Information Technology and Manufacturing: A Preliminary Report on Research Needs (1993) / Chapter Skim
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3 Shop Floor and Production Systems
3 Shop Floor and Production Systems
Pages 21-30
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From page 21... ...
Sophisticated information technology is enabling increased automation of traditional production techniques, as well as new techniques such as stereolithography and material deposition. This chapter presents a vision of the shop floor and production systems of a factory in the year 2010 in light of these changes, and it describes research needs to achieve the vision.
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From page 22... ...
Tools to support the brokering of priorities and obligations among cooperating entities, based on optimizing transportation, material handling, inventory, capital, and labor costs Identify appropriate interfaces among product design, product engineering, manufacturing engineering, and factory floor procedures as they will emerge in computer augmented work groups Demonstrate the resilience of the intelligent routing system with respect to the vagaries of factory conditions Identify practical open standards for recording and communicating data among parts, assemblies, subsystems, and their network of makers and maintainers Find mechanisms for embedding the information cost-effectively and for ensuring access throughout the life of the part continued
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From page 23... ...
The envisioned shop floor and production system environment creates a number of research opportunities. These are listed in Table 3.1 and discussed in the remainder of this chapter.
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From page 24... ...
Control architectures and software must also support communication with upstream functions, including computer-aided process planning and computer-aided design. Research for open-architecture manufacturing should address: · Appropriate operating systems, languages, data structures, and knowledge bases; · Architecture and technology for shop floor equipment and data interfaces; ·.' Architecture for control systems; - Design for repairability and the ability to work around equipment crashes, including diagnostic software; · Better real-time control; and · The human-machine interface to permit people to interact effectively in this environment.
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From page 25... ...
Research on the following topics is needed to achieve such a dynamic scheduling environment: · Dynamic shop floor models with high-speed recompute time and the ability to handle numerous variables; · Real-time scheduling tools for the flexible factory and the distributed factory; · Presentation tools to facilitate situation assessment and scheduling by the factory manager and operations team {see " Collaborative Technology and Computer-supported Cooperative Work" in Chapter 41; · Visualization and human-computer interfaces to present the scheduling information; · Multilevel understanding of large-scale systems (see "Complex Systems Theory" below) ; · Means for identifying the relevant measures and quantifying the relative performance of the alternative systems; and
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From page 26... ...
To realize intelligent routing systems, research is needed to identify appropriate interfaces among product design, product engineering, manufacturing engineering, and factory floor procedures as they will emerge in computer-augmented work groups, including humancomputer interfaces. The immediate research focus should be on demonstrating the resilience of the intelligent routing system with respect to the vagaries of factory conditions.
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From page 27... ...
But the comprehensive integrated modeling of the manufacturing enterprise will provide new insight into the causes and elimination of scheduling bottlenecks and new strategic options, just as SIMNET did for military preparedness in the Gulf War.6 To achieve the virtual production line, and ultimately the virtual factory, modeling and simulation tools are needed that are as realistic as possible. Such tools will require a comprehensive mode' or structure for incorporating heterogeneous models so that the entire product realization process- from design through orders to multicountry manufacturing and distribution to customer delivery—can be tested, measured, and optimized.
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From page 28... ...
Both approaches have substantial deficiencies. Research is needed to develop a universal product configuration language and methodology that could be used by both sales/marketing and manufacturing personnel to develop valid product configurations.
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Such knowledge bases will be able to mode' efficiently nearly any process that may be developed in the future. The research implications of such a system include software engineering innovations in areas such as data representation, incremental update, archival data, and data validity.
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From page 30... ...
1 1-13. It recommends research on a number of specific resource management modeling methods, e.g., modeling methods based on knowledgebased systems, object-oriented systems, and Petri nets; methods that are sufficiently fast and efficient that resource problems are tractable while plants are being designed and built, as well as being operated; methods for correcting models, based on comparisons of predicted and measured performance; and many more.
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