Sensor Based Cost Modelling for a Knowledge Support System Development

Abstract

Nowadays, many small or medium size manufacturing companies face significant challenges of quality, cost and cycle time in their production life cycle. In order to deal with these challenges, the utilization of knowledge management system in their facilities becomes an appealing solution. However, most their current knowledge management system is not flexible enough and adequate for handling high amount of production data or calculating manufacturing cost of a product adaptively. Therefore, a novel knowledge support system framework for calculating unit product manufacturing cost through a generic cost model becomes necessary for small or medium size companies (SMC) to effectively optimise a manufacturing system in order to produce, repair or remanufacture products with the highest efficiency, best quality performance and lowest cost. This paper presents a generic cost model that considers production time based on sensors in a manufacturing system. This means the basic elements of model would adapt cycle time variation, which is one of the most important data of the generic cost models that will be obtained from the sensors on the machines.