Process planning determines how a product is to be manufactured and is therefore a key element in the manufacturing process. It plays a major part in determining the cost of components and affects all factory activities, company competitiveness, production planning, production efficiency and product quality. It is a crucial link between design and manufacturing. There are several levels of process planning activities. Early in product engineering and development, process planning is responsible for determining the general method of production. The selected general method of production affects the design constraints. In the last stages of design, the designer has to consider ease of manufacturing in order for it to be economic. The part design data is transferred from engineering to manufacturing and process planners develop the detailed work package for manufacturing a part. Dimensions and tolerances are determined for each stage of processing of the workpiece. Process planning determines the sequence of operations and utilization of machine tools. Cutting tools, fixtures, gauges and other accessory tooling are also specified. Feeds, speeds and other parameters of the metal cutting and forming processes are determined.

Over the past two decades, research in the theory of Petri nets and the development of graphical tools has yielded a powerful methodology. The contributions in Petri Nets in Flexible and Agile Automation present theoretical development of Petri nets as well as in industrial applications to areas such as discrete- event control design, scheduling, performance evaluation and deadlock avoidance. These contributions also include comparative studies of Petri nets and other approaches. A primary theme of this book is to provide a unified approach to the applications of Petri nets in flexible and agile automation and, in that regard, a common notation and terminology is used. The book also allows readers to evaluate the benefits and applicability of state-of-the-art Petri net methods and apply CAD tools to problems of interest. Petri Nets in Flexible and Agile Automation is not only an essential reference for researchers, it is also a very useful tool for engineers, analysts and managers who are responsible for the design, implementation and operation of the next generation of manufacturing systems.

The most powerful computers in the world are not only used for scientific research, defence, and business, but also in game playing. Computer games are a multi-billion dollar industry. Recent advances in computational intelligence paradigms have generated tremendous interest among researchers in the theory and implementation of games. Game theory is a branch of operational research dealing with decision theory in a competitive situation. Game theory involves the mathematical calculations and heuristics to optimize the efficient lines of play. This book presents a sample of the most recent research on the application of computational intelligence techniques in games. This book contains 7 chapters. The first chapter, by Chen, Fanelli, Castellano, and Jain, is an introduction to computational intelligence paradigms. It presents the basics of the main constituents of compu tational intelligence paradigms including knowledge representation, probability-based approaches, fuzzy logic, neural networks, genetic algorithms, and rough sets. In the second chapter, Chellapilla and Fogel present the evolution of a neural network to play checkers without human expertise. This chapter focuses on the use of a population of neural networks, where each network serves as an evaluation function to describe the quality of the current board position. After only a little more than 800 generations, the evolutionary process has generated a neural network that can play checkers at the expert level as designated by the u.s. Chess Federation rating system. The program developed by the authors has also competed well against commercially available software."

In this global society, manufacturers compete in many ways, and information infrastructures play a critical role in ensuring the right information is available at the right time and the right place to support informed decision making. The traditional approach that assumes all information can be located on a single mainframe and accessed by everybody in the enterprise has fallen by the wayside, and new infrastructures supporting extended or virtual enterprises and globally distributed supply chains are becoming increasingly vital to successful, competitive organizations. Functions, data, and information must be made be available to all without regard to location, accessibility, or the ability to view in a native format. This book is a result of a conference, which brought together a number of leading experts from around the world that work on topics related to the design, implementation, and use of information infrastructures for manufacturing. These experts presented their views on the state of the art, and on a wide variety of topics related to the title. The topics range from the establishment of a generic enterprise framework, which can be used for the design of a supporting information infrastructure to details of how geometric surfaces should be merged together. Although not an exhaustive publication, we believe that the publications in this book represent the state of the art in this research is essential reading for anyone who is attempting the design or development of an information infrastructure for all aspects of Manufacturing.

Despite the numerous competitive advantages of one-of-a-kind production (OKP), the low efficiency and high costs associated with OKP companies threaten to push their business opportunities into the hands of cheaper overseas suppliers.

"One-of-a-Kind Production" introduces a novel strategy and technology to help OKP companies to efficiently mass-produce customized products. In "One-of-a-Kind Production, " case studies from OKP companies are used to validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the OKP strategy and technology. These case studies include: a structural steel construction company, a manufacturer of specifically ordered compressors and refrigeration systems, a customized high pressure vessel manufacturing company, anda custom window and door manufacturer.

To help readers understand OKP strategy and technology, the authors offer a year s free access to the OKP Management and Control Software System. This system is based on a new integrated production control and management concept, namely product production structure. It is a useful tool and "One-of-a-Kind Production" is a valuable guide for production engineers and managerial staff in manufacturing companies, as well as for university researchers and graduate students.

The integration of manufacturing planning functions, using artificial intelligence techniques, is essential for the effective and efficient operation of advanced manufacturing systems. This book provides an introduction to the integration of intelligent manufacturing systems for both present and next generation manufacturing. Because of its central importance, the book emphasizes the integration of the process planning functions.

Manufacturing has entered the early stages of a revolutionary period caused by the convergence of three powerful trends: * The rapid advancement and spread of manufacturing capabilities worldwide has created intense competition on a global scale. * The emergence of advanced manufacturing technologies is dramati cally changing both the products and processes of modern manufac turing. * Changes in traditional management and labor practices, organiza tional structures, and decision-making criteria represent new sources of competitiveness and introduce new strategic opportunities. These trends are interrelated and their effects are already being felt by the u.s. manufacturing community. Future competitiveness for manu facturers worldwide will depend on their response to these trends. Based on the recent performance of u.s. manufacturers, efforts to respond to the challenges posed by new competition, technology, and managerial opportunities have been slow and inadequate. Domestic markets that were once secure have been assailed by a growing number of foreign competitors producing high quality goods at low prices. In a number of areas, such as employment, capacity utilization, research and development expenditures, and capital investment, trends in u.s. manufacturing over the last decade have been unfavorable or have not kept pace with major foreign competitors, such as Japan. There is substantial evidence that many u.s. manufacturers have neglected the manufacturing function, have overemphasized product development at the expense of process improvements, and have not begun to make the adjustments that will be necessary to be competitive.

Direct Engineering (DE) is the creation of a product development cycle into a single, unified process. The design process in most industries is an evolutionary one (i.e., incremental changes to some existing design). DE is a manufacturing process that seeks to improve the design processes by providing complete archival documentation of existing designs. It uses three-dimensional geometric models with integrated manufacturing information throughout the design process. DE reduces the design cycle, and the variety and number of engineering changes. This process decreases the design cycle time, increases productivity, and provides a higher quality product. The required technologies and methodologies that will support the development of the DE environment are: (1) product representation using feature-based modeling; (2) knowledge-based applications that will support the entire product development cycle; (3) an engineering environment implemented around distributed computing and object-oriented systems; (4) direct manufacturing techniques using rapid prototyping. Direct Engineering: Toward Intelligent Manufacturing addresses the following recent topics related to the development, implementation, and integration of the DE environment: (1) the current scope of the research in intelligent manufacturing; (2) the results of the technologies and tools developed for integrated product and process designs, and (3) examination of the methodologies and algorithms used for the implementation of direct engineering.

During the last two decades, a tremendous growth in the popularity and applications of computers in manufacturing has occurred. Computer aided design, computer-aided manufacturing, flexible manufacturing systems, group technology and many others are considered by many manufacturing executives as the most promising technologies and philosophies that, if successfully implemented, can reduce costs and enable the US manufacturing companies to become more competitive in the global market. In the computer-integrated manufacturing environ ment, the decision processes are often more involved. The decision makers are frequently required to have access to a vast amount of data to support and analyze their complex decision problems at strategic and tactical levels. Decision support systems are often referred to as computer-based information technologies that allow the decision makers to interactively communicate and solve the decision problems. Manufacturing Decision Support Systems is intended to report the latest developments and address the central issues in this area. This volume consists of 14 refereed chapters, written by leading researchers from academia and industry."

Modern computer-based control systems are able to collect a large amount of information, display it to operators and store it in databases but the interpretation of the data and the subsequent decision making relies mainly on operators with little computer support. This book introduces developments in automatic analysis and interpretation of process-operational data both in real-time and over the operational history, and describes new concepts and methodologies for developing intelligent, state space-based systems for process monitoring, control and diagnosis. The book brings together new methods and algorithms from process monitoring and control, data mining and knowledge discovery, artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, and causal relationship discovery, as well as signal processing. It also provides a framework for integrating plant operators and supervisors into the design of process monitoring and control systems.

Industries and particularly the manufacturing sector have been facing difficult challenges in a context of socio-economic turbulence characterized by complexity as well as the speed of change in causal interconnections in the socio-economic environment. In order to respond to these challenges companies are forced to seek new technological and organizational solutions.

In this context two main characteristics emerge as key properties of a modern automation system - agility and distribution. Agility because systems need not only to be flexible in order to adjust to a number of a-priori defined scenarios, but rather must cope with unpredictability. Distribution in the sense that automation and business processes are becoming distributed and supported by collaborative networks.

Emerging Solutions for Future Manufacturing Systems includes the papers selected for the BASYS'04 conference, which was held in Vienna, Austria in September 2004 and sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP).

Solid Freeform Fabrication is a set of manufacturing processes that are capable of producing complex freeform solid objects directly from a computer model of an object without part-specific tooling or knowledge. In essence, these methods are miniature manufacturing plants which come complete with material handling, information processing and materials processing. As such, these methods require technical knowledge from many disciplines; therefore, researchers, engineers, and students in Mechanical, Chemical, Electrical, and Manufacturing Engineering and Materials and Computer Science will all find some interest in this subject. Particular subareas of concern include manufacturing methods, polymer chemistry, computational geometry, control, heat transfer, metallurgy, ceramics, optics, and fluid mechanics. History of technology specialists may also find Chapter 1 of interest. Although this book covers the spectrum of different processes, the emphasis is clearly on the area in which the authors have the most experience, thermal laser processing. In particular, the authors have all been developers and inventors of techniques for the Selective Laser Sintering process and laser gas phase techniques (Selective Area Laser Deposition). This is a research book on the subject of Solid Freeform Fabrication.

Process Control Performance Assessment is a practical guide to the application of control benchmarking to real, complex, industrial processes. It presents commercial solutions as well as current and future techniques still under development and contains real full-scale-implementation industrial case studies from the oil and gas, power and chemical industries providing a hierarchical perspective on benchmarks. The effect of benchmarking and control tuning on process performance and revenue optimisation is demonstrated.

The most frequently occurring practical issues associated with implementing benchmarking algorithms in industrial processes are discussed in detailed and concise terms and guidelines given for avoiding common problems. The impact of problems like valve stiction and plant-wide disturbances on process performance is reviewed and methods for diagnosing causative fault conditions suggested.

The benefit of non-intrusive and intrusive benchmarking techniques for optimising control systems using performance assessment and diagnostic tools is the potential to enhance company operational economics through increased throughput and better product quality. The book is appropriate for industrial and academic control and process engineers who wish to learn about methods of benchmarking through directed study or self study.

With the increasing complexity and dynamism in today's product design and manufacturing, more optimal, robust and practical approaches and systems are needed to support product design and manufacturing activities. Multi-objective Evolutionary Optimisation for Product Design and Manufacturing presents a focused collection of quality chapters on state-of-the-art research efforts in multi-objective evolutionary optimisation, as well as their practical applications to integrated product design and manufacturing. Multi-objective Evolutionary Optimisation for Product Design and Manufacturing consists of two major sections. The first presents a broad-based review of the key areas of research in multi-objective evolutionary optimisation. The second gives in-depth treatments of selected methodologies and systems in intelligent design and integrated manufacturing. Recent developments and innovations in multi-objective evolutionary optimisation make Multi-objective Evolutionary Optimisation for Product Design and Manufacturing a useful text for a broad readership, from academic researchers to practicing engineers.

Presents a methodology developed by DaimlerChrysler.

Illustrates the methodology through detailed case studies.

Today, every engineer interested in manufacturing should have a firm grasp of computer architecture and how digital controllers are interfaced to electromechanical processes to gather information and control machines. The theories of continuous control and discrete control, and their application in manufacturing, are fundamental to designing and working with the next generation of manufacturing systems. The purpose of Computer Automation in Manufacturing: An introduction is to provide a broad introduction to digital control technology and its application in manufacturing automation. It covers the application of this technology from the machine level through the manufacturing cell and shop floor levels, provides broad coverage of subjects beginning with the architecture of computers and controllers, and ends with shop floor applications. Written specifically for engineering students, the book does not require a specialized background and can be used as early as the third year of an undergraduate engineering program. Readers will appreciate the broad scope and integration of topics, as well as the provision of numerous end-of-chapter problem sets.

This book provides up-to-date information about the promising use of feature technology for integrating computer-aided-design with subsequent applications. The book consists of 20 articles based upon the international IFIP conference on this topic held in Valenciennes, France in May 1994.

The world of artificial systems is reaching hitherto undreamed-of levels of complexity. Surface traffic, electricity distribution, mobile communications, etc., demonstrate that problems are arising that are beyond classical scientific or engineering knowledge. In order that our ability to control such systems should not be hindered by lack of comprehension, there is an on-going effort to understand them.This book is an example of the types of approach that European researchers are using to tackle problems derived from systems' complexity. It has grown out of activities in the Control of Complex Systems (COSY) research program the goals of which are to promote multi-disciplinary activity leading to a deeper understanding and further development of control technologies for complex systems and if possible, to develop the theory underlying such systems. The material in this book represents a selection of the results of the COSY program and is organised as a collection of essays of varying nature: surveys of essential areas, discussion of specific problems, case studies, and benchmark problems.Topics covered include:Modelling complex physical systems;Passivity-based control of non-linear systems;Aspects of fault identification and fault tolerance;Control design;Learning control;Satellite attitude control.Complex systems appear in many different fields and for this reason this book should be of interest to scientists, researchers and industrial engineers with a broad spectrum of experience.

Model based control has emerged as an important way to improve plant efficiency in the process industries, while meeting processing and operating policy constraints. The reader of Methods of Model Based Process Control will find state of the art reports on model based control technology presented by the world's leading scientists and experts from industry. All the important issues that a model based control system has to address are covered in depth, ranging from dynamic simulation and control-relevant identification to information integration. Specific emerging topics are also covered, such as robust control and nonlinear model predictive control. In addition to critical reviews of recent advances, the reader will find new ideas, industrial applications and views of future needs and challenges. Audience: A reference for graduate-level courses and a comprehensive guide for researchers and industrial control engineers in their exploration of the latest trends in the area.

This essential book documents the latest research progress and key issues affecting SSM software development. With a particular focus on the CAD/CAM environment, it provides a rich source of reference and covers a wide range of topics.

ANEMONA is a multi-agent system (MAS) methodology for holonic manufacturing system (HMS) analysis and design. ANEMONA defines a mixed top-down and bottom-up development process, and provides HMS-specific guidelines to help designers identify and implement holons. The analysis phase is defined in two stages: System Requirements Analysis, and Holon Identification and Specification. This analysis provides high-level HMS specifications, adopting a top-down recursive approach which provides a set of elementary elements and assembling rules. The next stage is Holon Design, a bottom-up process to produce the system architecture from the analysis models. The Holons Implementation stage produces an Executable Code for the SetUp and Configuration stage. Finally, maintenances functions are executed in the Operation and Maintenance stage. The book will be of interest to researchers and students involved in artificial intelligence and software engineering, and manufacturing engineers in industry and academia.

This book has resulted from the activities of IFAC TC 5.2 "Manufacturing Modelling for Management and Control". The book offers an introduction and advanced techniques of scheduling applications to cloud manufacturing and Industry 4.0 systems for larger audience. This book uncovers fundamental principles and recent developments in the theory and application of scheduling methodology to cloud manufacturing and Industry 4.0. The purpose of this book is to present recent developments in scheduling in cloud manufacturing and Industry 4.0 and to systemize these developments in new taxonomies and methodological principles to shape this new research domain. This book addresses the needs of both researchers and practitioners to uncover the challenges and opportunities of scheduling techniques' applications to cloud manufacturing and Industry 4.0. For the first time, it comprehensively conceptualizes scheduling in cloud manufacturing and Industry 4.0 systems as a new research domain. The chapters of the book are written by the leading international experts and utilize methods of operations research, industrial engineering and computer science. Such a multi-disciplinary combination is unique and comprehensively deciphers major problem taxonomies, methodologies, and applications to scheduling in cloud manufacturing and Industry 4.0.

Pneumatic, hydraulic and allied instrumentation schemes have given way to electronic schemes in recent years thanks to the rapid strides in electronics and allied areas. Principles, design and applications of such state-of-the-art instrumentation schemes form the subject matter of this book. Through representative examples, the basic building blocks of instrumentation schemes are identified and each of these building blocks discussed in terms of its design and interface characteristics. The common generic schemes synthesized with such building blocks are dealt with subsequently. This forms the scope of Part I. The focus in Part II is on application. Displacement and allied instrumentation, force and allied instrumentation and process instrumentation in terms of temperature, flow, pressure level and other common process variables are dealt with separately and exhaustively. Despite the diversity in the sensor principles and characteristics and the variety in the applications and their environments, it is possible judiciously to carve out broad areas of application for each type of sensor and the instrumentation built around it. The last chapter categorises instrumentation schemes according to their different levels of complexity. Specific practical examples - especially at involved complexity levels - are discussed in detail.

Reliability, Yield, and Stress Burn-In explains reliability issues in Microelectronics Systems Manufacturing and Software Development with an emphasis on evolving manufacturing technology for the semiconductor industry. Since most microelectronics components have an infant mortality period of about one year under ordinary operating conditions, and many modern systems, such as PCs, are heavily used in the first few years, the reliability problem in the infant mortality period becomes extremely important. Burn-in is an accelerated screening procedure that eliminates infant mortalities early on in the shop before shipping out the products to the customers. This book will also help readers to analyze systems that exhibit high failure rate during a long infant mortality period. Reliability, Yield, and Stress Burn-In presents ways to systematically analyze burn-in policy at the component, sub-system, and system levels. Various statistical methods are addressed including parametric, nonparametric, and Bayesian approaches. Many case studies are introduced in combination with the developed theories. Included in the book is an introduction to software reliability. Reliability, Yield, and Stress Burn-In will help manufacturers and system designers to understand and to design a more reliable product given constraints specified by the users and designers. An understanding of the infant mortality period will solve many reliability problems, including those faced in the semiconductor industry and software industry.

This book presents a unified optimal control approach to a large class of problems arising in the field of production planning and scheduling. It introduces a leading optimal flow control paradigm which results in efficient solutions for planning and scheduling problems. This book also introduces the reader to analytical and numerical methods of the maximum principle, used here as a mathematical instrument in modeling and solving production planning and scheduling problems. The book examines control of production flows rather than sequencing of distinct jobs. Methodologically, this paradigm allows us to progress from initial assumptions about a manufacturing environment, through mathematical models and construction of numerical methods, up to practical applications which prove the relevance of the theory developed here to the real world. Given a manufacturing system, the goal is to control the production, subject to given constraints, in such a way that the demands are tracked as closely as possible. The book considers a wide variety of problems encountered in actual production planning and scheduling. Among the problems are production flow sequencing and timing, capacity expansion and deterioration, subcontracting and overtime. The last chapter is entirely devoted to applications of the theory to scheduling production flows in real-life manufacturing systems. The enclosed disk provides software implementations of the developed methods with easy, convenient user interface. We aimed this book at a student audience - final year undergraduates as weIl as master and Ph. D.