Industrial Production Line Research Articles

Action research of lean 4.0 application to the maintenance of hydraulic systems in steel industry

PurposeMaintenance represents an indispensable role in the productive sector of the steel industry. The increasing use of operating with a high level of precision makes hydraulic systems one of the issues that require a high level of attention. This study aims to explore an empirical investigation for decreasing the occurrences of corrective maintenance of hydraulic systems in the context of Lean 4.0.Design/methodology/approachThe maintenance model is developed based on action-research methodology through an empirical investigation, with nine stages. This approach aims to build a scenario to analyze and interpret the occurrences, seeking to implement and evaluate the actions to be performed. The undertaken initiatives demonstrate that this approach can be applied to optimize the maintenance of an organization.FindingsThe main contribution of this paper is to demonstrate that the applied method allows the overviewing results, with a qualitative approach concerning the maintenance actions and management processes to be considered, allowing a holistic understanding and contributing to the current literature. The results also indicated that Lean 4.0 has direct and mediating effects on maintenance performance.Originality/valueThis research intends to propose an evaluation framework with an interdimensional linkage between action research methodology and Lean 4.0, to explore an empirical investigation and contributing to understanding the actions to reduce the occurrences of hydraulic systems corrective maintenance in a production line in the steel industry.

Design and Optimization of Production Line Layout Using Material Flows

Businesses are constantly trying to improve their production by looking for bottlenecks to improve their market position. The introduction and innovation of automated production lines is necessary for both labor shortages and productivity and quality reasons. A combination of precision, fluidity, and speed, that is the basic definition of a production line. With the advent of new technologies, production lines have also begun to continuously speed up and innovate. Innovation is the subject of this paper, where the problem of designing a completely new layout for a new production line in the food industry has been addressed. The aim of this paper was to create a design for the optimal layout of the production line in preselected production areas. Optimal use of the space allocated for production is very important for every company today.

Design and simulation of remote monitoring of the intelligent automatic control system in the production line

<p><span lang="EN-US">In this research, we will introduce implementation requirements of a remote wireless control and monitoring unit of industrial production lines automatically controlled using programmable logic controller (PLC). PLC is capable of collecting different types of data and converting them into electrical signals that can be controlled by the industrial network using supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. SCADA will be installed in the main server inside the control unit. The PLC will be used as a decision maker of the received signals for the industrial lines that comes from a group of detectors (sensors/transducers). The output of the PLC processor will trigger the engines, according to a specific industrial process management program. The processed data could be transferred through wireless or wired method. The wireless approach will be shown in this study, along with two other ways to implement it.</span></p>

Hexad robot: A 6-dof parallel PnP robot to accommodate antagonistic rotational capability and structural complexity

This paper proposed a new structure of full-mobility parallel robot, which combined the advantages of high-rotational capabilities and structural simplification, for high-speed operations of material handling. The proposed robot structure integrates lightweight and simple linkages with a relatively complex (i.e., compared to the single platform with limited rotational capability) articulated mechanism or gear train as wrist mechanism to amplify the end-effector rotations, but without significantly increased structural complexity of gearbox, compared to the existing designs. Parametric modeling are carried out for position analysis, workspace evaluation, singularity identification and dynamic characterization to qualify the proposed robot. Moreover, the structure of the proximal links are designed with topology optimization to ensure design requirements of stiffness and low inertia. The performance evaluation shows that the proposed robot can be of high potential application in the industrial production line.

Constructing flame retardant microspheres for safe and stable poly (ethylene oxide) based All-Solid-State batteries at high voltage

The development of all-solid-state polymer electrolytes (ASSPE) based on poly (ethylene oxide) (PEO) is facing a series of challenges, such as poor ionic conductivity, low Li+ transference number, flammability, and the limited electrochemical windows of 4 V. Herein, we report our recent effort to meet these challenges by introducing flame retardant microspheres (TH) into PEO-based ASSPE to form stable solid cathode electrolyte interface (CEI) films and enhance safety performance. TH is constructed by reacting tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBA) with hexachlorocyclotriphosphazene (HCCP). With the presence of only 5 wt% TH, the LiNi0.8Mn0.1Co0.1O2 (NCM811)//Li cell achieves a high capacity retention rate of 77.61 % after 100 cycles at the cutoff voltage of 4.3 V and 0.5C, and achieves a capacity retention of 75.7 % at the voltage range of 3–4.5 V after 50 cycles at 0.5C. In addition, the PEO-based ASSPE with TH (TH-PEO/PE) shows excellent flame retardancy, which endows the NCM811//Li pouch cell with good resistance to fire and mechanical abuse. This simple process is compatible with the existing production lines in the battery industry, which exhibits enormous promise in manufacturing commercialized all-solid-state lithium metal batteries (ASSLMBs) with high energy density and safety capabilities.

Metal parçaların yüzey kusurlarını tespit için k-dedektörü ile küçük nesne tespit yöntemi

In the process of its development, intelligent manufacturing often focuses on production flexibility, client customization, and quality control, all of which are required for the manufacture of powder-based metallurgy. In particular, the identification and categorization of defects are crucial steps in the production processes involved in powder-based metallurgy. Intelligent strategies to detect faults in metal parts continue to be a challenge in automated industrial production lines. These techniques have been a particular concern for microscopic metal component producers for a long time. Due to its precision and speed, the YOLOv4 approach has been widely used for object detection. On the other hand, the identification of tiny targets, particularly imperfections on the surface of metal parts, continues to present a number of obstacles and difficulties. To increase the overall performance of detection, this research provided a technique for the detection of tiny objects based on YOLOv4 for such objects. To increase the effectiveness of the detection process, this involves expanding the size of the k detector while simultaneously eliminating unnecessary branches of the YOLO head network. Experiments have shown that the KD-YOLO model performs better than its predecessors, YOLOv4, YOLOv5, and PP-YOLO, in terms of the total number of parameters, classification accuracy and detection precision.

Optimization of the pick-and-place sequence of a bimanual collaborative robot in an industrial production line

AbstractThis paper focuses on optimising pick-and-place tasks performed by a dual-arm collaborative robot in a specific shoe manufacturing industry environment. The robot must identify the pieces of a shoe placed on a tray, pick them up, and place them in a shoe mold for further processing. The shoe pieces arrive on the tray in random positions and angles and can be picked up in a different order. Optimising these tasks could increase the assembly speed of each unit and improve shoe production. To achieve this goal, a mathematical model based on binary integer linear programming (BILP) has been developed. This model determines the optimal sequence for picking and placing the shoe pieces in the mold, thus minimising the time required for picking and decision-making. The effectiveness of this approach has been tested using two 3-piece unit shoe models: one for training and another for validation. These models encompass a total of 500 trays. An analysis of the results reveals that BILP offers advantages for task motion planning in complex environments with multiple trajectories and the potential for collisions between arms. The model’s generalizability to shoes with n assembly pieces further confirms its robustness for various piece counts.

The use of decision trees to identify the causes of failures in a medical enterprise - a case study

The large amount of historical data contains information about events that occur along an industrial production line. Having a set of historical data about emergency events and their causes makes it possible to automate decision-making processes based on a data-driven approach. Data-driven approaches, particularly machine learning (ML), are attracting attention. Due to its visualization and interpretability characteristics, the decision tree (DT) model is an important ML tool for decision analysis. This paper aims to present the possibility of using DT to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of maintenance activities by identifying the probable cause of failure based on historical data. Based on the research conducted, we have shown that the use of machine learning techniques can improve the accuracy of decisions regarding the type of maintenance work that should be carried out to efficiently and effectively remove failures and reduce losses caused by machine downtime.

Self-Supervised Masked Convolutional Transformer Block for Anomaly Detection.

Anomaly detection has recently gained increasing attention in the field of computer vision, likely due to its broad set of applications ranging from product fault detection on industrial production lines and impending event detection in video surveillance to finding lesions in medical scans. Regardless of the domain, anomaly detection is typically framed as a one-class classification task, where the learning is conducted on normal examples only. An entire family of successful anomaly detection methods is based on learning to reconstruct masked normal inputs (e.g. patches, future frames, etc.) and exerting the magnitude of the reconstruction error as an indicator for the abnormality level. Unlike other reconstruction-based methods, we present a novel self-supervised masked convolutional transformer block (SSMCTB) that comprises the reconstruction-based functionality at a core architectural level. The proposed self-supervised block is extremely flexible, enabling information masking at any layer of a neural network and being compatible with a wide range of neural architectures. In this work, we extend our previous self-supervised predictive convolutional attentive block (SSPCAB) with a 3D masked convolutional layer, a transformer for channel-wise attention, as well as a novel self-supervised objective based on Huber loss. Furthermore, we show that our block is applicable to a wider variety of tasks, adding anomaly detection in medical images and thermal videos to the previously considered tasks based on RGB images and surveillance videos. We exhibit the generality and flexibility of SSMCTB by integrating it into multiple state-of-the-art neural models for anomaly detection, bringing forth empirical results that confirm considerable performance improvements on five benchmarks: MVTec AD, BRATS, Avenue, ShanghaiTech, and Thermal Rare Event.

Efficient Fully Textured Perovskite Silicon Tandems with Thermally Evaporated Hole Transporting Materials

Fully textured perovskite silicon tandem solar cells effectively minimize the reflection losses and are compatible with industrial silicon production lines. To facilitate scalability and industrial deployment of perovskite silicon tandems...

Automated Angle Detection for Industrial Production Lines Using Combined Image Processing Techniques

Automated Angle Detection for Industrial Production Lines Using Combined Image Processing Techniques

PERAN PONDOK PESANTREN AL MUTTAQIN DALAM PEMBENTUKAN AKHLAK SANTRI DI ERA INDUSTRI 4.0

Role means something that is played or carried out. A role is defined as an activity that is played or performed by someone who has a position or social status in the organization. Morals mean attitudes, customs, habits or systems of behavior, habits that are common in a person's personality without any coercion that occurs because of themselves. The industrial era 4.0 is an effort to transform towards improvement by integrating the online world and production lines in industry, where all production processes run with the internet as the main support. This research focuses on: the role of Islamic boarding schools in the formation of santri morals, inhibiting and supporting factors in the formation of santri morals in the industrial era 4.0? With the aim: To find out the role of the Islamic boarding school, Al Muttaqin Bugul Lor Islamic Boarding School, Pasuruan City in the formation of santri morals. To find out the inhibiting and supporting factors for santri morals at the Al Muttaqin Bugul Lor Islamic Boarding School, Pasuruan City in the industrial era 4.0. In this research, researchers use a qualitative approach. Qualitative research is research that aims to describe phenomena or events that are considered unique, actual and relevant to certain scientific disciplines. In this research, theory is only used as an analytical tool in explaining this phenomenon. Meanwhile, the type of research used in this research is descriptive. This research is divided into three stages, namely: data collection, identifying data, final stage of research.

Multi-criterion selection of wolf mixers

The quality of the finished sausage product is affected not only by the quality of raw materials, but also by the process of grinding the meat and obtaining high-quality minced meat. Planning production lines in the food industry is associated with difficulties due to the need for an informed choice of the right equipment. Therefore, the purpose of this work is to increase the technological efficiency of meat processing by determining the rational type of mixer-mixer by the method of multi-criteria analysis of the equipment. On the market, stirrers are available in different capacities with different diameters of the grids of the stirrers and the capacity of the working chambers of the stirrers. For the initial evaluation of the technical perfection of the equipment according to its energy intensity, the criterion of throughput energy intensity and the energy intensity of the mixing process were selected. To find effective options, the principle of dominance according to the Pareto method was applied. For the final evaluation of the machines in the multi-criteria analysis, the method of the distance to the target according to the coefficients of energy and metal capacity was used. The obtained values of the throughput energy capacity of the analyzed agitators vary from 0,098 to 0,415 kW/mm, while the energy capacity of the mixing process varies from 0,00314 to 0,01375 kW/l. The value of the energy density coefficient varies from 0,0031 to 0,011 (kWh)/kg, while the metal density coefficient varies from 0,127 to 0,675 (kg·h)/kg. The obtained data can be used in the design calculations of similar equipment. Combo Grind 1500/250 by GEA turned out to be the closest to the ideal version. This machine has a special design, which distinguishes it from other "classical" schemes of execution of mixers.

Inverted pyramid structures fabricated on monocrystalline silicon surface with a NaOH solution

Low-cost aqueous alkaline etching has been widely adopted for monocrystalline silicon surface texturing in current industrial silicon solar cells. However, conventional alkaline etching can only prepare upright pyramid structures on mono-crystalline silicon surfaces. This study demonstrates for the first time the use of ethylene glycol butyl ether (EGBE) to regulate aqueous anisotropic alkaline etching and prepare inverted pyramid structures on monocrystalline silicon surfaces. Acidic metal-catalyzed etching solutions are not the best choice for monocrystalline silicon due to their inherent disadvantages, such as noble metal pollution and relatively high costs. The one-step method to produce the inverted pyramid structures by using alkaline etch with EGBE additive is simple and inexpensive, does not generate noble metal pollution, and especially compatible with current industrial silicon solar cell production lines. With the use of a sodium hydroxide (NaOH) solution containing a low-cost additive, inverted pyramid structures can be prepared on mono-crystalline silicon surface in a short time. This method is suitable for various types of silicon wafers and has great potential for industrial solar cell applications.

Tuning Fatty Acid Profile and Yield in Pichia pastoris.

Fatty acids have been supplied for diverse non-food, industrial applications from plant oils and animal fats for many decades. Due to the massively increasing world population demanding a nutritious diet and the thrive to provide feedstocks for industrial production lines in a sustainable way, i.e., independent from food supply chains, alternative fatty acid sources have massively gained in importance. Carbohydrate-rich side-streams of agricultural production, e.g., molasses, lignocellulosic waste, glycerol from biodiesel production, and even CO2, are considered and employed as carbon sources for the fermentative accumulation of fatty acids in selected microbial hosts. While certain fatty acid species are readily accumulated in native microbial metabolic routes, other fatty acid species are scarce, and host strains need to be metabolically engineered for their high-level production. We report the metabolic engineering of Pichia pastoris to produce palmitoleic acid from glucose and discuss the beneficial and detrimental engineering steps in detail. Fatty acid secretion was achieved through the deletion of fatty acyl-CoA synthetases and overexpression of the truncated E. coli thioesterase 'TesA. The best strains secreted >1 g/L free fatty acids into the culture medium. Additionally, the introduction of C16-specific ∆9-desaturases and fatty acid synthases, coupled with improved cultivation conditions, increased the palmitoleic acid content from 5.5% to 22%.

Grain‐growth Inhibitor with Three‐section‐sintering for Highly Dispersed Single‐crystal NCM90 Cubes

AbstractSingle crystallization of LiNixCoyMn1‐x‐yO2(NCM) is currently an effective strategy to improve the cycling life of NCM cathode, owing to the reduced surface area and enhanced mechanical strength, but the application of single crystal NCM(SC‐NCM) is being hindered by severe particle agglomeration and poor C‐rate performance. Here, a strategy of three‐section‐sintering(TSS) with the presence of grain‐growth inhibitor was proposed, in which, the TSS includes three sections of phase‐formation, grain‐growth and phase‐preservation. While, the addition of MoO3 inhibits the grain growth and restrains the particle agglomeration. With the help of TSS and 1 mol % of MoO3, highly dispersed surface Mo‐doped SC‐NCM(MSC‐NCM) cubes are obtained with the average diameter of 1.3 μm. Benefiting from the surface Mo‐doping and the reduced surface energy, the Li+‐migration preferred (1 0 4) crystalline facet is exposed as the dominant plane in MSC‐NCM cubes, because of which, C‐rate performance is significantly improved compared with the regular SC‐NCM. Furthermore, this preparation strategy is compatible well with the current industrial production line, providing an easy way for the large‐scale production of SC‐NCM.

Grain-growth Inhibitor with Three-section-sintering for Highly Dispersed Single-crystal NCM90 Cubes.

Single crystallization of LiNix Coy Mn1-x-y O2 (NCM) is currently an effective strategy to improve the cycling life of NCM cathode, owing to the reduced surface area and enhanced mechanical strength, but the application of single crystal NCM(SC-NCM) is being hindered by severe particle agglomeration and poor C-rate performance. Here, a strategy of three-section-sintering(TSS) with the presence of grain-growth inhibitor was proposed, in which, the TSS includes three sections of phase-formation, grain-growth and phase-preservation. While, the addition of MoO3 inhibits the grain growth and restrains the particle agglomeration. With the help of TSS and 1 mol % of MoO3 , highly dispersed surface Mo-doped SC-NCM(MSC-NCM) cubes are obtained with the average diameter of 1.3 μm. Benefiting from the surface Mo-doping and the reduced surface energy, the Li+ -migration preferred (1 0 4) crystalline facet is exposed as the dominant plane in MSC-NCM cubes, because of which, C-rate performance is significantly improved compared with the regular SC-NCM. Furthermore, this preparation strategy is compatible well with the current industrial production line, providing an easy way for the large-scale production of SC-NCM.

UHF Textronic RFID Transponder with Bead-Shaped Microelectronic Module

The idea of novel antennas and matching circuits, developed for radio frequency identification (RFID) passive transponders, and made on textile substrates, is presented in this paper. By manufacturing an RFID transponder by the means used in every clothing factory, we developed the concept of RFIDtex tags, which, as textronic devices, make a new significant contribution to the Internet of Textile Things (IoTT). The main feature of the device consists of the use of an uncommon inductively coupled system as the antenna feed element. The antenna is sewn/embroidered with a conductive thread, and the microelectronic module with an RFID chip is made in the form of a bead, using standard electronic technology. Finally, the construction of the RFIDtex tag is developed for easy implementation in production lines in the garment industry. The proposed inductive coupling scheme has not been considered anywhere, so far. The developed transponder is dedicated to operating in RFID systems of the ultra-high frequency band (UHF). The numerical calculations confirmed by the experimental results clearly indicate that the proposed coupling system between the antenna and the microelectronic module works properly and the RFIDtex device can operate correctly within a distance of several meters. The proposed design is based on the authors’ patent on the textronic RFID transponder (patent no PL 231291 B1).

STUDY OF THE INFLUENCE OF TOOL GEOMETRY AND CUTTING MODES ON THE ACCURACY OF PROCESSING PARTS OBTAINED BY FDM PRINTING

FDM printing (rapid prototyping) is a production process during which you can quickly obtain parts with high geometric complexity, given dimensions and with low energy consumption. From the early stages, 3D printing was identified as a method of rapid prototyping of parts that have a high level of complexity and their manufacture by traditional methods (for example, mechanical processing on CNC machines) is impossible. Despite the advantages that additive manufacturing offers, it has not yet been incorporated into industrial mass production lines as an alternative to traditional technologies, due to the long manufacturing time of parts and the lack of repeatability. In some cases this may not be a serious problem, but in some industrial applications where high precision parts are required, there are limitations due to the surface roughness of the outer layer and the accuracy requirements. To eliminate these shortcomings, an additional processing process is required. The purpose of this study is to determine the most optimal parameters of the cutting tool and cutting modes (spindle rotation frequency, feed rate, depth of cut, diameter of the end mill, geometric parameters of the cutting edge) for mechanical processing of parts obtained by FDM printing from CoPET (PETg) plastic in order to obtain the specified parameters accuracy and surface roughness. The article describes the study of the work of four types of end mills, which differ in the material of the cutting part, geometry, number of cutting teeth, coating. A rectangular prism printed from CoPET plastic, without internal voids, 100% filling, was selected as a blank. Processing was carried out on a MIKRON WF-2 vertical milling machine. For end mills, the cutting process was investigated with two different strategies: milling of a closed groove over the entire working width of the mill; milling of an open groove with the side surface of the cutter. The suitability for effective processing of each type of tool is evaluated. Results were recorded and evaluated using an optical electron microscope.

Dynamic analysis and sliding mode control method of 5-DOF manipulator

Background The five degree of freedom (5-DOF) manipulator greatly improves the machining efficiency and accuracy because of its high flexibility. They see wide application in various automation fields. The dynamic analysis and modeling of manipulators is of great significance to improve the working accuracy of a manipulator. Methods For the robot task of sheet metal bending, a 5-DOF manipulator based on sliding mode control strategy is designed in this paper. Firstly, the dynamics of the 5-DOF manipulator is analyzed and the dynamic equation is established. Secondly, based on the principle of sliding mode control, a proportional integral (PI) sliding mode control method for 5-DOF manipulator based on nominal model is proposed. PI sliding mode control method has the advantages of solving system deviation problem, eliminating steady-state error, strong adaptability, good robustness, sliding mode design and easy implementation. Finally, the sliding mode control simulation experiment of 5-DOF manipulator is carried out to verify its stability. Results The 5-DOF manipulator with PI sliding mode control has a good control effect by overcoming the influence of modeling error due to its strong robustness, and effectively realizes good control stability. Conclusions The experimental results show that the 5-DOF manipulator has good response speed and stability. The results also suggest that the manipulator can be widely used in complex scenarios such as medical surgery or industrial production line with high safety requirements.