Project CEEX 22-I03/2005
Resume:
Nowadays companies providing mechanical systems have to face fast evolution all over the world, both in the technical field and economical or trade ones.
The main trends are:
- economy globalisation implying severe competition ;
- customizing requirements, meaning product customization;
- high capital investing cycles, generating severe requirements concerning investment efficiency;
- industrial and commercial discretisation, resulting in big trusts being replaced by independent small business.
These evolutions establish a new balance between economy, technology and society. To handle knocking competition in this new economical environment, companies must react rapidly with minimum investments. The new market exigencies are described by the following features:
-increased frequency of new products release;
- reduced volume orders;
- increased products variety ordered;
- continuous changing for governmental laws (for intance those reffering to enviroment or safety)
- rapid changes concerning manufacturing technologies used.
The concept this project is providing as a possible solution to such a challenge is to develop a new generation of technological systems, able to satisfy the following features:
a) to be reconfigurable, with open architecture hardware and universal modules, mechatronically featured, with embedded control system, in-situ;
b) to be in-cycle numerical self-programmable;
c) the economical and quality issue are on-machine controlled;
d) the control is defined as adaptive, optimized, predictive, online.
Concept solution is supported by the following aspects:
As modules are universal, small amounts of modules are available from the module store of a company; as a result, the number of unused modules at one specific time is low, tending to zero (even presuming a small and varied production series – which is the case with the nowadays manufacturing). Consequently, waste capital is decreasing to zero, and therefore investment recovery is reduced to 4-5 years instead of 15…20 years as it happens today.
This reconfigurable manufacturing system control is adaptive, i.e. by re-identifying online, the control model follows accurately the system behavior in time and space. Also the control is described as adaptive because correction is preceding error.
On the other hand, with this new generation of manufacturing systems, according to the project, the time and space evolution of both system behavior and blank mechanical or size characteristics are described by the building of simple, placed- in -time, ephemeral , built –with- recent- data models instead of complex, general, perennial, built –with- historic- data models, using the latest ICT facilities (wireless and supplyless sensors, embedded systems, data mining techniques, etc).
During the development of this new generation of manufacturing systems, the project team could observe that, after reconfiguration, a reconfigurable manufacturing system is practically a new, very little known system which must be controlled in order to manufacture an object which is also very little known. Since neither the system nor the object is known enough, an on-line identification technique for both system and manufacturing process should be developed (irrespective of the system architecture or the process physical nature: cutting, plastic deformation, injection, electrodischarge etc.). The result of such a technique would be a model which represents the description at the current moment of the interaction between the two elements. The model thus obtained is used to simulate the operation of the entire assembly, virtual product manufacturing and evaluation of the preventive controls set, necessary to compensate for the deviations of any kind such as they are noticed during said virtual manufacturing.
The conceptual ideas the development of this new generation of manufacturing systems is based on have been implemented for the cutting and deep drawing processes the operation of which has been controlled in terms of product quality and process economic aspect.
The analysis of the manufacturing machines market (such as machine-tools market) shows the following: 1) these machines represent important investments to the purchasers; 2) the manufacturing machines available nowadays are, more often than not, quite old conceptually because: i) as they are designed for a certain type of manufacturing process they are not used continuously, which makes their life cycle excessively long – sometimes exceeding 10-12 years; ii) they cannot be turned into a good account but by keeping on being used, which further affects the cost of the physical objects they manufacture; 3) in this situation the demand for new machines is lower, penalizing the manufacturing machine suppliers, and that is why the costs of the machines they manufacture becomes quite high which further affects the customers too.
In short, nowadays on the machine manufacturing market, the speed of running the economic loop is rather low which negatively affects the profit rate of all actors involved (purchasers, suppliers equally). The new generation of reconfigurable machining systems, due to their exceptional flexibility, may have a considerable impact as the two market actors are given competitiveness and the market is offered dynamism.
Step 1 - Upon completion of the project, the description of the prototype and presentation of the final outcome shall be disseminated to all important machines-tools builders and to other manufacturing machines builders in the EU, to stimulate their interest in new generation of reconfigurable machining systems. Consortium members will be available to provide counseling for the implementation of this new machines.
Step 2 - Manufacturing machines builders shall be interested that their products are reconfigurable because in this way, with a limited module library, they shall be able to fast and easy meet a wide range of orders. Moreover, since the module library is quite limited, the number of identical modules to perform shall increase thus resulting in lower costs. It is expected that they themselves be the first users of new generation of reconfigurable machining systems thus accelerating the process of primary improvement, specific to any new product. Also it is expected that after about one year after project completion to be European machine builders able to sell manufacturing machines of latest generation.
Step 3 – The purchasers shall become more competitive, as already shown, because: i) they will be better adapted to the market demands, ii) the costs of material, energy, man work and capital shall be considerable reduced.
Step 4 – The purchaser of a new generation of reconfigurable machining system shall be able to use it plug and play and on many occasions, which shall: i) increase the time component during which the machine operates with respect to the total calendar time; ii) decrease the calendar life time of the machine and therefore the time of investment reimbursement down to 4-5 years; iii) increase the profit rate.
Step 5 – At the level of European Research Area, new programs shall emerge for the purpose of disseminating the advantages of the new generation of reconfigurable systems in domains other than manufacturing and robotics, such as health and environment.
Step 6 - Manufacturing machines builders shall encourage the component (screws, guides, sensors etc.) suppliers to adjust their offer accordingly thus reducing the costs involved. On the other hand a special class of embedded systems (manufacturing embedded control systems) shall be developed which results in lower costs and improved components.