In the traditional process of designing a manufacturing system, a sequential approach treats each of the design steps individually, without considering the requirements of concurrent design activities. The lack of systematic and concurrent consideration of the interactive impact of design decisions leads to repeated and excessive changes in the design and process. To resolve this problem, this research develops a production engineering-oriented virtual factory -a planning cell-based manufacturing systems design approach. The manufacturing systems design process based on a planning cell is reengineered according to the concept of concurrent engineering. The process modeling of a production engineering-oriented virtual factory is proposed at generic and particular levels. An illustrative example of an engine assembly plant demonstrates the effectiveness of the new approach.Keywords Manufacturing systems design 9 Process modeling 9 Process reengineering 9 Production engineering 9 Simulation 9 Virtual factory
To realize a constraint-based virtual assembly operation, the unified representations of the assembly constraint, the equivalent relation between the constraint and the degree of freedom (DOF), and the movement DOF reduction in a virtual environment are proposed. Several algorithms about the constraint treatment are submitted. First, the automatic recognition algorithm based on the assembly relation is used to determine the position and orientation relation between two geometry elements of constraint whether they meet the given errors. Second, to satisfy the new constraint, according to the positing solving algorithm, the position and orientation of an active part are modified with minimal adjustment after the part has satisfied the affirmed constraints. Finally, the algorithm of movement navigation based on the generalized coordinate system is put forward, and the part movement is guided. These algorithms have been applied to the integrated virtual assembly environment (IVAE) system. Experiments have indicated that these algorithms have well supported constraint treatments in the IVAE and realized the closer combination of the virtual and the real assembly processes.
Faced with today's competitive market, the development of innovative product needs to be accelerated. But this is limited by heterogeneous systems and a distributed environment. A way of utilising network technology to this end must be found. In this paper, we use a new approach, called asynchronous and synchronous coupling, which is a network-based product development approach. This is then applied to rapidresponse manufacturing by small-and medium-sized enterprises in a distributed environment. It demonstrates integrated thinking, high development speed and a transparent development process. Visual technology and real-time monitoring technology are used to solve asynchronous process and data management problems. An ICE (integrated collaborative environment) is also created to support synchronous collaboration.Keywords distributed environment AE rapid product development AE asynchronous and synchronous coupling AE integrated collaborative environment Int
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