An early-phase design process to enable long-term flexibility in assembly systems

Key Issues in Designing Long-term Care Systems: A Response to Recent Commentaries

Optimal retrofit design for improving process flexibility in nonlinear systems

In this paper the problem of establishing the optimal trade-off between investment cost for the retrofit and expected revenue that result from increasing flexibility in systems described by nonlinear models is addressed. A systematic procedure is first proposed for constructing the cost versus flexibility curve. A stochastic optimization method is then presented for evaluating the expected opti...

Process Capability Studies in an Automated Flexible Assembly Process: A Case Study in an Automotive Industry

Statistical Process Control (SPC) methods can significantly increase organizational efficiency if appropriately used. The primary goal of process capability studies is to obtain critical information about processes to render them even more effective. This paper proposes a comprehensive framework for proper implementation of SPC studies, including the design of the sampling procedure and interva...

Supporting Flexibility in an Assembly System through Product Design

Increasing customer demands for product variety in conjunction with the short lifecycle of products has caused manufacturing companies to introduce a wide range of products by accommodating flexibility. An assembly system is an essential part of the manufacturing system from both cost and time perspectives. Hence, the shift towards flexibility in manufacturing companies highlights the significa...

Using assembly representations to enable evolutionary design of Lego structures

This research presents an approach to the automatic generation of electromechanical engineering designs. Our intent is to apply the Messy Genetic Algorithm optimization techniques to the evolution of assemblies composed of the Lego structures. Each design is represented as a labeled assembly graph. Designs are evaluated based on a set of behavior and structural equations, which we are trying to...