The last two decades have witnessed important shifts in customers' behaviour. Companies now need to integrate customers in their strategies and manufacturers have to propose a large variety of products to meet the market's demand. Increasing the range of PVs attracts and retains customers, yet it dramatically augments the cost and complexity of the manufacturing systems. As many decisions taken at the design stage of the product are decisive for its entire life, it is crucial to integrate the process and the assembly system when designing the product.

Integrated Design of a Product Family and Its Assembly System presents an integrated approach for the design of a product family and its assembly system, whose main principles consider the product family as a fictitious unique product for which the assembly system is to be devised. It imposes assembly and operation constraints as late as possible in the design process to get liberties in the system design, and adapts the product family at each design stage to integrate the new constraints related to the successive design choices.
Integrated Design of a Product Family and Its Assembly System is an important, must-have book for researchers and Ph.D. students in Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, Mechanical Engineering, and Manufacturing, as well as practitioners in the Design, Planning and Production departments in the manufacturing industry. Integrated Design of a Product Family and Its Assembly System is also suitable for use as a textbook in courses such as Computer-Aided Design, Concurrent Engineering, Design for Assembly, Process Planning, and Integrated Design.

The main objective of the authors is to deliver specifications and underlying concepts for future computer-aided tools for the design and the control of flexible manufacturing systems for mechanical and electro-mechanical assemblies. This book presents an integrated computer-aided method which supports a concurrent engineering approach for assembled products. This integrated method is divided in several modules which analyse the ease of assembly of a design, the assembly order, the design of an assembly workshop, and the simulation of the workshop taking into account scheduling and flow control. Automatic, semi-automatic and manual utilisations are presented for each module. Communication between design and manufacturing has been emphasised. The environment in this book is a real concurrent engineering one and for the first time the concurrent engineering steps are integrated in a CAD system. The method has been implemented in one of the worlds most used CAD systems: CATIA.

Technological change has had a profound impact on manufacturing industry and related business sectors. Since publication of the first edition of Implementing New Technologies the pace of change ahs been maintained, often with uncertain consequences. In this new edition the editors have brought together a collection of readings which include: aeo Project planning. aeo Conversion or application of plans. aeo Consolidation of change after the insertion of new technologies. Although the second edition includes material on innovation it is more concerned with the consequences of technology diffusion and technology transfer, concentrating on the adoption of technologies which are novel in a particular application even though not inherently a newa .

The Adaptive Computing in Design and Manufacture Conference series is now in its tenth year and has become a well-established, application-oriented meeting recognised by several UK Engineering Institutions and the International Society of Genetic and Evolutionary Computing. The main theme of the conference again relates to the integration of evolutionary and adaptive computing technologies with design and manufacturing processes whilst also taking into account complementary advanced computing technologies. Evolutionary and adaptive computing techniques continue to increase their penetration of industrial and commercial practice as their powerful search, exploration and optimisation capabilities become ever more apparent. The last two years have seen a very significant increase in the development of commercial software tools utilising adaptive computing technologies and the emergence of related commercial research and consultancy organisations supporting the introduction of best practice in terms of industrial utilisation. Adaptive Computing in Design and Manufacture V is comprised of selected papers that cover a diverse set of industrial application areas including: engineering design and design environments, manufacturing process design, scheduling and control, electronic circuit design, fault detection. Various aspects of search and optimisation such as multi-objective and constrained optimisation are also investigated in the context of integration with industrial processes. In addition to evolutionary computing techniques, both neural-net and agent-based technologies play a role in a number of contributions. This collection of papers will be of particular interest to both industrial researchers and practitioners in addition to the academic research communities of engineering, operational research and computer science.

Robots and Manufacturing Automation Second Edition C. Ray Asfahl University of Arkansas 55391 3, 512 pp., cloth, 1992 A Complete Guide to Using Automation to Boost Productivity This applications-oriented book surveys the wide spectrum of automated systems available to increase manufacturing productivity. It covers all aspects of automation including robots, numerical control machines, programmable controllers, computer controllers, and microprocessor-based automated systems. Technical topics are explained in an easy-to-understand style and illustrated with vivid images. Every chapter includes quantitative exercises or problems and design case studies to help solidify understanding of the material. The new Second Edition is now completely current in coverage, and includes a number of enhancements: Text expansion (approximately 20 per cent) ensures complete coverage of the field. Careful changes have modernized the text and emphasize the most recent and widely-used automation equipment and techniques. Updated coverage now includes concepts which show how to design products to enhance automation and manual production. New chapters on Machine Vision and Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) bring topic coverage to the cutting edge. The Robot Programming chapter contains new material on the AML Language.

Optimal Shape Design is concerned with the optimization of some performance criterion dependent (besides the constraints of the problem) on the "shape" of some region. The main topics covered are: the optimal design of a geometrical object, for instance a wing, moving in a fluid; the optimal shape of a region (a harbor), given suitable constraints on the size of the entrance to the harbor, subject to incoming waves; the optimal design of some electrical device subject to constraints on the performance. The aim is to show that Optimal Shape Design, besides its interesting industrial applications, possesses nontrivial mathematical aspects. The main theoretical tools developed here are the homogenization method and domain variations in PDE. The style is mathematically rigorous, but specifically oriented towards applications, and it is intended for both pure and applied mathematicians. The reader is required to know classical PDE theory and basic functional analysis.

This monograph is concerned with the development and implementation of nonlinear mathematical techniques for feedback control and shape design of robot manipulators whose links have considerable structural flexibility. Several nonlinear control and observation techniques are studied and implemented by simulations and experiments in a laboratory setup. These techniques include integral manifolds in singular perturbation theory, nonlinear input-output decoupling, nonlinear observers and sliding control.
The study of dynamic properties and control techniques for flexible-link manipulators can also be a framework for designing the mechanical shape and material of these systems such that improved properties can be achieved in order to facilitate the control problem. Therefore, structural shape optimization is considered as a means of improving the dynamic behaviour of flexible-link manipulators.

The present edited volume is of special importance, and for various reasons. First of all, it is one of the most comprehensive and multifaceted coverage of broadly per ceived fuzzy control in the literature. The editors have succeeded to collect papers from leading scholars and researchers on various subjects related to the topic of the volume. What is relevant and original is that - as opposed to so many volumes on fuzzy control published by virtually all major publishing houses that are strongly technically oriented and covering a narrow spectrum of issues relevant to fuzzy con trol itself - the editors have adopted a more general and far sighted approach. Basically, the perspective assumed in the volume is that though fuzzy control has reached such a level of maturity and implementability that it has become a part of in dustrial practice, science and academic research still have a relevant role to play in this area. One should however take into account that by their very nature, the role of science and academic research is very peculiar and going beyond straightforward ap plications, ad hoc solutions, "quick and dirty" tools and techniques, etc. that are usu ally effective and efficient for solving practical problems. This does not mean that as pects of practical implementations should not be accounted for by scholars and re searchers."

This collection of selected papers from the Fourth International Conference on Adaptive Computing in Design and Manufacture (ACDM0) represents a cross-section of the state-of-the art relating to the integration of advanced stochastic search, exploration and optimisation techniques with complex problem areas relating to various aspects of design and manufacturing processes. The Conference, held in the Sherwell Conference Centre at the University of Plymouth, Devon, UK in April, 2000, is a well-established biennial event supported by several UK Engineering Institutions and recognised by the International Society for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation as a mainstream event. The conference continues to attract an international audience of leading researchers and practitioners in the field. Aerospace, mechanical, thermal and structural design are among the subjects treated. In terms of manufacturing processes, cell formation, facility design, system control and robotics are addressed. In most cases, results from their application to or integration with real-world industrial problems are very much in evidence and conclusions relating to the overall utility of the various techniques across a diverse spectrum of problem areas are available. Evolutionary computing research and its application provides the mainstay in the great majority of papers. In the tradition of the ACDM series, papers utilising neural computing technologies and related computational intelligence techniques within the design/manufacture environments have also been included. The collection further illustrates the increasing uptake of these technologies in terms of academic research, academic and industrial collaboration andindustrial practice. It is apparent that application strategies are becoming increasingly sophisticated as the powerful data processing capabilities of the technologies become more apparent and their increasing potential leads to integration with more complex problem areas so the book will be of particular interest to both design and computer science research communities in addition to those industrial organisations that are either already including these technologies in day-to-day working practice or that wish to familiarise themselves with the potential utility of their application further.

MATLAB , a software package developed by Math Works, Inc. is powerful, versatile and interactive software for scientific and technical computations including simulations. Specialised toolboxes provided with several built-in functions are a special feature of MATLAB .

This book titled System Design through MATLAB Control Toolbox and SIMULINK aims at getting the reader started with computations and simulations in system engineering quickly and easily and then proceeds to build concepts for advanced computations and simulations that includes the control and compensation of systems. Simulation through SIMULINK has also been described to allow the reader to get the feel of the real world situation.

This book is appropriate for undergraduate students undergoing final semester of their project work, postgraduate students who have MATLAB integrated in their course or wish to take up simulation problem in the area of system engineering for their dissertation work and research scholars for whom MATLAB along with toolboxes and SIMULINK is an indispensable tool for simulation.

To download interactive simulations of various systems (523Kb) described in the book, go to http//www.springer.co.uk/matlab.htm

Applications of communication networks lead to radical changes in human life. Fieldbus technology is part of this development acting in close connection to systems control and in critical domains. Equipped with sensitive sensors, fieldbus technology becomes the backbone of many processes of our daily life. In automation technology, fieldbus systems are essential parts of modern applications. In airplanes and in near future also in automobiles, mechanical control is replaced by "x by wirea systems based on fieldbusses, a technique more efficient and flexible, but also cheaper. Moreover, fieldbus technology, used in factories, hospitals, laboratories for the collection of numerous data, enables a more efficient and reliable operation of these complex environments. This book is a collection of articles submitted to the fieldbus conference FeT'99 in Magdeburg, Germany. The articles were reviewed by an international program committee which decided to include some high quality articles not presented at the conference. The book comprises chapters dealing with important aspects of fieldbus technology and reflecting areas of main activity in science and industry: real-time aspects, networking, management, OPC, system aspects, realization, protocol specifications (supplements to introduced fieldbus systems), validation, profile development (i. e. specification of application semantics) and research projects. A further chapter reports on the European harmonization project NOAH.

The third evolutionary I adaptive computing conference organised by the Plymouth Engineering Design Centre (PEDC) at the University of Plymouth again explores the utility of various adaptive search algorithms and complementary computational intelligence techniques within the engineering design and manufacturing domains. The intention is to investigate strategies and techniques that are of benefit not only as component I system optimisers but also as exploratory design tools capable of supporting the differing requirements of conceptual, embodiment and detailed design whilst taking into account the many manufacturing criteria influencing design direction. Interest in the integration of adaptive computing technologies with engineering has been rapidly increasing in recent years as practical examples illustrating their potential relating to system performance and design process efficiency have become more apparent. This is in addition to the realisation of significant commercial benefits from the application of evolutionary planning and scheduling strategies. The development of this conference series from annual PEDC one day workshops to the biennial 'Adaptive Computing in Engineering Design and Control' conference and this year's event reflects this growth in both academic and industrial interest. The name change to include manufacture relates to a desire to increase cover of integrated product development aspects, facility layout and scheduling in addition to process I machine control.

This book, based on the Fourth International Conference on Advanced Manufacturing Systems and Technology - AMST '96 aims at presenting trend and up-to-date information on the latest developments - research results and industrial experience in the field of machining processes, optimization and process planning, forming, flexible machining systems, non conventional machining, robotics and control, measuring and quality, thus providing an international forum for a beneficial exchange of ideas, and furthering a favourable cooperation between research and industry.

In a competitive world, research in manufacturing systems plays an important role in creating, updating and improving the technologies and management practices of the economy. This volume presents some of the most recent results in stochastic manufacturing systems. Experts from the fields of applied mathematics, engineering and management sciences review and substantially update the recent advances in the control and optimization of manufacturing systems. Recent Advances in Control and Optimization of Manufacturing Systems consists of eight chapters divided into three parts which focus on Optimal Production Planning, Scheduling and Improvability and Approximate Optimality and Robustness. This book is intended for researchers and practitioners in the fields of systems theory, control and optimization, and operation management as well as in applied probability and stochastic processes.

Product Data Technology encompasses the information related to all stages in the product life cycle from product design via production planning, production processes, production control etc. through the delivery and operational stages of the technical product. Product Data Technology takes a coherent, unified view of the information captured in this whole life cycle and provides methodologies to support this integrated perspective. The Product Data Technology Advisory Group (PDTAG), a Special Interest Group of the CIME Division of the Commission of the European Communities founded in 1991, has encouraged the formation of a new subseries on Product Data Technology within the existing series of Research Reports ESPRIT. This subseries will provide a depository for the important contributions made by ESPRIT projects to the evolving area of Product Data Technology, particularly also those based on STEP (ISO 10303). PDTAG is grateful to Springer Publishers for establishing this subseries which will serve to report recent international developments in Product Data Technology. The current volume describes the results of the ESPRIT Project CACID (Proj. No. 5168), dealing with the subject of computer-aided concurrent integral design. Concurrent engineering provides an important enhancement of computer-aided product design by offering a framework and methodology for the management of design projects with multiple parallel tasks. Concurrent Engineering is one of the important growth areas for Product Data Technology.

In this paper a nearly perfected concept of basic training in the field of "Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM)" has been explained. With the help of detailed studies conducted in part by the Department of Technology and Education. Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Dortmund the necessity of basic training at all levels for employees in Computer Integrated Manufacturing was verified. Then the new requirements for employees were indicated with respect to the "ability to act". Moreover, the didactic demands of the concept for basic subject-specific training were clearly stipulated. In summary, this concept has to include the invariant, indispensable, fundamental and exemplary contents and the basic options of CIM work organisation which are most important today and in the near future. Then a configuration was presented to meet these demands: the multimedia system of the CIM Learnil)g Factory, subsidised by the EC in the COMETT programme. The CIM Learning Factory consists of * a well-operating "model factory", where activities like job management, production control, design, manufacturing, including loading, material transport and assembly as well as quality control and warehousing, are flexibly shown in functional models and are controlled by means of cross-linked computers (MPC); during the training the cross-linked computer structure is used like a language laboratory; * two different "teachware packages", the first for the target group of designers and decision-makers, the second for skilled workers and plant management.

Today's manufacturing environment is characterised by significant change in the way it is able to respond to its business objectives. Companies now face new challenges to meet customer demands including greater flexibility, a wider range of products, higher quality, improved lead time, whilst maintaining _c.ompetitive prices. The changes manifest in each company will differ but, the trend is towards providing a leaner, more responsive organisation. This is reflected in the need for Information Technology (IT) systems to be more integrated across an enterprise and for the systems to be provided on a distributed basis. At the same time it is imperative that the costs associated with these IT systems and the range of skills required by an enterprise to develop and support such systems should be minimal. One way of achieving this objective is to adopt the use of standards. During recent years there has been a lot of activity to standardise the way that manufacturing devices communicate with each other. Considerable progress has been made, thanks not least to the success of the international effort of stand ardisation bodies like ISO, IEEE and IEC, and projects applying standardised protocols like Manufacturing Automation Protocol (MAP), in the USA, Commun ications Network for Manufacturing Applications (CNMA) in Europe and not forgetting Mini-MAP and Fieldbus technology."

Within CIME environments, one continually comes across a multitude of different working practices, network devices, information systems and manufacturing technologies. This heterogeneous environment extends to individual enterprises and can have profound effects on the efficiency and effectiveness of an organisation, and often results in symptoms such as: long product lead times, poor visibility of the product and process status, high product inventory and work-in progress, low data integrity, etc., as well as incurring excessive infrastructure costs. Having to select an appropriate information system to help achieve the business objectives of anyone manufacturing enterprise can be an awesome task. During the 1980s, vendor-independent communications such as MAP (Manu facturing Automation Protocol) and CNMA (Communications Network for Manufacturing Applications) brought standard, open communications to computer controlled industrial devices, but this alone was not enough to satisfy the more demanding requirements of creating and maintaining manufacturing applications. In order to create manufacturing solutions that effectively utilise Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) it is necessary to look beyond the standard communications protocols to how and why applications are developed."

This book presents a modern and attractive approach to computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) by stressing the crucial role of information management aspects. The 31 contributions contained constitute the final report on the EC Project TEMPUS No. 2609 aimed at establishing a new curriculum and regular education in the new field of information management in CIM at European universities.
Much attention was paid to the style of writing and coverage of the important issues. Thus the book is particularly suited as a text for students and young scientists approaching CIM from different directions; at the same time, it is a comprehensive guide for industrial engineers in machine engineering, computer science, control engineering, artificial intelligence, production management, etc.

The aim of this book is to present important software tools, basic concepts, methods, and highly sophisticated applications of computerized symbolic manipulation to mechanics problems. An overview about general-purpose symbolic software is followed by general guidelines how to develop and implement high-quality computer algebra code. The theoretical background including modeling techniques for mechanical systems is provided which allows for the computer aided generation of the symbolic equation of motion for multibody systems. It is shown how the governing equations for different types of problems in structural mechanics can be automatically derived and how to implement finite element techniques via computer algebra software. Perturbation methods as a very powerful approach for nonlinear problems are discussed in detail and are demonstrated for a number of applications. The applications covered in this book represent some of the most advanced topics in the rapidly growing field of research on symbolic computation.

Providing a comprehensive introduction to the multi-disciplinary function called Manufacturing Systems Engineering (MSE), this textbook aims to demonstrate the systems aspects of modern manufacturing operation, systems modelling and evaluation, and structured design of manufacturing systems. This second edition shows how to adopt structured, systematic approaches to the design and evaluation of the modern manufacturing plant with the purpose of optimizing performance of the whole factory. Broad in scope and integrating topics, this book should be useful to students and managers in manufacturing.

Intented as a primer' in manufacturing systems, this book concentrates primarily on the technology that is applied on the shop floor to automate the manufacturing process. Modern automation techniques are placed in the context of manufacturing systems approaches and more traditional production engineering approaches. This edition has been updated with new material including sample course work, examination questions and a comprehensively revised reading list. It provides a clear account of steps to automation and covers all the essential aspects of principle and application in an accessible way.

The central purpose of this book is to acquaint the reader especially with the cases of local search based learning as well as to introduce methods of constraint based reasoning, both with respect to their use in automated manufacturing. We restrict our attention to job shop scheduling as well as to one-machine scheduling with sequence dependent setup times. Additionally some design and planning issues in flexible manufacturing systems are considered. General purpose search methods which in particular include methods from local search such as simulated annealing, tabu search, and genetic algorithms, are the basic ingredients of the proposed intelligent knowledge-based scheduling systems, enriched by a number of constraint-based local decision rules in order to introduce problem specific knowledge.

The safe operation of computer systems continues to be a key issue in many applications where people, environment, investment, or goodwill can be at risk. Such applications include medical, railways, power generation and distribution, road transportation, aerospace, process industries, mining, military and many others. This book represents the proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computer Safety, Reliability and Security, held in Poznan, Poland, 27-29 October 1993. The conference reviews the state of the art, experiences and new trends in the areas of computer safety, reliability and security. It forms a platform for technology transfer between academia, industry and research institutions. In an expanding world-wide market for safe, secure and reliable computer systems SAFECOMP'93 provides an opportunity for technical developers, users, and legislators to exchange and review the experience, to consider the best technologies now available and to identify the skills and technologies required for the future. The papers were carefully selected by the International Program Com mittee of the Conference. The authors of the papers come from 16 different countries. The subjects covered include formal methods and models, safety assessment and analysis, verification and validation, testing, reliability issues and dependable software tech nology, computer languages for safety related systems, reactive systems technology, security and safety related applications. As to its wide international coverage, unique way of combining partici pants from academia, research and industry and topical coverage, SAFECOMP is outstanding among the other related events in the field."

This book covers the various aspects of the development of an integrated product and process modelling system using advanced computer technologies. It describes languages and methodologies for developing an information reference model, system architectures, a link with emerging new standards such as ISO/STEP and CIM/OSA, and a new approach for the definition of model semantics. It discusses practical aspects of the usage and integration of computer aided design, planning and production systems, and shows how the reference model can be applied. Concrete practical examples are given for two demonstration parts: a sheet metal part and a ship propeller blade. Much attention has been devoted to making the subject matter easy to understand for a wide audience. The reference model is presented in easy-to-grasp chunks in a graphical, informal way, and many figures support the text. The reader should gain a clear impression of the various technical aspects of CIM systems using modern techniques corresponding to emerging new standards. Aspects of future systems are also included.