboration aware, multi-mode communications network management, synchronous real-time protection in a collaborative 3D design system. Based on open source projects-open CASCADE and Adaptive Communication Environment (ACE), we implement our collaborative 3D design system, and experiments show our system can meet the requirements of some 3D cooperative modeling design applications.

This paper gives an overview of a collaborative design system (CDS) for electromechanical products. To reduce design costs and to manufacture high-quality products, it is well known that concurrent engineering (CE) is a very efficient approach. Three-dimensional (3D) CAD system and engineering database system are essential components of CE. The CDS is an environment to realize CE. By creating 3D models in a computer and performing some simulations such as mechanical, electronic, software simulation and integrated simulations, it is possible to estimate functions, assemblability, manufacturability and so on, before making prototype models. In this paper, we outline the CDS and mainly discuss the total information management system (TIMS) which makes an important role of the CDS. This paper describes the implementation experience of some functions of the TIMS.

The paper proposes a new approach as an alternative to full automation of processes that meets current economic trends — collaborative multi-agent systems. In this concept, people and robots are considered as agents in a single sensory-information field, who perform tasks to achieve the goals of the collaborative multi-agent system. The urgency of collaborative multi-agent systems results from the fact that the industrial use of fully automated multi-component systems is limited by the financial and infrastructural unavailability of various industries to switch to completely unmanned technologies. The proposed approach combines the latest, but remaining quite recouped, technological advances along with highly skilled human labor. The use of collaborative multi-agent systems will be economically justified in the manufacture of products in small batches, in the conditions of rapid change of product lines, as well as the presence of staff shortages. The article shows that such an approach can significantly reduce automation costs, while ensuring that the specified production indicators are met. This approach allows taking a fresh look at a human, considering him and a robot as equal partners within a collaborative system. The basic concepts and distinctive characteristics of collaborative multi-agent systems are formulated and presented in the work, justifications for their use are given. Creating a new class of collaborative multi-agent systems requires solving a number of problems associated with the interaction of man and robot. The article considers issues related to the work of a person within a collaborative system, with a rational separation of human functions and an automated production system, in accordance with the necessary level of collaboration. The inclusion of a person with his psychoemotional and physical characteristics as an equivalent agent of a multi-agent system causes difficulties in formalizing collaborative multi-agent systems associated with the need to take these features into account and create a sensory-information system. The inclusion of a person with his psychoemotional and physical characteristics as an equivalent agent of a multi-agent system causes difficulties in formalizing collaborative multi-agent systems associated with the need to take these features into account and create a sensory-information system. The paper discusses ways to formalize a collaborative multi-agent system and management approaches.

Engineering technology exists in an interconnected world. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a popular movement that connects industrial and consumer goods to the Internet. Human-machine interfaces (HMIs) are becoming classier to operate those devices. HMI technology includes any software or device that takes to interact with the machine. This can be further defined as a component or feature of certain software or device application that makes humans engage and interact with several machines. With an improvement in the implementation of "Industry 4.0" in the factories of today, the concept of HMI has garnered even more importance. Adopting this technology in a factory ensures that production is closely monitored and changing production demands are met. This process ensures that efficiency is improved and the level of downtime reduces. The HMI technology also offers a glimpse into the system's operations and in case of any defect or problem; an alarm is signaled so that the operator can rectify the issue at the earliest without wasting valuable production time.The HMI is implemented in automobiles too. For instance, initially, only luxury automobiles could afford the innovative technology in their cars but with time, this technology was also incorporated into medium-cost cars. Experts suggest that the HMI in automobiles is expected to witness significant growth in the long term. The number of consumers in HMI using augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are discussed.

This paper proposes a new software composition method for automated machines that exploits their mechatronic modularity. It is demonstrated that desired behavior of a certain class of machines can be composed of behaviors of its mechatronic components, including fully decentralized scheduling and operation control. This aims at increased performance of software design and maintenance, as well as systems' flexibility and reconfigurability. The IEC 61499 Function Blocks' (FBs) architecture is used as an implementation platform that enables system-level simulation and transparency of deployment. A configurable pick-and-place (PnP) manipulator with decentralized control synthesized using the proposed approach is chosen as an illustrative example.

The concept of time in traditional distributed systems has been inherited in the Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) literature. The following assumptions have generally been made: (1) Events are atomic and their durations do not matter. (2) Total ordering of events can be achieved by some mechanical algorithm. (3) The relationship between events is determined solely by time (causal relationship). However, we observe that these assumptions are not appropriate if the goal is to faithfully preserve user intentions in collaborative systems. In particular, we discuss why and how these assumptions should be relaxed or removed in the design of collaborative editing systems.

Design of multi-arc collaborative additive manufacturing system and forming performance research