Manufacturing Systems

Due to the concentration of core competences and the utilisation of international location advantages successful German production companies face a situation with globally dispersed sites in global value added networks. The ongoing globalisation, which includes the integration of external sites, suppliers and partners, leads to complex interactions within networks. However, these interactions are not or are simply partially known and not predictable so far. Being able to control dramatic dynamics in the behaviour of global value added networks, German production companies will be positively affected by globalisation in the future. Therefore, changeable global value added networks which can be quickly adjusted to dynamics become crucial. The paper on hand describes an approach for the planning and optimization of adaptable global value added networks. Background is the approach of the research project “planning and optimization of changeable global value added networks” (POWer.net) ...

Production systems require a continuous development to contribute to the competitiveness of the manufacturing industry. Therefore, the audit of production systems enables the determination of the current maturity level of production. This allows for the identification of deficits and the definition of starting points for a sustainable optimization of the production. This article focuses on the development of a maturity level based self-assessment concept for the evaluation of the sustainability of production systems.

Due to a difficult market situation represented by the world economic and related market crisis and a steady growth of model-variety the automotive industry is facing major challenges: short innovation cycles, increased complexity of production and cost pressures. To respond to these challenges advanced approaches for long-term planning of production systems have to be implemented. This paper presents approaches of plant design utilizing digital factory and shows applications of operations research (OR) for the planning of production systems. The application of OR methods holds significant potential not only for the network planning level but also for supporting strategic decisions on the production system level.

For the design of an agile production system in addition to the holistic view of production and its internal and external links, a detailed analysis of individual components is necessary. These elements are general manufacturing equipment in various types of expression. To investigate and valuate the properties of these components primarily key figures and indicators are used. In the field of facility and maintenance management the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) parameter is widely used to determine the equipment efficiency. This indicator is an integral part of a holistic maintenance management. Recent developments use the OEE value as a basis to evaluate the whole value chain to get a holistic view of the included equipment. This integrated approach is an essential component for assessing the flexibility of production systems, which presents itself in three different dimensions.

Shoe manufacturing provides employment to a large number of European citizens. Large parts of the manufacturing process are still dominated by manual work. Robotic solutions to automate and optimize the production can ensure that European companies, in particular manufacturers of high-quality, high-price fashion shoes, retain their competitive edge on the global markets. There are many sectors of industry, in particular industrial production, that have a strong need for practical, flexible, and human-like manipulation and gripping. This is true in particular for SMEs characterized by fast changing product-cycles and the need for robots that can be integrated in manual product lines. In general, all industrial sectors with a high percentage of manual labour, a large number of product variants, and non-standardized or delicate products do need robots that exhibit a general flexibility and the capacity for human-like manipulation. Shoe manufacturing is an example for an industrial sector ...

Within the last few years there was a growing trend at universities to establish so called Virtual Reality laboratories as special work places. This trend follows the need for better visualisation, both of research findings and of teaching content. The use of Virtual Reality systems for educational purposes at universities improves the imparting of complex issues and therefore enables a faster and more purposeful expert education. The visualisation of the relevant teaching content, using the virtual-interactive environment in combination with practical training, will help to improve the training results [1]. This paper outlines the potentials of the Virtual Reality technology for the university education.

Quality and speed in manufacturing and assembly of micro systems significantly increased within the last years. Sophisticated micro- and nano-rapid prototyping methods in connection with replication techniques allow mass production of micro parts with very high precision. For quality control of those parts an as well fast as precise measuring method is necessary. The very good experiences of macroscopic fringe projection shall therefore be adapted and optimized to micro systems. Endoscopic fringe projection can achieve the measurement of small volumes optically, 3 dimensionally and precisely. The measuring principle and chances of this technique are explained exemplary on a fibrebased endoscopic fringe projection system, which currently is developed in cooperation with the SFB/TR 73 which is supported by the German research foundation (DFG).

As a result of economic and production-orientated advantages, laser sources have established in a wide range of manufacturing engineering in the last 30 years. In particular, due to the possibility of realising small focus diameters for material processing applications, the laser is one of the most important tools in micro technology. In this contribution, fundamental methods of laser micro processing are presented. In this context, well-established as well as nascent technologies are described. Concluding, a view on the market potential of laser-based manufacturing processes in micro technology is given.

Already today intelligent functions based on microsystems technologies can be found in many applications of everybody’s daily life. Mobile phones are called smart phones. They are equipped with digital cameras, music players, game consoles and PDA’s. Cars are getting more and more intelligent due to self controlled operation and adaptive safety systems. Japan, USA and Europe belong to the first research and de-velopment sites worldwide. Key factors for successful products will be system integration, miniaturisation and last but not least transdisciplinary technology approaches. Thereby the gap has to be bridged between the nanometer and micrometer scale of the components and the customer’s macro world. Smart Systems technologies and their integration will therefore have a significant impact on the competitiveness of entire sectors as aeronautics, automotives, security, logistics, medical technology and process engineering.

A huge variety of micro-sized sensors and actuators are created using methods of Micro Systems Technology (MST). The limitation of this technology is the use of stacked layers so that no real 3D-structures can be created. This barrier can be overcome by combining MST-processes with subsequent forming-processes to transform the flat structures into 3D objects. This is demonstrated with the forming of a planar coil arrangement into a cylindrical micro motor.