Digital Manufacturing Environment Research Articles

Cyber‐physical‐based welding systems: Components and implementation strategies

AbstractThe conditions for a feasible Cyber‐Physical System (CPS) in a welding environment are explored for the manufacturing technology components while also focusing on machine learning tools. Increasing manufacturing efficiency means making digitalisation feasible for all technologies, including welding, given today's challenges. Early versions of manufacturing management, such as Computer Integrated Manufacturing, are already leading the way, and one of the latest milestones in these developments is CPS. It can be shown that the digital migration of specific sub‐domains (e.g. visual inspection of the weld seam during quality assurance) is significantly more challenging and unimaginable without artificial intelligence applications. However, it is also true that the full integration needed to achieve autonomous manufacturing has yet to be fully achieved, although there is a strong demand in the industry for these CPS to work. In some areas, the digital switchover has already been prepared. However, the interconnection of these subsystems requires modern information systems or, in the case of existing ones, their upgrading to the appropriate level. This research area is set to be addressed comprehensively by initiating several projects. In the initial phase, the aim is to develop an architecture that integrates the various Information Technology applications. In this work, the digital manufacturing environment under CPS is studied, the relevant components are explored, the conditions for the transition from traditional to CPS‐based manufacturing are examined and examples of planned further specific studies on the components are listed.

Challenges and Opportunities in Industry 4.0 for Mechatronics, Artificial Intelligence and Cybernetics

Industry 4.0 has risen as an integrated digital manufacturing environment, and it has created a novel research perspective that has thrust research to interdisciplinarity and exploitation of ICT advances. This work presents and discusses the main aspects of Industry 4.0 and how intelligence can be embedded in manufacturing to create the smart factory. It briefly describes the main components of Industry 4.0, and it focuses on the security challenges that the fully interconnected ecosystem of Industry 4.0 has to meet and the threats for each component. Preserving security has a crucial role in Industry 4.0, and it is vital for its existence, so the main research directions on how to ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the information shared among the Industry 4.0 components are presented. Another view is in light of the security issues that come as a result of enabling new technologies.

Comprehensive identification of aircraft coordination feature based on complete importance modeling and its engineering application

PurposeCoordination feature (CF) is the information carrier in dimension and shape transfer process in aircraft manufacturing. The change of its geometric size, shape, position or other attributes would affect the consistency of accumulated errors between two or more assemblies. To identify these “key characteristics” that have a close relationship with the assembly precision, a comprehensive method was developed under digital manufacturing environment, which was based on importance calculation. The multi-hierarchy and multi-station assembly process of aircraft products were also taken into consideration.Design/methodology/approachFirst, the interaction and evaluation relationship between components at different manufacturing stages was decomposed with a hierarchical net. Second, to meet coordination accuracy requirements, with the integrated application of Taguchi quality loss function, accuracy principal and error correction coefficient H, the quality loss between target features and candidate features at adjacent assembly hierarchies were calculated, which was based on their precision variation. Third, the influence degree and affected degree of the features were calculated with DEMATEL (decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory) method, and the concepts of centrality degree index and cause degree index were proposed for calculating the complete importance degree to eventually identify the CFs.FindingsBased on the proposed methodology, CFs, affecting the skin profile and the flush coordination accuracy, were successfully identified at different assembly hierarchies to a certain type of wing flap component.Originality/valueBenefit results for the engineering application showed that the deviation of skin profile was more accurate than before, and the tolerance was also closer to the centerline of required assembly precision range. Moreover, the stability in the assembly process was increased by 26.9 per cent, which could bring a higher assembly quality and an enhancement on aircraft’s flight performance.

Study on Risk of Logistics and Transport in Digital Manufacturing Environment

For logistics and transport in digital manufacturing environment security status quo, study and proposed transportation security risk evaluation index system; using whitening weight function design specific transportation security risk assessment model; verified by an example, that the evaluation method is more scientific and accurate comprehensive evaluation transportation security situation, with the characteristics of the feasibility and operability.

An integration methodology for automated recurring cost prediction using digital manufacturing technology

The need to account for the effect of design decisions on manufacture and the impact of manufacturing cost on the life cycle cost of any product are well established. In this context, digital design and manufacturing solutions have to be further developed to facilitate and automate the integration of cost as one of the major driver in the product life cycle management. This article is to present an integration methodology for implementing cost estimation capability within a digital manufacturing environment. A digital manufacturing structure of knowledge databases are set out and the ontology of assembly and part costing that is consistent with the structure is provided. Although the methodology is currently used for recurring cost prediction, it can be well applied to other functional developments, such as process planning. A prototype tool is developed to integrate both assembly time cost and parts manufacturing costs within the same digital environment. An industrial example is used to validate this approach.

Construction of a computer-simulated mixed reality environment for virtual factory layout planning

To survive the cut-throat competition in the manufacturing industry, many companies have introduced digital manufacturing technology. Digital manufacturing technology not only shortens the product development cycle times but also improves the precision of engineering simulation. However, building the virtual objects needed for a digital manufacturing environment requires skilled human resources; it is also costly and time-consuming. A high precision environment with the similar resources is also needed for a high precision simulation. In this paper, we propose a method of constructing a mixed reality-based digital manufacturing environment. The method integrates real objects, such as real images, with the virtual objects of a virtual manufacturing system. This type of integration minimizes the cost of implementing virtual objects and enhances the user's sense of reality. We studied several methods and derived a general framework for the system. Finally, we developed our idea into a virtual factory layout planning system. To assign the pose and position of real objects in virtual space, we applied a circle-based tracking method which uses a safety sign instead of the planar-square-shaped marker generally used for registration. Furthermore, we developed the framework to encapsulate simulation data from legacy data and process data for visualization based on mixed reality.

Intelligent Assembly Time Analysis Using a Digital Knowledge-Based Approach

The implementation of effective time analysis methods fast and accurately in the era of digital manufacturing has become a significant challenge for aerospace manufacturers hoping to build and maintain a competitive advantage. This paper proposes a structure oriented, knowledge-based approach for intelligent time analysis of aircraft assembly processes within a digital manufacturing framework. A knowledge system is developed so that the design knowledge can be intelligently retrieved for implementing assembly time analysis automatically. A time estimation method based on MOST, is reviewed and employed. Knowledge capture, transfer and storage within the digital manufacturing environment are extensively discussed. Configured plantypes, GUIs and functional modules are designed and developed for the automated time analysis. An exemplar study using an aircraft panel assembly from a regional jet is also presented. Although the method currently focuses on aircraft assembly, it can also be well utilized in other industry sectors, such as transportation, automobile and shipbuilding. The main contribution of the work is to present a methodology that facilitates the integration of time analysis with design and manufacturing using a digital manufacturing platform solution.