Manufacturing Areas Research Articles

Research on the Manufacturing Development in China under the US-China Trade War

This paper aims to analyze the current condition of high technology manufacturing in China in the context of a trade war between it and the U.S. Since China and the U.S. are the largest two manufacturing countries and also the highest GDP countries, the paper presents the trend of the manufacturing within these two countries and their comparative advantage. While Chinese manufacturing wins by large scale and low production cost, U.S. manufacturing wins by its control of high technology which is more valuable to manufacturing growth today. Given the ever-intense rivalry between China and the U.S. on high-end technology manufacturing, the paper then discusses the resulted difficulty faced by China as it is experiencing a high-tech supply shortage and the solution China has used to conquer the obstacles. The solution China employed has shown its effectiveness as several high-end manufacturing areas have achieved great progress in the year after the solution was imposed. The content of the paper is meaningful to the study of the relationship between China and the U.S. and the continuing growth of Chinese manufacturing as it records the biggest tension between the two countries and the resolution China takes to save its manufacturing from a broken technology supply chain.

Process capabilities and future scope of Incremental Sheet Forming (ISF)

The Incremental Sheet Forming process (ISF) is a versatile forming process that is widely used in various advanced manufacturing areas such as for making the skull prosthesis, automobile, electronics and aerospace components etc. In the present paper methods, chronology of ISF and its classifications have been discussed, considering the effect of various factors such as stress triaxiality, bending stress and fracture strain. In addition, the effect of process parameters and its interaction on forming force, formability, surface roughness, spring back, failure and fracture etc. are also studied. It is observed that the study of two degree of freedom manipulator of robot with ISF and its effect on the formability surface roughness are highly recommended. Also, a future scope of ISF is also included in this investigation.

Mechanism in damage variation of nanosecond laser-induced damage of germanium sheets in vacuum

Laser-induced damage of germanium (Ge) sheets plays a key role to estimate the lifetime of optical components in the vacuum and space irradiation environment. However, the dependence between the degrees of laser-induced surface damage and nanosecond pulsed irradiation remains unclear for Ge sheet. Here, we investigate damage morphology and the growth characteristic of Ge sheets under different conditions and measure the laser-induced damage threshold (LIDT) in vacuum. Our results reveal that optical reflectivity of Ge in vacuum chamber falls 92% because of the defective sites on the damaged surface. The area, the depth and the size of the damage crater increase but the hillock height and the surrounding thermal diffuse area decrease along with the increase of vacuum degree. The thermal effect, the failure effect of plasma shock wave and the mechanical stress are analyzed to be the main mechanism in the laser damage. The combined experimental and theoretical work gives an insight into the change of surface damage and material failure behavior, hence broadens the potential applications of Ge sheets in areas of laser material manufacturing and laser processing.

The effect of contactless support parameters on the mechanical properties of laser powder bed fusion produced overhang parts

Support structures are used in especially overhang areas in laser metal additive manufacturing to prevent parts from distortion due to high thermal gradients. Since the support structures are not a part of the final component, extra time and material are needed for manufacturing. Moreover, they need to be removed after the build is completed. In addition to waste of time and material, distortion and/or surface roughness issues at supported surfaces may be observed during support removal. As a solution, contactless supports with no direct contact between the support and the part are studied in the present work. Contactless support gap, thickness of each contactless support pieces, and the spacing between two contactless support pieces were used as design variables, and dimensional variations, microhardness through thickness, microstructural changes of bottom surfaces, and surface roughness of overhang features were selected as performance outputs. A full set of design of experiments were manufactured by laser powder bed fusion process using Inconel 718 material. It was observed that all three geometrical parameters had influence on the performance outputs.

High-impact AI: How to achieve business goals while making the world a better place

A vast amount of wealth has been generated by the explosive growth of artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled applications, and that wealth generation is accelerating. This paper describes how both monetary and non-monetary wealth — the kind of wealth that makes the world a better place — can be generated by the same intelligent application. The paper introduces the term ‘high-impact AI’, which is the practice of achieving business goals while simultaneously benefiting society. Novel and practical examples of achieving this lofty goal are described in the areas of manufacturing, where AI-powered software enables people with disabilities to perform jobs they would otherwise not be qualified to perform; healthcare, where the incredible complexity of practising medicine has been simplified to potentially improve the health and prolong the lives of millions of people; and psychology, where a tremendous variety of human interactions can be quantified and optimised in real time to assist strengthening and enhancing relationships of all kinds. Finally, this paper makes the case that practising high-impact AI will help businesses attract and retain talented people by giving them meaningful work that matters.

A Preliminary Study on Fine Particulate Matter and Carbon Monoxide at a Cooking Food Sector

The study investigates the trends of particulate matter in diameter 2.5 microns and carbon monoxide in a cooking food sector located in Pulau Pinang. The study aims to assess the concentration of pollutants in a manufacturing area with different food processing. Four sampling locations were selected for the study. Samples were collected at 8-hr Time Weighted Average (TWA) for four consecutive days using IQ-610 Graywolf and EVM-7 following the standard method by the ICOP-IAQ 2010. Data analysis found that PM2.5 had exceeded about ten times the concentration of the regulated standard in a cooking area. Carbon monoxide had not exceeded the standard in other areas except the grinding area. Temperature levels had also exceeded the permissible range at all locations with more than 30°C. The findings indicate major issues of PM2.5 and temperature which indicate a need for further research to be carried out to tackle the issue.

Spatially controlling the mechanical properties of 3D printed objects by dual-wavelength vat photopolymerization

To date, the 3D printing of polymers with heterogeneous and locally controlled material properties is still a challenging area in additive manufacturing. In terms of vat photopolymerization 3D printing, the fabrication of multi-material objects typically relies on an automatic material exchange of different resin vats. However, along with the high complexity of the printing equipment, this technique suffers from a low build speed and often yields 3D printed objects with week interlayer adhesion across the various material interfaces. Herein, we use chemo-selective wavelengths to fabricate objects with multi-material properties by dual-wavelength vat photopolymerization 3D printing employing a single vat. The photopolymers’ stiffness and flexibility are conveniently controlled by two photoreactions working at two different wavelengths. In particular, a dual photocurable resin is applied containing multi-functional acrylates, which are cured by a radical induced chain growth reaction at 405 nm, and bi-functional epoxy monomers, which additionally undergo cationic curing upon UV exposure (365 nm). FT-IR experiments confirm the wavelength selective network formation whilst dynamic mechanical analysis and tensile tests give evidence of the distinctive difference of the related mechanical properties. By being able to produce soft (ε = 24%, σ = 1.0 MPa) and stiff (ε = 4%, σ = 39.1 MPa) networks with a single resin vat, we demonstrate the efficient fabrication of 3D structures with locally controlled mechanical properties using a dual-wavelength 3D printer operating at 405 and 365 nm. In contrast to previous work in this field, we were able to significantly expand the range of mechanical properties by appropriate selection of the acrylic components and to drastically accelerate the build speed by changing the cationic photoinitiator and using a customized printer with high intensity LED sources.

Revalorization of Australian royal palm (Archontophoenix alexandrae) waste as reinforcement in acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) for use in 3D printing pen

This study assesses the potential revaluation of solid waste from palm residues for use as reinforcement in acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) matrix to develop a composite filament that is more environmentally friendly. Filaments were processed using a thermokinetic mixer and then processed by a mini extruder using different fiber loadings (5, 10, 15, and 20% wt.). The effect of the fiber contents on the morphological, chemical, and thermal properties was evaluated, and environmental analysis was performed using the life cycle assessment. For a concept-proof, the materials were printed using a 3D printing pen. Pristine ABS presented no porosity, while filament composites showed a porous structure due to fiber presence and higher fiber loading induced pores with a diameter smaller than 50 μm. ABS and filament composites presented similar FTIR spectra; however, the hydrogen-bonding coefficient indicated a better fiber-matrix interaction for the ABS/15%Palm composition, increasing 42% compared to ABS. Filament's composites presented a slight decrease in thermal stability, which does not compromise its processing temperature, while the Tg presented similar values to pristine ABS. The life cycle assessment demonstrated beneficial environmental gains with fiber inclusion, especially for agricultural land occupation and ozone depletion impact categories. The filaments were successfully printed using a 3D printing pen showing the viability of using the developed filaments, and new applications may be promoted. Thus, the revalorization of palm fibers in the ABS matrix presents a low-cost alternative for filaments production and may expand 3D printing applications with more sustainable materials that could enable new applications in the additive manufacturing area.

Structural regulation of Fe–Co prussian blue analogues by incorporation of Pt for enhanced electrocatalytic overall water splitting

The specific properties of easy manufacturing, open frameworks, and high specific surface area endow prussian blue analogues (PBAs) as promising electrode materials for water splitting. Herein, we reported the successful application of interface engineering strategy to introduce low content of Pt species to boost the electrocatalytic activity of FeCo PBAs by ammonia etching and subsequent calcination. The resulting PtCo alloy modified FeCo PBAs (PtCo–FeCo PBAs) complex reveals modest electrocatalytic activity with low overpotentials (η) of 139 mV for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and 310 mV for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) at 10 mA cm−2 in alkaline electrolyte. Remarkably, the PtCo–FeCo PBAs only required small cell voltage of 1.68 V to drive 10 mA cm−2 for overall water splitting and the ideal electrocatalytic activity can be maintained for more than 50 h at a current density of 10 mA cm−2. The structural analysis unveils that the strong interaction between FeCo PBAs host and PtCo alloy resulting in charge redistribution and ultimately lead to high electrocatalytic activity and stability of PtCo–FeCo PBAs for both HER and OER.

Smart manufacturing and sustainability: a bibliometric analysis

PurposeDuring the past decade, the necessity to integrate manufacturing and sustainability has increased mainly to reduce the adverse effect on the manufacturing industry, transforming traditional manufacturing into smart manufacturing by adopting the latest manufacturing technology as part of the Industry 4.0 revolution. Smart manufacturing has piqued the interest of both academics and industry. Manufacturing is a foundation of products and services required for human health, safety, and well-being in modern society and from an organizational standpoint. This paper uses bibliometric analysis better to understand the relationship between smart manufacturing and sustainability scholarship and provide an up-to-date account of current industry practices.Design/methodology/approachThis paper used the bibliometric analysis method to analyze and draw conclusions from 839 articles retrieved from the Scopus database from 1994 to February 2022. The methodology is divided into four steps: data collection, analysis, visualization, and interpretation. The current study aims to comprehend smart manufacturing and sustainability scholarship using the bibliometric R-package and VOSviewer software.FindingsThe study provides fascinating insights that may assist scholars, industry professionals, and top management in conceptualizing smart manufacturing and sustainability in their organizations. The results show that the number of publications has significantly increased from 2015 onwards, reaching a maximum of 317 journals in 2021 with an increasing publication annual growth rate of 21.9%. The United Kingdom, India, the United States of America, Italy, France, Brazil and China were the most productive countries in terms of the total number of publications. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Journal of Cleaner Production, International Journal of Production Research, Production Planning and Control, Business Strategy and the Environment Technology in Society, and Benchmarking: An International Journal emerged as the top outlets.Research limitations/implicationsThe research in the area of smart manufacturing and sustainability is underpinned by this study, which aims to understand the trends in this field over the last two decades in terms of prolific authors, most influential journals, key themes, and the field's intellectual and social structure. However, according to the research, this field is still in its early stages of development. As a result, a more in-depth analysis is required to aid in the development of a better understanding of this new field.Originality/valueThe paper focuses on integrating smart manufacturing and sustainability through increased interest from 2015 onwards through the literature review. Specific policies should be formulated to improve the manufacturing sector's competence. Furthermore, these findings can guide researchers who want to delve deeper into smart manufacturing and sustainability.

Designing and ERP System: A Sustainability Approach

Technology has grown up massively, which is numerous aspects. Whether the system is limited or open source, had to adapt to certain circumstances. For instance, decades ago, people mainly used to have a paper to work on reporting or to make notes. These days, people started to migrate the work stuff into digitalization. Furthermore, environmental pollution has been triggered by emissions from vehicles. Moreover, due to a lack of knowledge and resources to solve this issue, the manufacturing process does not apply the sustainability process. This matter has led to an impenetrable environmental issue in the manufacturing area for years. Therefore, developing a sales module dashboard system that is configured on Sales Order (SO) transactions and customer data could assist the problem-solving process. The reason for this matter is to highlight the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) at the sustainability that has been added by the open-source Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) System and display the indicator of data visualization application. Furthermore, the development of the ERP system is aligned with the purpose of the Quickstart methodology that was applied in this research. To sum up, the sales module dashboard system is designed to assist the new user in this implementation in classifying the material, process, or products that require consideration to be maintained. Moreover, to reduce the number of raw materials or shipment processes that did not apply the eco-friendliness

Collaborative robots’ assembly system in the manufacturing area, assembly system 4.0

Collaborative robots’ assembly system in the manufacturing area, assembly system 4.0

Advance in barnacle cement with high underwater adhesion

AbstractAdhesives play an important role in the areas of biomedicine and engineering manufacture. Barnacle cement is a polyprotein complex secreted by barnacle, which can bind with various kinds of underwater substances; therefore, becoming a hotspot of new bionic adhesive materials because of its superior adhesion. The low solubility and complicated secretion process of barnacle cement hinder current understanding of its components, physicochemical properties, synthetic process, and so forth. This review mainly summarizes the latest research advances and applicable potentials of barnacle cement characterized by rapid adhesion, uneasy degradation, polymerized curing in an underwater environment, and so forth, and provides reference for both research and development of bioinspired synthetic wet adhesives.

DTUAV: a novel cloud–based digital twin system for unmanned aerial vehicles

This paper is concerned with the first work on the integration of digital twin (DT), 5G, cloud platform, and virtual reality (VR) technologies for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) autonomy development. DT focuses on connecting the virtual and physical world as an emerging strategic technology. Initially, it was implemented through mirror models of physical objects to realize the monitoring of their whole life cycle in the manufacturing area. In recent years, DT technologies have been applied in different fields, and some typical DT solutions have been proposed to solve complex system problems. In this paper, we study the problem of how to combine the DT and other emerging technologies for UAV autonomy development and supervision, aiming to propose a basic DT framework to integrate DT and UAVs as reference rules for building DT systems, which includes four parts, that is, Virtual Space, Real Space, Service Center, and Data and Model Processing Center. Based on the proposed basic DT framework, a cloud-based DT system is then further constructed in which cloud platform, 5G, and VR are integrated seamlessly. The running and implementation processes of each subsystem are introduced in detail. Multiple experiments are conducted to verify the usefulness of proposed DT system, that is, real-time system monitoring and cloud processing, VR connection, human–robot interaction through VR technology, and so on. The experimental results show that the proposed DTUAV system can be used in the interaction of virtual and physical systems, remote supervision, intelligence integration of swarm of unmanned vehicles, and so on. The development in our work introduces the DT into unmanned system applications and can promote relevant research in this direction. All implementation codes of the system will be shared in https://github.com/DTUAV .

Vibration-assisted printing of highly viscous food

The manufacturing of engineered foods is a fast growing area of additive manufacturing; however, the majority of demonstrated approaches have been limited to simple homogeneous food materials. While the direct-write printing of food pastes and gels allows for a variety of food formulations, it often relies on material modifications (e.g., balancing gelling properties and lowering viscosity) to enable extrusion. This food material modification happens through the use of diluents and additives at the expense of nutritional content and texture, leading to printing materials that lag the typical properties of traditionally manufactured foods. Vibration-Assisted Printing (VAP) is a modified direct-write approach that is capable of printing high-viscosity materials akin to common foods. Here, we explore the application of VAP to the additive manufacture of food by printing two high-viscosity dough materials; a model dough and a low-fat, high-fiber, high-protein lentil fiber formulation. VAP allows faster fabrication (print speed of 67 mm/s) than conventional food printing technology, does not require material modification, and achieves high geometric precision using a 500 μm diameter nozzle.

Evolving ATMP regulations in the EU & UK, & the role of the Qualified Person

David Caulfield is currently Assistant Director of Pharmacy – Quality Assurance at Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Trust, he has spent his career working in the NHS, briefly in clinical pharmacy roles and latterly in production and quality assurance roles. David is passionate about delivering high quality care and with a love for science and innovation he was drawn to the field of advanced therapies. David passed his Qualified Person VIVA in 2016 and has been an operational Qualified Person across numerous dosage forms since then. He is now a Qualified Person Assessor on behalf of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, and is passionate in supporting candidates within the NHS and industry in their own QP journeys, including lecturing at The University of Manchester where he did his original undergraduate degree. He has a unique perspective of the disruption that can face the NHS in adopting these exciting therapies, but also an understanding of the extremely complicated and highly regulated area of manufacture, David now assists industry in the shaping the design of the next generation of ATMPs to optimise adoption, maximising the incredible promise many of these therapies offer.

Life cycle engineering and sustainable manufacturing for net-zero targets and environmental sustainability

Life cycle engineering of new products and technologies must consider not just the single product and product life cycle, but also the foreseeable growth in market volume that results from increases in population and affluence, in order to allow the associated total environmental impact to be taken into account during the product development. The emphasis should not only be on eco-efficiency but also in eco-effectiveness. In the context, eco-effectiveness provides the target (e.g., 2050 targets), while ecoefficiency provides a progressive pathway to get there. The main aim of this special issue is to create a platform for researchers around the world in the area of Life Cycle Engineering and Sustainable Manufacturing for achieving net-zero targets and environmental sustainability.

Optimal Solution to the Two-Stage Hybrid Flow Shop Scheduling Problem with Removal and Transportation Times

The two-stage hybrid flow shop scheduling problem with removal and transportation times is addressed in this paper. The maximum completion time is the objective function to be minimized. This scheduling problem is modeling real-life situations encountered in manufacturing and industrial areas. On the other hand, the studied problem is a challenging one from a theoretical point of view since it is NP-Hard in a strong sense. In addition, the problem is symmetric in the following sense. Scheduling from the second stage to the first provides the same optimal solution as the studied problem. This propriety allows extending all the proposed procedures to the symmetric problem in order to improve the quality of the obtained solution. Based on the existing literature and to the best of our knowledge, this study is the first one addressing the removal time and the transportation time in the hybrid flow shop environment simultaneously. In order to solve the studied problem optimally, a heuristic composed of two phases is proposed, and a new family of lower bounds is developed. In addition, an exact Branch and Bound algorithm is presented to solve the hard test problems. These hard instances are unsolved by the proposed heuristic. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed procedures, an extensive experimental study is carried out over benchmark test problems with a size of up to 200 jobs. The obtained computational results provide strong evidence that the presented procedures are very effective since 90% of test problems are solved optimally within a moderate time of 47.44 s. Furthermore, the unsolved test problems present a relative gap of only 2.4%.

Raman Microscopic Analysis of Dry-Surface Biofilms on Clinically Relevant Materials.

Moist/hydrated biofilms have been well-studied in the medical area, and their association with infections is widely recognized. In contrast, dry-surface biofilms (DSBs) on environmental surfaces in healthcare settings have received less attention. DSBs have been shown to be widespread on commonly used items in hospitals and to harbor bacterial pathogens that are known to cause healthcare-acquired infections (HAI). DSBs cannot be detected by routine surface swabbing or contact plates, and studies have shown DSBs to be less susceptible to cleaning/disinfection products. As DSBs are increasingly reported in the medical field, and there is a likelihood they also occur in food production and manufacturing areas, there is a growing demand for the rapid in situ detection of DSBs and the identification of pathogens within DSBs. Raman microspectroscopy allows users to obtain spatially resolved information about the chemical composition of biofilms, and to identify microbial species. In this study, we investigated Staphylococcus aureus mono-species DSB on polyvinylchloride blanks and stainless steel coupons, and dual-species (S. aureus/Bacillus licheniformis) DSB on steel coupons. We demonstrated that Raman microspectroscopy is not only suitable for identifying specific species, but it also enables the differentiation of vegetative cells from their sporulated form. Our findings provide the first step towards the rapid identification and characterization of the distribution and composition of DSBs on different surface areas.

Проектирование схемы системы поддержки принятия решений на основе онтологии перекомпонуемого производства

The purpose of the work is to design a scheme of the DSS of a recomposable manufacturing using an ontological approach and mathematical modeling. The decomposition of the production process in the recomposed manufacturing is carried out, the main influencing factors are identified. The conceptual scheme and hierarchy of classes of the constructed ontology of the subject area are given. In order to take into account the priority of influencing factors and identify the controlling influences affecting the speed of reconfiguration of the recomposed manufacturing, the Ishikawa cause-and-effect diagram was developed. A formalized description of the process of choosing the optimal way to reconfigure the system is proposed. A DSS scheme for the reconfigurable manufacturing has been developed, based on the consideration of temporal and spatial factors of the reconfiguration. A recomposition time structure is proposed, which allows optimizing several factors at the same time. An example of optimizing the recomposition time of a recomposable manufacturing area using the Bellman dynamic programming method and graph theory is demonstrated.