Shop Floor Control Systems

Shop floor control and namely the problem of job shop scheduling have been fields of research for a long time. However, until now no comprehensive framework on the various aspects exists. This book will provide a systems perspective towards shop floor control by stressing its sociotechnical and cybernetical nature. It focuses on the behavioral aspects of control activities and sees the shop floor as the center of value-adding manufacturing activities within an enterprise. The book enables the reader to understand the interaction of organization, information technology and human resources. This eventually allows to achieve holistic and agile solutions and facilitates profound organizational change. The book will therefore provide a welcome addition to several standard textbooks on the issue.

In recent years there has been a tremendous upsurge of interest in manufac turing systems design and analysis. Large industrial companies have realized that their manufacturing facilities can be a source of tremendous opportunity if managed well or a huge corporate liability if managed poorly. In particular industrial managers have realized the potential of well designed and installed production planning and control systems. Manufacturing, in an environment of short product life cycles and increasing product diversity, looks to tech niques such as manufacturing resource planning, Just In Time (lIT) and total quality control among others to meet the challenge. Customers are demanding high quality products and very fast turn around on orders. Manufacturing personnel are aware of the lead time from receipt of order to delivery of completed orders at the customer's premises. It is clear that this production lead time is, for the majority of manufacturing firms, greatly in excess of the actual processing or manufacturing time. There are many reasons for this, among them poor coordination between the sales and manufacturing function. Some are within the control of the manufacturing function. Others are not.

Modern manufacturing is more advanced than ever. There are too many moving parts between human errors, equipment breakdowns, delayed shipments, and hurried orders. Errors are inevitable without adequate planning. Preplanning, planning, staffing, directing, monitoring, and controlling actions that improve shop efficiency and analysis are all parts of shop floor management. The process of converting raw resources (inputs) into the intended output (products or services) is referred to as production or operations activity. Production is a collection of consecutive tasks that generate a desirable product that customers will accept and that also satisfies their needs in terms of quantity and intended use. Using effective production planning and control, the goals can be attained. Smart manufacturers are swiftly implementing the most recent business process optimization techniques in response to the changing production environment, and shop floor management is probably the most crucial technique on the list. A shop floor is a place where production or assembly is done. Either the labor would have to do this manually, or sophisticated automated systems would have to do it. Consequently, shop floor management might be characterized as management at the point of action. At this location where value is created, managers and production staff gather every day to thoroughly examine the machinery, inventory, storage, and manufacturing processes in order to spot any disruptions or deviations in the value-added processes and, where appropriate, to start corrective action.

Overviews manufacturing systems from the ground up, following the same concept as in the first edition. Delves into the fundamental building blocks of manufacturing systems: manufacturing processes and equipment. Discusses all topics from the viewpoint of four fundamental manufacturing attributes: cost, rate, flexibility and quality.

On the verge of the global information society, enterprises are competing for markets that are becoming global and driven by customer demand, and where growing specialisation is pushing them to focus on core competencies and look for partnerships to provide products and services. Simultaneously the public demands environmentally sustainable industries and urges manufacturers to mind the whole life span of their products and production resources. Information infrastructure systems are anticipated to offer services enabling and catalyzing the strategies of manufacturing companies responding to these challenges: they support the formation of extended enterprises, the mastering of full product and process life cycles, and the digitalization of the development process. Information infrastructure systems would accommodate access to and transformation of information as required by the various authorized stakeholders involved in the life phases of products or production resources. Services should be available to select and present all relevant information for situations involving any kind of players, during any life phase of a product or artifact, at any moment and at any place.

This two volumes constitute the refereed proceedings of the First International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Applications, ICIRA 2008, held in Wuhan, China, in October 2008. The 265 revised full papers presented were thoroughly reviewed and selected from 552 submissions; they are devoted but not limited to robot motion planning and manipulation; robot control; cognitive robotics; rehabilitation robotics; health care and artificial limb; robot learning; robot vision; human-machine interaction & coordination; mobile robotics; micro/nano mechanical systems; manufacturing automation; multi-axis surface machining; realworld applications.

The CIM-Europe provides a focal point for reporting on progress in Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM). CIM practitioners, decision makers and researchers exchange experiences gained in developing and implementing CIM technologies. This work deals with the application of technology innovation to industrial demand.

Overviews manufacturing systems from the ground up, following the same concept as in the first edition. Delves into the fundamental building blocks of manufacturing systems: manufacturing processes and equipment. Discusses all topics from the viewpoint of four fundamental manufacturing attributes: cost, rate, flexibility and quality.