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.

Advanced modeling techniques are a necessary tool in order to design and manage manufacturing systems effectively. This book contains a set of tutorial chapters on topics ranging from aggregate production planning to real time control, including predictive and reactive scheduling, flow management in assembly systems, simulation of robotic cells, design of manufacturing systems under uncertainty and a historical perspective on production management philosophies. The book will be of interest both to researchers and practitioners, including graduate students in Manufacturing Engineering and Operations Research.

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.

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.

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.

Supervisory Control of Discrete Event Systems Using Petri Nets presents a novel approach to its subject. The concepts of supervisory control and discrete event systems are explained, and the background material on general Petri net theory necessary for using the book's control techniques is provided. A large number of examples is used to illustrate the concepts and techniques presented in the text, and there are plenty of references for those interested in additional study or more information on a particular topic. Supervisory Control of Discrete Event Systems Using Petri Nets is intended for graduate students, advanced undergraduates, and practicing engineers who are interested in the control problems of manufacturing, communication and computer networks, chemical process plants, and other high-level control applications. The text is written from an engineering perspective, but it is also appropriate for students of computer science, applied mathematics, or economics. The book contains enough background material to stand alone as an introduction to supervisory control with Petri nets, but it may also be used as a supplemental text in a course on discrete event systems or intelligent autonomous control.

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.

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.

Based on the results of the study carried out in 1996 to investigate the state of the art of workflow and process technology, MCC initiated the Collaboration Management Infrastructure (CMI) research project to develop innovative agent-based process technology that can support the process requirements of dynamically changing organizations and the requirements of nomadic computing. With a research focus on the flow of interaction among people and software agents representing people, the project deliverables will include a scalable, heterogeneous, ubiquitous and nomadic infrastructure for business processes. The resulting technology is being tested in applications that stress an intensive mobile collaboration among people as part of large, evolving business processes. Workflow and Process Automation: Concepts and Technology provides an overview of the problems and issues related to process and workflow technology, and in particular to definition and analysis of processes and workflows, and execution of their instances. The need for a transactional workflow model is discussed and a spectrum of related transaction models is covered in detail. A plethora of influential projects in workflow and process automation is summarized. The projects are drawn from both academia and industry. The monograph also provides a short overview of the most popular workflow management products, and the state of the workflow industry in general. Workflow and Process Automation: Concepts and Technology offers a road map through the shortcomings of existing solutions of process improvement by people with daily first-hand experience, and is suitable as a secondary text for graduate-level courses on workflow and process automation, and as a reference for practitioners in industry.

The application of intelligent imaging techniques to industrial vision problems is an evolving aspect of current machine vision research. Machine vision is a relatively new technology, more concerned with systems engineering than with computer science, and with much to offer the manufacturing industry in terms of improving efficiency, safety and product quality. Beginning with an introductory chapter on the basic concepts, the authors develop these ideas to describe intelligent imaging techniques for use in a new generation of industrial imaging systems. Sections cover the application of AI languages such as Prolog, the use of multi-media interfaces and multi-processor systems, external device control, and colour recognition. The text concludes with a discussion of several case studies that illustrate how intelligent machine vision techniques can be used in industrial applications.

On the verge of the global information society, enterprises are competing for markets that are becoming global and driven by customer demand, and where growing specialisation is pushing them to focus on core competencies and look for partnerships to provide products and services. Simultaneously the public demands environmentally sustainable industries and urges manufacturers to mind the whole life span of their products and production resources. Information infrastructure systems are anticipated to offer services enabling and catalyzing the strategies of manufacturing companies responding to these challenges: they support the formation of extended enterprises, the mastering of full product and process life cycles, and the digitalization of the development process. Information infrastructure systems would accommodate access to and transformation of information as required by the various authorized stakeholders involved in the life phases of products or production resources. Services should be available to select and present all relevant information for situations involving any kind of players, during any life phase of a product or artifact, at any moment and at any place.

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."

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.

Software has become a decisive cost and time factor in regard to developing and establishing manufacturing systems and setting them into operation. In addition, software determines the availability, reliability as well as functionality of manufacturing units. Software Engineering for Manufacturing Systems considers the methods and procedures required to deal with problems in the software engineering of control technology for manufacturing systems. Significantly, the following topics are addressed: * definitions and requirements of software for control technology * system design, describing forms of control software * CASE tools for the generation of a code * configuration, adaption of standard software variants, and re-usability of software * and man-machine interface. It contains the selected proceedings of the International Conference on Software Engineering and Case Tools for Control Technology of Manufacturing Systems, sponsored by the IFIP and held in Germany, in March 1996.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Towards Balanced Automation The concept. Manufacturing industries worldwide are facing tough challenges as a consequence of the globalization of economy and the openness of the markets. Progress of the economic blocks such as the European Union, NAFTA, and MERCOSUR, and the global agreements such as GATT, in addition to their obvious economic and social consequences, provoke strong paradigm shifts in the way that the manufacturing systems are conceived and operate. To increase profitability and reduce the manufacturing costs, there is a recent tendency towards establishing partnership links among the involved industries, usually between big industries and the networks of components' suppliers. To benefit from the advances in technology, similar agreements are being established between industries and universities and research institutes. Such an open tete-cooperation network may be identified as an extended enterprise or a virtual enterprise. In fact, the manufacturing process is no more carried out by a single enterprise, rather each enterprise is just a node that adds some value (a step in the manufacturing chain) to the cooperation network of enterprises. The new trends create new scenarios and technological challenges, especially to the Small and Medium size Enterprises (SMEs) that clearly comprise the overwhelming majority of manufacturing enterprises worldwide. Under the classical scenarios, these SMEs would have had big difficulties to access or benefit from the state of the art technology, due to their limited human, financial, and material resources.

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."

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 volume reviews the latest global research results in computer applications. The book contains a selection of papers presented at the Fifth International Conference on Computer Applications in Production and Engineering, arranged by the International Federation for Information Processing and held in Beijing, China in May 1995.