Shop Floor Level Research Articles

A method and tool for Sustainability-driven Computer-Aided Process Planning with user-tuneable optimization

This paper introduces the methodology framework, and a cloud-based Sustainability-driven Computer-Aided Process Planning (s-CAPP) tool aimed at optimizing efficiency and sustainability aspects of manufacturing operations at shopfloor level, considering a user-tailored optimization goal function. Geometric data extracted from 3D models of the parts to be produced are coupled with process parameters and resource consumption data from the manufacturing equipment in order to analyze the metrics for productivity and sustainability accordingly. By leveraging comprehensive data resources in manufacturing, s-CAPP allows companies to balance their production plans between productivity and sustainability through a user-friendly interface. Its application in a furniture manufacturing case study demonstrates its potential for process planning by prioritizing between productivity or sustainability, showcasing promising results. The presented s-CAPP implementation assists the production managers in taking decisions regarding sustainability and productivity in the production of batches through the prompting of intuitive visual results, impacting on both economic and environmental sides. Keywords: sustainability-driven manufacturing, process planning, cloud-based computing, furniture manufacturing, process simulation, data-driven manufacturing, feature extraction

Mitigation of human factors in aviation maintenance

Human factors during aircraft maintenance have a significant impact on aviation safety. Human factors analysis, therefore, is an essential aspect in aviation. The researchers have analyzed human factors in detail. yet, the existing studies are mostly reactive in nature. In the present study, incidents during aircraft maintenance related to human factors were investigated using the HFACS-ME classification system. Critical human factors and their latent conditions were identified and mapped. Identification of active and latent human factors enables proactive mitigation of weaknesses in the system thus ensuring maintenance safety. Interventions to mitigate human factors and improve the maintenance setup at the shop floor, management, and organization levels were formulated. The proposed model validated that past incidents could be effectively utilized as predictors to identify and mitigate active and latent human factors during aircraft maintenance by implementing proactive interventions.

Energy digital twins in smart manufacturing systems: A case study

Among core Industry 4.0 technologies, the Digital Twin represents a promising smart technology and tool that researchers are investigating to help improve energy efficiency at the shopfloor level by analyzing and optimizing energy consumption. Energy Digital Twins are a relatively new area of research, only gaining popularity in industry applications and academia recently. where a comprehensive literature review uncovered only one ‘true’ Energy Digital Twin application across published research to date. To address this research gap, an Energy Digital Twin for smart manufacturing systems was developed and evaluated in this study. In particular, the study focused on bidirectional parameter communication between the physical and the virtual part with the aim of optimizing the energy used in the manufacturing process. To address this research gap, the research objective is to create and evaluate an application of an energy optimizing Digital Twin for a Heating Tunnel. Following the definition of a Digital Twin, the research methodology and experimental setup have three major components: i) the Heating Tunnel as the physical object, ii) the digital counterpart constructed using Python to house the digital control logic and linear energy optimization feedback model, and iii) the connecting fabric, in form of a bidirectional OPC UA communication protocol. The optimization model ingests input parameters of setpoint temperature, power level, and targeted overshoot time, and after running the simulation, returns a calculated value of the required turn off temperature to the real-time heating process of the physical system. Results show that the Energy Digital Twin is effective at maintaining the maximum temperature range of the Heating Tunnel during the heating process, in addition to reducing the energy consumption and cost for all trial runs compared to the original process. Overall, the study successfully created and evaluated a functioning energy optimizing Digital Twin with bidirectional, automated feedback. The results of this research emphasize the potential impact of Energy Digital Twin applications in any manufacturing process and show the promise of future work in this realm of Energy Digital Twins.

An emerging ‘China-threat-corporatism’? CRRC’s acquisition of a German locomotive company and its impact on labour relations

The China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC) is presently the largest player in the global rolling stock industry and has increasingly expanded to mature markets. In 2019, CRRC acquired a German locomotive company, establishing a manufacturing foothold in the EU. This paper presents the findings of extensive field research on the impact of CRRC’s investment on industrial relations. Drawing on comparative capitalisms research and recent debates on the German model of industrial relations, we discuss key developments in the post-merger process. Our study reveals a continuity in industrial relations at the shop-floor level, characterized by stable co-determination practices. Nevertheless, the acquisition of the locomotive manufacturer has contributed to a new form of ‘China-threat-corporatism’, wherein trade unions and business associations have collaborated to advocate successfully for measures to protect the local rolling stock industry from Chinese competition.

Technological upgrading along global value chains: The case of automation and digital technologies in the automotive sector in South Africa

This article contributes to the growing literature on technological upgrading along global value chains, by focusing on the adoption of automation and digital technologies at different functional stages of the automotive value chain. It explores the constant tension that firms in emerging economies face between linking up to international trade and ensuring the upgrading of indigenous firms, which depends on the relationship between lead international firms’ operations and capabilities at the local level. Drawing on extensive qualitative research in South Africa, including 39 interviews and observations at the shopfloor level, this paper examines the determinants for automation and digital technologies adoption. The finding extends existing knowledge of technological upgrading along global value chains, by examining both final assemblers and lower-tier suppliers. Four production specific drivers are identified: volume, quality, material-led adoption, and ergonomics. This paper suggests policymakers should consider sector heterogeneity and specific sector-technology combinations when designing policies to sustain digitalization and production upgrade.

An approach to using a CNC machine digital shadow and cloud-based technologies at the machine shop floor level

An approach to using a CNC machine digital shadow and cloud-based technologies at the machine shop floor level

A novel indicator for sustainability in production planning using Center of Gravity-based assessment of Pareto fronts

In sustainable manufacturing, the comparison of different production processes has become increasingly important in recent years due to societal and political demands on companies to obtain a more sustainable business structure. At the shop floor level, production planning based on existing processes is usually approached through mathematical optimization, leading to a Pareto front under multiple conflicting criteria. The decision to exchange production processes then leads to the comparison and evaluation of different Pareto fronts. Here, analyzing the structure of Pareto fronts via performance indicators—such as hypervolume, Euclidean distances, etc.—are often the order of the day. However, respective indicators are often neither easy to communicate to decision-makers nor meaningful regarding economic and environmental impacts when processes are changed. Consequently, we propose a Center of Gravity-based indicator to handle these issues and analyze the efficacy of the proposed method through a bicriteria energy-efficient lot-sizing and scheduling numerical scenario analysis; the conflicting criteria under consideration are electricity costs and indirect emissions. Ultimately, we discuss the selected theoretical properties and approximation features of the proposed concept, and elaborate on the communicational benefits of the new tool.

Energy digital Twins in smart manufacturing Systems: A literature review

Rising costs and environmental impacts of energy consumption has risen in importance for consumers globally. Notably, high energy consumers like the manufacturing sectors are impacted more than ever, resulting in the urgent quest to cut their energy costs. A recent advancement in industry 4.0 technologies, the Digital Twin, offers a smart technology and tool that researchers are investigating to help reduce energy costs at the shopfloor level by analyzing and optimizing energy consumption. A literature review was conducted to investigate the current state of the art in the realm of Digital Twins in manufacturing with an energy focus. This is a relatively new research field only gaining popularity in applications and academia within the last five years. However, there is already promising research being conducted in this area. The results show that most Digital Twin publications technically fall under the term Digital Shadow or are not ‘true’ Digital Twins – mainly due to the lack of bi-directional data flow back to the physical asset from the virtual asset. There was only one publication that accurately fit the applied definition of Digital Twin to-date. Additionally, publications, if they provide the information at all, are using a variety of different types of energy meters to collect data or transferring that data from the physical to virtual asset with a universal communication protocol. It was also found that most papers are covering Energy Consumption Analysis over Monitoring and Optimization in their Digital Twin. This paper summarizes the analysis conducted from an in-depth review of a pool of criteria-met papers, while drawing conclusions and suggesting future research directions for researchers who want to investigate energy Digital Twins in the manufacturing domain.

Hybrid learning-based digital twin for manufacturing process: Modeling framework and implementation

Digital twin (DT) and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are powerful enablers for Industry 4.0 toward sustainable resilient manufacturing. Digital twins of machine tools and machining processes combine advanced digital techniques and production domain knowledge, facilitate the enhancement of agility, traceability, and resilience of production systems, and help machine tool builders achieve a paradigm shift from one-time products provision to on-going service delivery. However, the adaptability and accuracy of digital twins at the shopfloor level are restricted by heterogeneous data sources, modeling precision as well as uncertainties from dynamical industrial environments. This article proposes a novel modeling framework to address these inadequacies by in-depth integrating AI techniques and machine tool expertise using aggregated data along the product development process. A data processing procedure is constructed to contextualize metadata sources from the design, planning, manufacturing, and quality stages and link them into a digital thread. On this consistent data basis, a modeling pipeline is presented to incorporate production and machine tool prior knowledge into AI development pipeline, while considering the multi-fidelity nature of data sources in dynamic industrial circumstances. In terms of implementation, we first introduce our existing work for building digital twins of machine tool and manufacturing process. Within this infrastructure, we developed a hybrid learning-based digital twin for manufacturing process following proposed modeling framework and tested it in an external industrial project exemplarily for real-time workpiece quality monitoring. The result indicates that the proposed hybrid learning-based digital twin enables learning uncertainties of the interaction of machine tools and machining processes in real industrial environments, thus allows estimating and enhancing the modeling reliability, depending on the data quality and accessibility. Prospectively, it also contributes to the reparametrization of model parameters and to the adaptive process control.

The treacherous trade unionist: Paraschiva B. Ion and labour activism in the Romanian tobacco sector, 1920s to 1940s

ABSTRACT What did it mean to be a woman labour activist in a state-owned industry in Romania before 1945? In this article, I construct a political biography of Paraschiva B. Ion, a worker and trade unionist in the “Belvedere” tobacco factory in Bucharest during the interwar period. P. B. Ion led factory- and national-level social democratic trade unions and served as an elected delegate to factory-level and municipal-level workers’ representative bodies. At the same time, she participated in labour control practices, including during the Second World War. I argue that P. B. Ion’s career illustrates how, in the interwar period, women labour activists in social democratic trade unions in Romania could become more prominent participants in labour governance on the shop floor, municipal, and national levels while not being involved in labour governance at the international scale. Like other trade unionists in Europe, at times, P.B. Ion supported certain claims made by women workers (including through expert knowledge production) and at other times restrained them. I position P. B. Ion’s activism in a domestic context marked by competing labour agitation and organizing in the tobacco sector, activities shaped by a legal framework that hindered labour organizing.

Better Than the Markets: Mutual Fund Managers’ Perceptions of the Rich

This article investigates the cultural perceptions and the common sense held by Finnish mutual fund managers on the very wealthy and the rich in times of growing inequalities and increased wealth accumulation at the top. By studying the financial intermediaries on the shop-floor level, who embody the promises of popular finance, the article describes how fund managers working for the small investors make sense of the inequalities caused by financialization. In the research interviews analysed in the article, the mutual fund managers perceive the rich as a necessary and salutary part of the contemporary economy, whose function is to be and behave better than the financialized markets. This common sense concerning the rich helps to legitimize increasing wealth accumulation at the top, so that the fund managers’ perceptions of the rich embody an ideological coalition between the working financiers and the super-rich rentiers, a coalition that contrasts starkly with the promises of popular finance.

How to improve firm performance? – The role of production capabilities and routines

PurposeIn the multilayered capability framework the authors integrate two layers, namely functional level production capabilities and shop floor-level production routines (PRs). The authors examine how these two layers are interlinked, and additionally, they explore how these layers contribute to firm performance.Design/methodology/approachThe authors tested the hypotheses using structural equation modeling (SEM) on a sample of manufacturing firms.FindingsRegarding the capability layers, the authors found that at the functional level, production dynamic capabilities (PDCs) drive the renewal of production ordinary capabilities (POCs), and that at the shop floor level, deployment of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) is influenced by lean production. Regarding the direct links between capability layers, the authors showed that PDCs and POCs have different roles in shaping shop floor PRs: PDCs is linked to I4.0, and lean methods is impacted by POCs. Concerning performance implications, only PDC and POC have significant impact on firm performance (the latter is negative), while PRs do not.Research limitations/implicationsAlthough, contextual factors (e.g. technology intensity, size) do not influence our findings, the potential country-effect and the dominance of medium-sized firms offer future research directions.Practical implicationsIf production managers want to contribute to business performance, they should be more susceptible to resource renewal (PDCs) than to their general (POCs) or specific (PRs) exploitation efforts. As they exploit current resource stocks, they face a trade-off: they must consider that beyond their positive impacts on operational performance, their implications on business performance will be controversial.Originality/valueScholars usually examine one layer of capabilities, either capabilities or routines, and associate that with one dimension of performance, either financial and market measures or operational indicators. The authors propose a multilayered capability framework with a complex view on performance implications.

Understanding the impacts of energy efficiency measures on a Company’s operational performance: A new framework

Energy efficiency has long been considered a key component of an industrial company’s competitive repertoire. However, despite the potential benefits of adopting so-called energy efficiency measures, their uptake in such companies remains low. In response, this study proposes a framework aimed at supporting key decision-makers in undertaking a thorough assessment of energy efficiency measures. This involves, on the one hand, providing a complete characterization of a general industrial energy efficiency measure and, on the other, identifying the multiple impacts stemming from its adoption based on a novel performance measurement system that encompasses sustainability features and is defined at the shop floor level. Once theoretically validated through literature, the framework is empirically tested with a heterogeneous sample of Italian companies. The preliminary results demonstrate the framework's ability to thoroughly assess energy efficiency measures, highlighting characteristics and impacts that are sometimes considered more critical than energy saving by industrial decision-makers and therefore able to guide the outcome of the adoption decision.

The Relevance of Taylor's Scientific Management in the Modern Era

Frederick Winslow was an American and sculptor who lived in the nineteenth century. Taylor was born in 1856 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and died in 1915 in the same city. What is Taylor's contribution to the contemporary business environment? Taylor has provided management principles that can be used to improve the efficiency of an organisation. Taylor provided us with scientific management principles, which are now being implemented by all organisations in order to increase productivity at the shop floor level. The principles help to achieve effective results. Taylor, also known as the "Father of Scientific Management," demonstrated that a scientific method could be applied to management, citing names such as W. Taylor and Fredrick Winslow in his practical theories. Taylor placed a strong emphasis on management at the supervisory level, as well as the performance of managers and employees at the operational level of the organisation. The aim of study is to identify and amylase the Relevance of Taylor's Scientific Management in the Modern Era.

Towards Flexible and Cognitive Production—Addressing the Production Challenges

Globalization in the field of industry is fostering the need for cognitive production systems. To implement modern concepts that enable tools and systems for such a cognitive production system, several challenges on the shop floor level must first be resolved. This paper discusses the implementation of selected cognitive technologies on a real industrial case-study of a construction machine manufacturer. The partner company works on the concept of mass customization but utilizes manual labour for the high-variety assembly stations or lines. Sensing and guidance devices are used to provide information to the worker and also retrieve and monitor the working, with respecting data privacy policies. Next, a specified process of data contextualization, visual analytics, and causal discovery is used to extract useful information from the retrieved data via sensors. Communications and safety systems are explained further to complete the loop of implementation of cognitive entities on a manual assembly line. This deepened involvement of cognitive technologies are human-centered, rather than automated systems. The explained cognitive technologies enhance human interaction with the processes and ease the production methods. These concepts form a quintessential vision for an effective assembly line. This paper revolutionizes the existing industry 4.0 with an even-intensified human–machine interaction and moving towards cognitivity.

From the ground up: developing a practical ethical methodology for integrating AI into industry

In this article we present a new approach to practical artificial intelligence (AI) ethics in heavy industry, which was developed in the context of an EU Horizons 2020 multi partner project. We begin with a review of the concept of Industry 4.0, discussing the limitations of the concept, and of iterative categorization of heavy industry generally, for a practical human centered ethical approach. We then proceed to an overview of actual and potential AI ethics approaches to heavy industry, suggesting that current approaches with their emphasis on broad high-level principles are not well suited to AI ethics for industry. From there we outline our own approach in two sections. The first suggests tailoring ethics to the time and space situation of the shop floor level worker from the ground up, including giving specific and evolving ethical recommendations. The second describes the ethicist’s role as an ethical supervisor immersed in the development process and interpreting between industrial and technological (tech) development partners. In presenting our approach we draw heavily on our own experiences in applying the method in the Use Cases of our project, as examples of what can be done.

The Relevance of Taylor's Scientific Management in the Modern Era

Frederick Winslow was an American and sculptor who lived in the nineteenth century. Taylor was born in 1856 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and died in 1915 in the same city. What is Taylor's contribution to the contemporary business environment? Taylor has provided management principles that can be used to improve the efficiency of an organisation. Taylor provided us with scientific management principles, which are now being implemented by all organisations in order to increase productivity at the shop floor level. The principles help to achieve effective results. Taylor, also known as the "Father of Scientific Management," demonstrated that a scientific method could be applied to management, citing names such as W. Taylor and Fredrick Winslow in his practical theories. Taylor placed a strong emphasis on management at the supervisory level, as well as the performance of managers and employees at the operational level of the organisation. The aim of study is to identify and amylase the Relevance of Taylor's Scientific Management in the Modern Era.

Construction of an Smart Progress Production Unit Based on Paddle Boring

With the continuous improvement of hardware product performance and data processing capability and the rapid development of network communication technology, the intelligent technology of computer systems is becoming more and more mature, and the intelligence of manufacturing has become the focus of people's attention. The intelligent performance of manufacturing is to use the knowledge obtained from data analysis to make inferences and decisions to solve problems, and the Cyber-Physical System (CPS) supports the deep integration of informationization and industrialization by integrating advanced information technology and automatic control technology, such as perception, computation, communication, control, etc. Although there has been great progress in the research of CPS, it has been widely used in the development of computer systems. Despite significant progress in CPS research, some key issues have yet to be fully addressed at the shop floor level, including dynamic reorganization and local intelligence. These issues have hindered the research on the intelligence of complex processes. For progress units of complex processes, this study proposes a CPS-based smart progress unit (SPU) construction method. In order to improve machining efficiency and quality consistency, this study proposes a multi-source data acquisition technique and a multi-objective optimization algorithm to process the data within the machining unit. Finally, this study takes the paddle boring process as an example, and designs hardware and software systems to automate the paddle boring process and meet the needs of automation and intelligent transformation of the paddle boring process.

“Buslish” in East and Southeast Asian business – a role for continuing education

PurposeThe aim of the research, in the East and Southeast Asia context, is to explore the advantages and problems of Buslish (business facilitation English) for managers and to generate suggestions for maximising the use of Buslish as a critical resource in organisational effectiveness, including potential educational support and its required technology.Design/methodology/approachData aimed to explore the issue were collected from a multi-country sample of 31 non-native English speakers, using a semi-structured questionnaire, plus in-depth interviews (10) with some respondents. Data were analysed using a mixture of descriptive statistics and logical argumentation.FindingsThe authors found a strong agreement that Buslish is important in the chosen setting, but there are problems in practice. Views on the importance of style and precision of the language actually used varied considerably. A key practical implication is that there is a role for English continuing professional development (CPD) courses.Practical implicationsFirms should support the development of English language skills of employees, certainly at management level and perhaps also at shop floor level. Suitable courses could be offered in firms' CPD programmes. Employees who are native speakers should be encouraged to enunciate clearly for non-native speaker colleagues, not to use slang and not to speak too quickly. While the authors encourage the use of contemporary communication technologies (e.g. virtual classrooms), they maintain that these should be supplementary in nature, supporting, rather than replacing, face-to-face learning formats.Originality/valueA key aspect of the originality of the work is derived from the specific location, primary data collected and the creative nexus of the initial issue and its educational requirements, including technologies.

Study of Augmented Reality Based Manufacturing for Further Integration of Quality Control 4.0: A Systematic Literature Review

Augmented Reality (AR) has gradually become a mainstream technology enabling Industry 4.0 and its maturity has also grown over time. AR has been applied to support different processes on the shop-floor level, such as assembly, maintenance, etc. As various processes in manufacturing require high quality and near-zero error rates to ensure the demands and safety of end-users, AR can also equip operators with immersive interfaces to enhance productivity, accuracy and autonomy in the quality sector. However, there is currently no systematic review paper about AR technology enhancing the quality sector. The purpose of this paper is to conduct a systematic literature review (SLR) to conclude about the emerging interest in using AR as an assisting technology for the quality sector in an industry 4.0 context. Five research questions (RQs), with a set of selection criteria, are predefined to support the objectives of this SLR. In addition, different research databases are used for the paper identification phase following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) methodology to find the answers for the predefined RQs. It is found that, in spite of staying behind the assembly and maintenance sector in terms of AR-based solutions, there is a tendency towards interest in developing and implementing AR-assisted quality applications. There are three main categories of current AR-based solutions for quality sector, which are AR-based apps as a virtual Lean tool, AR-assisted metrology and AR-based solutions for in-line quality control. In this SLR, an AR architecture layer framework has been improved to classify articles into different layers which are finally integrated into a systematic design and development methodology for the development of long-term AR-based solutions for the quality sector in the future.