April 2015 #1
2
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Editorial
3
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Event
4
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Progress
at
KIT
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5
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Role of
MCM
6
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VPN
Agenda
News
Welcome to the first issue of the RobustPlaNet newsletter.
RobustPlaNet works on the development of innovative mechanisms
for supply network coordination by production-related information
sharing contracts, risk-sharing contracts, predictive maintenance and
equipment reconfiguration services for reliable plants. We hope you
will find this newsletter an useful update of our main activities and
achievements. We have conceived this newsletter with the aim of
communicating the research and industrial community our project
results, provide an overview of the main events we will be participating
at, and show the main technical discussions we as a project are engaging
in. This newsletter will be published on a trimestral basis, and we would
like to encourage our project members and our research partners to
participate by proactively sending us news updates. We would also
like to invite our corporate audience to participate by communicating
us your biggest challenges and concerns, as we are confident that our
resulting RobustPlaNet approach to supply network coordination offers
European Industry a unique chance to further strengthen your global
competitive positions.
Events
Editorial
Agenda
On Wednesday the 11th of March, members of FLEXINET, RobustPlaNet
and ManSYS (FP7) projects gathered in Brussels to explore synergies
and assess the possibility of creating a cluster aiming at improving the
dissemination and exploitation impact of our projects. During this
meeting, each project was presented and analyzed to find commonalities.
Marcello Colledani, a ROBUSTPLANET member, enriched the discussion by
sharing his experiences with clustering activities. As a general conclusion
of this event, it was agreed to create the Resilient Production Networks
cluster.
The Resilient Production Networks cluster will be formally presented
during the Impact Workshop organized by the European Commission to
Agenda
The primary objectives of this cluster are:
• Bring together FP 7 and H2020 FoF projects focused on methods,
tools, services, applications and platforms for strategic, tactical,
operational and process support for Resilient Production Networks;
• Offer synergies in project exploitation
• Provide opportunities for integration and harmonisation of results
• Promotion of future calls for proposals for research relevant to
Resilient Production Networks.
News
According to the vision created during this event, a Resilient Production
Network supports: (1) the co-evolution of products, services and
production technology, through their ability to adapt the network
configuration to change as a matter of routine; (2) innovation by
exploiting their flexibility and enabling them to encourage disruptive
change; and (3) the integration of systems flexibly across changing
network configurations.
Events
Event
Within the research project RobustPlaNet different levels of production
are regarded and their robustness is improved. The regarded levels are:
machine level, shop-floor level and production network level. On the
machine level, mainly technological solutions (hardware, sensors, etc.)
for improved robustness are regarded. On the shop-floor level, different
planning and optimization methodologies are used, while on the network
level, product-services are addressed.
News
Agenda
In the following, one activity on shop-floor level will be described in more
detail. On this level a highly automated assembly line has been examined.
The line doesn’t include any buffers and thus disturbances of any kind
have a huge impact on the line’s performance. To increase the robustness
of the line, first a thorough disturbance analysis has been established
using a black- and white-list approach. The analysis enabled to identify the
root of the disturbances causing the main performance losses. Using a
discrete-event simulation possible actions were evaluated for their effects
on the line’s performance. The performance under many disturbances
and scenarios allows evaluating the performance distribution function,
which is the main base for robustness evaluations. In total, eight different
actions were compared for their effects on the line’s robustness and their
costs. A multi-objective decision support was built up to identify the most
promising action among the regarded ones.
Events
KIT
News
Agenda
Role, interests, objectives and results
As a company that produces flexible manufacturing plants for customers
in different industrial domains, MCM main interests in RobustPlaNet are
for new technologies and methods to develop innovative, robust, flexible
automation systems.
MCM is currently coordinating Task 2.3 “Design and selection of flexible
and reconfigurable automation modules and equipment”. The main
objective of this task is to design a system architecture which is able to
provide a production system with the required degrees of evolvability,
so that it can be reconfigured at any time in its life cycle to meet market
trends for new products or for changes in demand levels. After a first step
of a formal definition of requirements, a key point in this process is the
development of a methodology to select the technical reconfiguration
enablers to cope with specific production problems, taking in
consideration both machining and assembly lines.
MCM is also deeply involved in demonstration activities. Firstly, in the
VPN use-case MCM is currently working to provide technical automation
solutions for flexibility and reconfigurability of Automotive assembly lines.
Additionally, for the new opportunistic maintenance use case MCM has
introduced one of its customers of the Aerospace industrial domain, the
OMA company, which will join the project as a new partner soon. MCM
is willing to test and apply to its manufacturing plants the innovative
maintenance system that is going to be developed in the project.
Finally, due to its role of manufacturing system provider and its long
tradition of designing software tools for plant coordination and
production management, MCM is part of the team that is working in WP4
for the validation of the “Simulation and Navigation Cockpit”.
Events
MCM
Voestalpine Polynorm started this project with the creation of a database
that contains information on all future parts for two important OEMs.
Building this database was crucial to get the necessary knowledge for
the upcoming challenges of the assembly department at VPBV. Among
others, the volumes of the future product mix where determined
together with the expected assembly techniques.
Agenda
In parallel we’re working with the University of Twente to provide
them with the information for the development on their synthesis tool.
Furthermore, we’ve also been working together with SZTAKI and their
expert knowledge to create a first simulation of our existing assembly
cells. This is a good starting point for further simulation of our new
assembly concepts.
News
The second step was a two day brainstorm session at our plant in
Bunschoten to get input from our RPN use-case partners. This was a
crucial step towards a solutions strategy for our internal problem. We
determined the second phase of the project and started with creating
functional assembly groups. This gave us the opportunity to develop
technology clusters to get to a more abstract level of the problem. First
these clusters where rated by us and we identified the most interesting.
Secondly, these high rated clusters are being translated to new flexible
assembly concepts.
Events
VPN
April 24 2015
Consortium meeting @ Brussel, Belgium
Events
Agenda
April 28 2015
Impact workshop @ Brussel, Belgium
May 8 2015
18 M RPN review meeting @ Brussel, Belgium
News
June 24-26 2015
Conference in manufacturing systems @ Napels, Italy
Agenda
Colofon
RobustPlaNet is an acronym for Shock-robust Design of Plants and their Supply Chain Networks
For futher information: www.robustplanet.eu
Or contact
Coördinator: Laszlo Monostori, [email protected]
Project leader: Botond Kádár, [email protected]