To produce a large number of different products in an efficient way, traditional industry production architectures have incorporated non-value-adding operations such as transporting, storing and inspecting to provide flexibility. These operations should be minimized, if not eliminated, to improve performance on automated manufacturing systems. Heuristic planning tools seem to offer a good metho...

Neural network is a model of brains’s cognitive process. Neural network originated as a model of how the brain works. Neural network research has its beginnings in psychology. Today neural network methods are being used to solve numerous problems associated with manufacturing operations. A review of neural network applications to problems in production and operations management is presented. Ap...

The operations sheets generator (OPGEN) is an expert system that helps industrial engineers at the Hazeltine manufacturing and operations facilities plan the assembly of printed circuit boards In this article, we describe the evolution of OPGEN from its initial development in the Hazeltine research laboratories to its routine use in an integrated manufacturing environment We describe our approa...

1.1 History Sheet metal operations have been in existence since 8000 B.C. (Fries-Knoblach, 1999). Due to its long history, sheet metalworking is, unfortunately, often seen as archaic and uninteresting. That metal sheets can be transformed with the aid of robust machines into fancy consumer products with tight tolerances is inconceivable to many. Yet, sheet metal operations are used for producin...

In the last decade, supply chain operations have received tremendous attention in manufacturing and business sectors due to an increasingly challenging marketplace. This paper presents a multi-agent approach for analysing material flow in a manufacturing supply chain under information sharing. The model is capable of handling complex networks with many tiers, each tier with many business units ...

High quality mechanical manufacturing of small components and subassemblies having geometric features in the micrometer range requires controlled and coordinated processes. Considering full automation of the production process as essential, not only manufacturing processes have to be optimized but also handling and quality assurance operations take an integral part of the production process. We...

Networked manufacturing enterprises are now moving towards more open information exchange for integrating their activities with those of their suppliers, customers and partners within wide supply chain networks. Therefore there has been increasing need for software systems to support business networks. This paper introduces SteelNet agent architecture, which facilitates a real collaboration of ...