The world is changing distinctly and manufacturing is facing significant challenges. Current manufacturing paradigms need to develop towards better agility to meet current market demand. The relevant research has been launched and the resulting new approaches, like smart manufacturing, digital manufacturing and the cognitive factory, are introduced. However, today’s real challenge to manufactur...

Current research by the developers of rapid prototyping systems is generally focused on improvements in cost, speed and materials to create truly economic and practical economic rapid manufacturing machines. In addition to being potentially smarter/faster/cheaper replacements for existing manufacturing technologies, the next generation of these machines will provide opportunities not only for t...

It can be difficult estimating all of the cost components that are attributed to a machined part. This problem is more pronounced when a factory uses group technology manufacturing cells as opposed to a functional or process layout of a job shop. This paper describes how activity-based costing (ABC) concepts can be integrated into a discreteevent simulation model of a U-shaped manufacturing cel...

The layout of a factory is essential to costand time-efficient production in today’s competitive manufacturing environment. This thesis provides assistance for the rough factory layout planning process, which is the initial design phase of factory work floors. While currently used pure analog approaches are easy to handle and support collaborative work, they miss the advantages of digital plann...

While techniques exist for the rapid prototyping of mechanical and electrical components separately, this paper describes a method where commercial additive manufacturing (AM) techniques can be used to concurrently construct the mechanical structure and electronic circuits in a robotic or mechatronic system. The technique involves printing hollow channels within 3D printed parts that are then f...

Lean production systems require an information-interoperable environment that can process diverse factory information for all workers to do KAIZEN activities. Moreover, the information-interoperable environment should be connected to an inter-enterprise collaboration environment. For those reasons, an Information-Interoperable Environment (IIE) that can connect device-level information and Manu...

This paper is concerned with the problem of how to detect visual defects on painted slates using an automated visual inspection system. The inspection work cell of the manufacturing process was replicated by mounting the inspection system on an industrial conveyor and operating at production line speeds. Laboratory test bed proven image sensing methods and inspection algorithms were subjected t...

This study is conducted to developed innovative production planning and control strategies to manufacturing industries so as to improve production performance and competitiveness of basic metal sectors Though the study was conducted through field observation and questioner used as primary data and literature review on research articles, books, and electronic-sources which used as secondar...

data types (queues, sets, lists, trees, ...) operations objects (windows, palettes, tool bars, ...) methods agents (radar stations, military equipment, factory machinery, ...) messages Table 1: The Progression to Agent Technology identical or complimentary agents which act together. There are a number of possible architectures which can be used to build multi-agent systems. 1.2. Multi-Agent Arc...

This paper presents an integrated cognitive robotics system for industrial kitting operations in a modern factory setting. The robot system combines low-level robot control and execution monitoring with automated mission and task planning, and a logistics planner which communicates with the factory’s manufacturing execution system. The system has been implemented and tested on a series of autom...