scholarly journals Design and Digital Manufacturing: an ergonomic approach for Industry 4.0

Author(s):  
Elena Laudante ◽  
Francesco Caputo

The contribution proposes innovative methods for design and ergonomic configuration of tools, equipment and manual workplaces for automobile assembly tasks, in order to increase the worker’s welfare and the system’s performance by improving general safety conditions. Developed activities are part of the research project “DEWO – Design Environment for WorkPlace Optimization”, financed by Italian Government to the Second University of Naples. The aim of this project is to identify new methods for optimization of assembly tasks  in a virtual environment in terms of overall integration among materials management, working tasks organization and layout, starting from the principles of "WorkPlace Organization" and the modern theories of "Lean Production ". The manufacturing industry is heading to the ever more pushed use of digital technologies in order to achieve very dynamic production environments and to be able to develop continuous process and product innovations to fit into the so called Fourth Industrial Revolution, Industry 4.0. The main goal of Industry 4.0 is to “rethink” companies through the use of digital, to reconsider the design approach and to monitor the production process in real time. The research addresses the evolution of innovation 4.0 in relation to the discipline of design, where the management of knowledge in the production process has led to the strengthening and improvement of tangible goods. Starting by current ergonomic analysis models and innovative approaches to the process of industrial production line, the manufacturing processes in the virtual environment were defined and optimized with the use of innovative 3D enjoyment technologies. The constant interaction among the different disciplines of design, engineering and occupational medicine, enables the creation of advanced systems for simulating production processes based on virtual reality and augmented reality, mainly focused on the needs and requirements of the workers on a production line where it is possible to bring out the interaction between real and virtual factory (Cyber-Physical System). The objective is to define new models of analysis, of development and testing for the configuration of ergonomic processes that improve and facilitate the human-machine interaction in a holistic view, in order to protect and enhance human capital, transferring the experiences and knowledge in the factory system, key factors for the company and for the sustainability of workers welfare levels.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/IFDP.2016.3297

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 910-936 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morteza Ghobakhloo

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to conduct a state-of-the-art review of the ongoing research on the Industry 4.0 phenomenon, highlight its key design principles and technology trends, identify its architectural design and offer a strategic roadmap that can serve manufacturers as a simple guide for the process of Industry 4.0 transition. Design/methodology/approach The study performs a systematic and content-centric review of literature based on a six-stage approach to identify key design principles and technology trends of Industry 4.0. The study further benefits from a comprehensive content analysis of the 178 documents identified, both manually and via IBM Watson’s natural language processing for advanced text analysis. Findings Industry 4.0 is an integrative system of value creation that is comprised of 12 design principles and 14 technology trends. Industry 4.0 is no longer a hype and manufacturers need to get on board sooner rather than later. Research limitations/implications The strategic roadmap presented in this study can serve academicians and practitioners as a stepping stone for development of a detailed strategic roadmap for successful transition from traditional manufacturing into the Industry 4.0. However, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy that suits all businesses or industries, meaning that the Industry 4.0 roadmap for each company is idiosyncratic, and should be devised based on company’s core competencies, motivations, capabilities, intent, goals, priorities and budgets. Practical implications The first step for transitioning into the Industry 4.0 is the development of a comprehensive strategic roadmap that carefully identifies and plans every single step a manufacturing company needs to take, as well as the timeline, and the costs and benefits associated with each step. The strategic roadmap presented in this study can offer as a holistic view of common steps that manufacturers need to undertake in their transition toward the Industry 4.0. Originality/value The study is among the first to identify, cluster and describe design principles and technology trends that are building blocks of the Industry 4.0. The strategic roadmap for Industry 4.0 transition presented in this study is expected to assist contemporary manufacturers to understand what implementing the Industry 4.0 really requires of them and what challenges they might face during the transition process.


Designs ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Javaid Butt

Industry 4.0 (also referred to as digitization of manufacturing) is characterized by cyber physical systems, automation, and data exchange. It is no longer a future trend and is being employed worldwide by manufacturing organizations, to gain benefits of improved performance, reduced inefficiencies, and lower costs, while improving flexibility. However, the implementation of Industry 4.0 enabling technologies is a difficult task and becomes even more challenging without any standardized approach. The barriers include, but are not limited to, lack of knowledge, inability to realistically quantify the return on investment, and lack of a skilled workforce. This study presents a systematic and content-centric literature review of Industry 4.0 enabling technologies, to highlight their impact on the manufacturing industry. It also provides a strategic roadmap for the implementation of Industry 4.0, based on lean six sigma approaches. The basis of the roadmap is the design for six sigma approach for the development of a new process chain, followed by a continuous improvement plan. The reason for choosing lean six sigma is to provide manufacturers with a sense of familiarity, as they have been employing these principles for removing waste and reducing variability. Major reasons for the rejection of Industry 4.0 implementation methodologies by manufactures are fear of the unknown and resistance to change, whereas the use of lean six sigma can mitigate them. The strategic roadmap presented in this paper can offer a holistic view of phases that manufacturers should undertake and the challenges they might face in their journey toward Industry 4.0 transition.


2013 ◽  
Vol 397-400 ◽  
pp. 2622-2625 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiu Ying Tang ◽  
Jie Shi ◽  
Li Chang Chen ◽  
Lin Lin Yang ◽  
Xue Mei Leng

At present, with the rapid development of manufacturing industry, the problem in the production process is constantly exposed. This kind of production system is very complicated that it is often the spatial variable, time variable and random variable interdependent dynamic problems. The computer simulation software is the one of the best effective way to find out the problems existing in the production process. This paper takes one product line as example, using Flexsim simulation software in the production line for modeling and simulation. Then the simulation test and simulation analysis is done to find out the bottleneck of the system. Finally proposal is given to solving the bottleneck problem, and Flexsim simulation of new distribution is proved that it could improve the efficiency of the production line.


Electronics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 628
Author(s):  
Michail J. Beliatis ◽  
Kasper Jensen ◽  
Lars Ellegaard ◽  
Annabeth Aagaard ◽  
Mirko Presser

This paper investigates digital traceability technologies taking careful consideration of the company’s needs to improve the traceability of products at the production of GPV Group as well as the efficiency and added value in their production cycles. GPV is primarily an electronics manufacturing service company (EMS) that manufactures electronic circuit boards, in addition to big metal products at their mechanics manufacturing sites. The company aims to embrace the next generation IoT technologies such as digital traceability in their internal supply chain at manufacturing sites in order to stay compatible with the Industry 4.0 requirements. In this paper, the capabilities of suitable digital traceability technologies are screened together with the actual GPV needs to determine if deployment of such technologies would benefit GPV shop floor operations and can solve the issues they face due to a lack of traceability. The traceability term refers to tracking the geolocation of products throughout the manufacturing steps and how that functionality can foster further optimization of the manufacturing processes. The paper focuses on comparing different IoT technologies and analyze their positive and negative attributes to identify a suitable technological solution for product traceability in the metal manufacturing industry. Finally, the paper proposes a suitable implementation road map for GPV, which can also be adopted from other metal manufacturing industries to deploy Industry 4.0 traceability at shop floor level.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1013
Author(s):  
Whisper Maisiri ◽  
Liezl van Dyk ◽  
Rojanette Coeztee

Industry 4.0 (I4.0) adoption in the manufacturing industry is on the rise across the world, resulting in increased empirical research on barriers and drivers to I4.0 adoption in specific country contexts. However, no similar studies are available that focus on the South African manufacturing industry. Our small-scale interview-based qualitative descriptive study aimed at identifying factors that may inhibit sustainable adoption of I4.0 in the country’s manufacturing industry. The study probed the views and opinions of 16 managers and specialists in the industry, as well as others in supportive roles. Two themes emerged from the thematic analysis: factors that inhibit sustainable adoption of I4.0 and strategies that promote I4.0 adoption in the South African manufacturing industry. The interviews highlighted cultural construct, structural inequalities, noticeable youth unemployment, fragmented task environment, and deficiencies in the education system as key inhibitors. Key strategies identified to promote sustainable adoption of I4.0 include understanding context and applying relevant technologies, strengthening policy and regulatory space, overhauling the education system, and focusing on primary manufacturing. The study offers direction for broader investigations of the specific inhibitors to sustainable I4.0 adoption in the sub-Saharan African developing countries and the strategies for overcoming them.


Author(s):  
Marco Cucculelli ◽  
Ivano Dileo ◽  
Marco Pini

AbstractWe examine whether the probability of innovating a company’s business model towards the Industry 4.0 paradigm is affected by external institutional support and family leadership. Industry 4.0 is the information-intensive transformation of global manufacturing enabled by Internet technologies aimed at reinventing products and services from design and engineering to manufacturing. Using a sample of 3000 firms from a corporate survey on the manufacturing industry in Italy, our results showed that family leadership has a significant positive influence on the adoption of Industry 4.0 business models, but only in terms of family ownership. By contrast, family management has a negative influence on the probability of adopting a new business model. However, this negative influence is almost totally offset by the presence of the Triple Helix, i.e. the external support by public institutions and universities, which counterbalances the lower propensity of family managers to adopt Industry 4.0 business models. This supporting role only occurs when institutions and universities act together.


2003 ◽  
Vol 02 (02) ◽  
pp. 229-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. KESAVADAS ◽  
M. ERNZER

This paper describes an interactive virtual environment for modeling and designing factories and shop floors. The factory building tool is developed as an open architecture in which various modules can be utilized to quickly implement factory design algorithms ranging from plant layout to factory flow analysis. Software modules and utilities have been implemented to allow easy set-up of the visual interface. In this paper, this virtual factory is used to implement cellular manufacturing (CM) system. CM has traditionally been a very complicated system to implement in practice. However successful implementation of the system has improved productivity immersely. Several issues involved in implementing CM within our virtual factory machine modeling and interface designs for defining the cells, are discussed. The mathematical clustering algorithm called Modified Boolean Method was implemented to automatically generate complex virtual environments. The virtual factory makes the process of CM-based factory design a very easy and intuitive process. Though the cell formation problem is NP-complete in 2D space, issues related to human factors and ergonomics can be better perceived in a 3D virtual environment. It also leads to further optimization with respect to maintainability and performance, and thus help get better solutions, which are not visible unless the factory is built. Our virtual factory interface also allows easy reassignment of machines and parts, subcontracting of bottleneck parts and rearranging of machines within the same design environment, making this a productive industrial tool. 3D virtual factory can also be automatically generated from the Part Machine interface called the Virtual Matrix Interface.


Author(s):  
Edgar Chacón ◽  
Luis Alberto Cruz Salazar ◽  
Juan Cardillo ◽  
Yenny Alexandra Paredes Astudillo

AbstractIndustry 4.0 (I4.0) brings together new disruptive technologies, increasing future factories’ productivity. Indeed, the control of production processes is fast becoming a key driver for manufacturing operations. Manufacturing control systems have recently been developed for distributed or semi-heterarchical architectures, e.g., holonic systems improving global efficiency and manufacturing operations’ reactiveness. So far, previous studies and applications have not dealt with continuous production processes, such as applications for Water Supply System (WSS), oil refining, or electric power plants. The complexity of continuous production is that a single fault can degrade extensively and even cause service disruption. Therefore, this paper proposes the Holonic Production Unit (HPU) architecture as a solution to control continuous production processes. An HPU is created as a holon unit depicting resources in a continuous process. This unit can detect events within the environment, evaluate several courses of action, and change the parameters aligned to a mission. The proposed approach was tested using a simulated model of WSS. The experiments described in this paper were conducted using a traditional WSS, where the communication and decision-making features allow the application of HPU. The results suggest that constructing a holarchy with different holons can fulfill I4.0 requirements for continuous production processes.


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