Computer-aided production engineering
Computer-aided production engineering (CAPE) is a relatively new and important branch of technology . Global manufacturing has changed the environment in which goods are manufactured. Meanwhile, with the rapid development of electronics and communication technologies, design and manufacturing are required to keep up.
description
CAPE is seen as a new type of computer-aided engineering environment designed to improve the productivity of manufacturing and industrial engineers. This environment would be used by engineers to design and implement future manufacturing systems and subsystems. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is currently working on CAPE systems. The NIST project aims to promote the development of software environments and tools for the development and construction of manufacturing systems.
CAPE and the future of manufacturing
The future of manufacturing will be determined by the efficiency with which it can integrate new technologies . The current process of developing manufacturing systems is often ad hoc and with limited use of computerized tools. In view of the costs and resources involved in building and operating production facilities, the development process must be made more efficient. New calculation software for the development of manufacturing systems could help to achieve this goal.
Why is CAPE important? In the same way that product designers need CAD systems, manufacturing and industrial engineers need sophisticated computational capabilities to solve complex problems and manage the vast amounts of data involved in designing a manufacturing system.
To solve these complex problems and manage design data, computer-aided tools in scientific and engineering methods must be applied to the problem of designing and implementing manufacturing systems. Engineers must consider the entire factory as a system, its interactions and its environment.
Components of a factory system are:
- the physical facility in which the production is housed,
- the production facilities that carry out the manufacturing operations,
- the technologies used in production,
- the workplaces / stations, machines, devices, tools and materials that are contained or used in production facilities,
- the various auxiliary facilities and
- the relationship between the factory and its environment.
CAPE needs to be about not only the original design and construction of the factory, but also improvements over time. CAPE should support standard engineering methods and problem-solving techniques, automate simple activities, and provide reference data to aid decision-making.
The environment should help engineers be more productive and effective in their work. CAPE would be implemented on PCs or engineering workstations that were configured with appropriate peripheral devices. Engineering tool developers will need to integrate the following functions and data used by various disciplines:
- Manufacturing, industrial and plant engineering,
- Material processing and quality control,
- Environmental engineering,
- Mathematical modeling / simulation, statistical process control and computer science and
- Profitability and cost analysis and corporate management .
Many methods, formulas, and data that are assigned to these technical areas currently only exist in engineering manuals. While some computerized tools are available, they are often very specialized, difficult to use, and do not share information or work together. Engineering software from different manufacturers must be made compatible through an open system architecture and interface standards.
What CAPE will look like
CAPE will be based on computer systems that provide a range of integrated design and engineering tools. These software tools are used by a company's manufacturing engineers to continuously improve production systems. You will continue to manage information about manufacturing resources, improve manufacturing capabilities, and develop new equipment and systems. Engineers who work at different workplaces will use information from a common database.
With CAPE, a team of engineers will be able to prepare detailed plans and working models for an entire factory in a matter of days. Alternative solutions to production problems could be quickly developed and evaluated. This would be a significant improvement over previous manual methods, which can require weeks or months of intense activity.
A number of new engineering tools are required to achieve this goal. Examples of features that should be supported include:
- Identification of product specifications and production requirements,
- Feasibility analysis for products and modification of product designs to take into account feasibility issues, management, planning and tracking of projects,
- Modeling and specification of manufacturing processes, system planning and building planning,
- Consideration of the various economic / cost compromises of various manufacturing processes, systems, tools and materials,
- Analysis to support the selection of systems / suppliers and the procurement of production machines and support systems,
- Task and workplace design and
- Compliance with various regulations, norms and standards and the control of hazardous materials.
The tools used to implement these functions must be highly automated and integrated and must enable quick access to a wide range of data. This data must be maintained in a format that is accessible and usable by the engineering tools. Some examples of the information that may be contained in these electronic libraries include:
- Production process models and data and generic manufacturing system configurations,
- Machine and system specifications and supplier catalogs,
- Recommended methods, practices, algorithms etc. and benchmarking data,
- Typical plant / system layouts,
- Cost estimation models, labor costs, other cost data and budget templates and
- Time standards, industry standards, project plans, and laws / government regulations.
These online libraries would allow engineers to quickly develop solutions based on the work of others.
Another critical aspect of this engineering environment is affordability, which is best achieved by designing an environment that is built from inexpensive, off-the-shelf commercial products rather than specialty computer hardware and software. The basic engineering environment must be affordable. For cost and technical reasons, it has to be designed in such a way that it is able to perform incremental upgrades. Incremental upgrades would allow companies to add features that they need. Commercial software products must be easy to install and integrate with other software that is already in use. These functionalities already exist to a limited extent in commercial universal software, e.g. B. Word processors, databases and spreadsheets.
Technical concerns
There are many technical issues to consider when designing and developing new tools for CAPE. These topics include:
- the required functionality of the tools themselves,
- Formalization and refinement of engineering methods,
- Development of online technical reference libraries and user engineering and graphical visualization,
- User engineering and graphical visualization techniques,
- System connectivity, exchange of information and the integration of standards for the IT environment and
- Incorporation of intelligent behavior into the tools.
There are three important elements to be addressed: creating a common manufacturing system information model using an engineering lifecycle approach and developing a software tool integration framework.
The resolution of these elements will help independently developed systems be able to work together. The common information model should
- the core elements of the manufacturing process and their relationships to each other,
- the functions or processes performed by each element,
- the tools, materials and information needed to perform these functions and
- the effectiveness measurements for the model and its component elements
identify.
Much effort has been made in recent years to develop information models for different aspects of manufacturing, but no known existing model meets the needs of a CAPE environment. A life cycle approach is therefore required in order to recognize the various processes that a CAPE environment must support and to define all phases of a manufacturing system or the existence of a subsystem. Some of the most important phases that can be included in a system lifecycle approach are identification requirements, system design specifications, supplier selection, system development and upgrades, installation, testing and training, and benchmarking of production.
Management, coordination and administration functions must be carried out at every stage of the life cycle. Phases can be repeated over time, just as a system can be expanded or redeveloped to meet changing requirements or integrate new technologies.
A software tool integration framework should define how the tools are designed and developed independently. The framework would define how CAPE instruments deal with shared services, interact with one another and coordinate problem-solving activities. Although some existing software products and standards deal with shared services, the problem of tool interaction remains largely unsolved. The problem of tool interaction is not limited to the field of computer-aided manufacturing engineering systems - it is ubiquitous in the software industry.
CAPE's current status
A first CAPE environment was established by COTS software packages (from commercial off-the-shelf ). This new environment is used to
- to demonstrate commercially available tools with which CAPE functions can be carried out,
- to develop a better understanding and to define functional requirements for individual technical aids as well as the entire environment and
- Identify integration issues that need to be resolved in order to be able to implement compatible environments in the future.
Several technical demonstrations using COTS tools are under development. These demonstrations are designed to illustrate the different types of functions that must be performed in the development of a manufacturing system. Functions that are supported by the current COTS environment are: system specification / diagram creation, flow diagram creation , computer simulation , CAD of products, system planning, material flow analysis, ergonomic workplace design, mathematical modeling, statistical analyzes, balancing, simulation of manufacturing processes, investment analysis, project management , knowledge-based systems development, spreadsheets, document preparation, user interface development, document illustration, forms and database management.
literature
- JP Tanner: Manufacturing Engineering: An Introduction to Basic Functions. Marcel Dekker, New York 1991.
- G. Salvendy (ed.): Handbook of Industrial Engineering. Wiley Interscience, New York 1992.
- D. Dallas (ed.): Tool and Manufacturing Engineers Handbook. McGraw-Hill, New York 1976.
- WD Compton (ed.): Design and Analysis of Integrated Manufacturing Systems. National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1988.