Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Automatic batch production systems'

At the University of Pretoria's Fluoropolymer Laboratory, an important long-term project is the development of a waste polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) depolymerisation process where TFE can be produced, purified and polymerised to reproduce pure PTFE. At the start of this project, the process consisted of a batch depolymerisation system, a sub-zero distillation column, and a polymerisation reactor system. The batch depolymerisation system could not produce enough gas per session to operate the downstream processes efficiently. The main aim of this investigation was to adapt the batch depolymerisation system to enable continuous depolymerisation by designing, implementing and testing a continuous PTFE screw feeder. With the screw feeder in place, the operating limits, with regard to temperature, pressure, and Teflon® PTFE 807N feed rate, were determined. The effects of temperature and pressure on the tetrafluoroethylene (TFE), hexafluoropropylene (HFP) and octafluorocyclobutane (OFCB) fractional composition were examined and the optimum operating conditions to maximise these products were determined statistically. An investigative approach was used in designing the hopper system. The optimum hopper wall angle and Teflon® PTFE 807N feed mixture was determined experimentally by testing four hopper angles, pure Teflon® PTFE 807N, and two Teflon® PTFE 807N mixtures (Teflon® PTFE 807N mixed with larger, compressed Teflon® PTFE 807N, particles in a 70:30 wt % and 50:50 wt % ratio) and two motor speeds. At all of the hopper angles and Teflon mixture configurations, rat-hole formation prevented the feeder from producing a constant flow rate. A hopper wall angle of 20° (to the vertical) together with plain Teflon® PTFE 807N were selected, as these two variables together helped to delay the formation of rat-holes the most. A stirrer was inserted in the hopper to negate the rat-holing problem. The continuous feeder was successfully designed, manufactured, calibrated, and installed. The feeder consists of a wedge-shaped hopper with a constant pitch, a tapered shaft screw and is capable of providing a maximum Teflon® PTFE 807N flow rate of approximately 20 g·min-1 for up to 40 min. Experimental test runs of the continuous depolymerisation system indicated that the minimum operating reactor temperature was 650 °C due to heat transfer and or rate of reaction limitations. The maximum flow rate of Teflon® PTFE 807N was determined to be 11 g·min-1 for the current reactor system. The maximum operating temperature and pressure were limited to 750 °C and 40 kPa, respectively, to avoid operating conditions that could lead to the increased production of PFIB. A three-level full factorial experimental design was used to determine the temperature and pressure effects on the fractional distribution of TFE, HFP, and OFCB under steady operating conditions. For pressure control purposed no carrier gas was used. The PTFE flow rate and experimental run time were kept constant at 11 g·min-1 and 15 min, respectively. The pressure in the system was regulated manually by constricting the flow of product gas out of the system. A maximum TFE mole percentage of 97 % was achieved at operating conditions of 650 °C and 2 kPa. The maximum HFP mole percentage (31 %) was observed at operating conditions of 750 °C and 20 kPa. A maximum of 55 % was observed at 750 °C and 40 kPa for OFCB. Statistical analysis of the continuous depolymerisation results indicate that TFE formation is highly sensitive to changes in pressure, with higher TFE yield fractions achieved at low pressures. The production of OFCB is highly sensitive to pressure, whereas the formation of HFP is equally affected by pressure and temperature changes. However, changes in pressure have a larger effect on the HFP production than temperature when operating at pressures lower than approximately 20 kPa. At higher pressures the sensitivity has the inverse affect, with temperature having a larger effect. As opposed to TFE, an increase in temperature and pressure leads to an increase in the HFP and OFCB concentration. To achieve a TFE mole percentages of 95 % and higher, the operating temperature of the system has to be kept in the range of 650 °C 720 °C, together with a system pressure of 2 kPa or less. Within the operating range of 730 °C 750 °C and 35 kPa 40 kPa a mole percentage of 50 % and higher can be expected for OFCB. A mole percentage of 19 % and higher can be expected for HFP in the operating range of 744 °C 750 °C and 32 kPa 40 kPa. It was determined through a kinetic analysis of the system, that the residence time of the product gas in the reactor has a large effect on the production of HFP, with an increase in residence time leading to a sharp increase in the HFP concentration and a decrease in the OFCB and TFE concentrations. Analysis of the determined product specific kinetics indicate that the predominant HFP production pathway at low residence times (< 3 s) is via the reaction of TFE with difluorocarbenes. At higher residence times the dominant reaction pathway is the dissociation OFCB.
Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2016.
Chemical Engineering
MEng
Unrestricted

To improve product quality and reduce cost, batch production is often implemented in many exible manufacturing systems. However, the current literature does not provide any method to analyze the quality performance in a flexible manufacturing system with batch production. In this research, we present an analytical method with closed-form formula to evaluate the quality performance in such systems. Based on the model, we discover and investigate monotonic and non-monotonic properties in quality to provide practical guidance for operation management. To improve product quality, we introduce the notions of quality improvability with respect to product sequencing. In addition, we develop the indicators for quality improvability based on the data available on the factory floor rather than complicated calculations. We define the bottleneck sequence and bottleneck transition as the ones that impede quality in the strongest manner, investigate the sensitivity of quality performance with respect to sequences and transitions, and propose quality bottleneck sequence and transition indicators based on the measured data. Finally, we provide a case study at an automotive paint shop to show how this method is applied to improve paint quality. Moreover, we explore a potential application to reduce energy consumption and atmospheric emissions at automotive paint shops. By selecting appropriate batch and sequence policies, the paint quality can be improved and repaints can be reduced so that less material and energy will be consumed, and less atmospheric emissions will be generated. It is shown that such scheduling and control method can lead to significant energy savings and emission reduction with no extra investment nor changes to existing painting processes. The successful development of such method would open up a new area in manufacturing systems research and contribute to establish a solid foundation for an integrated study on productivity, quality and exibility. In addition, it will provide production engineers and operation managers a quantitative tool for continuous improvement on product quality in flexible manufacturing environment

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Florida, 2001.
Title from title page of source document. Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 73 p.; also contains graphics. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2008.
Includes bibliographical references (leaf 71).
A Kanban Production System is designed to help a factory line meet fluctuating demands for multiple part types. Based on the parameter settings of the Control-Point Policy, the optimum Kanban levels are obtained. The simulation software Simul8 was used to model the factory line and the Kanban system. Using the optimum Kanban levels, the Kanban system will act as an automatic production scheduling system that will indicate clearly when and how much of each part-type should be produced. Use of this system will avoid unnecessary inventory and changeover cost incurred by the existing Kanban system used by the factory line. Key words: Kanban, Control-Point Policy, Optimization Disclaimer: The content of the thesis is modified to protect the real identity of the attachment company. Company name and confidential information are omitted.
by Kaizhao Lee.
M.Eng.

Manufacturing companies are nowadays facing an unprecedented series of challenges to their survival: global competition and product mass-customization are the shaping forces of tomorrow’s business success. The consequent need for agile and sustainable production solutions is the utmost motivation behind the development of innovative approaches which often are not in line with the state of art. It is well documented that companies fail in recognizing how such disruptively innovative approaches can yield an interesting economic output. This, in turn, enhances the risk of leaving the aforementioned promising technologies conceptually and practically underdeveloped.  In the field of automatic production systems the Evolvable Production System paradigm proposes modular architectures with distributed, autonomous control rather than integral design and hierarchical, centralized control. EPS technology is thus disruptive: it refuses the present paradigm of Engineer to Order in industrial automation by proposing an advanced Configure to Order system development logic. This dissertation investigates the possibility of using the recent sophisticated developments of the concept of Business Model as a holistic analytical tool for the characterization and solution of the issue of bringing disruptive and non-fully mature innovation to proficient application in production environments. In order to purse this objective the main contributions in the relevant literature have been extracted and combined to an original definition of business model able to encompass the aspects deemed critical for the problem. Such a construct is composed of three elements: (1) Value Proposition that describe the features of a technology that generates value for a given customer, (2) the Value Configuration and the (3) Architecture of the Revenue which describe the mechanisms that allows to create and capture such value respectively.    The subsequent work has focused on the EPS paradigm as a specific case of the overall problem. The first step has been a full characterization of the related value proposition through an innovative approach based on a bottom-up decomposition in its elementary components, followed by their aggregation into meaningful value offerings: with reference to the EPS paradigm such an approach has disclosed an overall value proposition composed of six potentially independent value offerings. This collection of Value Offerings has then been used as a basis to generate the EPS business models. In particular for each single offering a possible set of necessary activities and resources has been devised and organized in a coherent value configuration. The resulting creation mechanisms have then been linked among each other following a logical supplier-customer scheme for capturing the value: this allowed establishing the architecture of revenue, last element of the overall production paradigm. Finally the results have been validated in a semi-industrial system developed for the (IDEAS, 2010-2013) project through the individuation of the areas of application of such business models.

QC 20121120

FP7-IDEAS- Instantly Deployable Evolvable Assembly System
FP6- EUPASS-Evolvable Ultra-Precision Assembly Systems
XPRES- Initiative for excellence in production research

Globalization and the increasing time to market have led to ever-higher requirements on the production systems. More than often the short-term thinking and the chase for profit lead to cheap quick fixes. The manufacturing industry changes slowly while the market is changing rapidly, which requires long-term planning for capacity increase but at the same time the ability to rapidly respond to changes. The most crucial factors determining the ability to efficiently produce and deliver a product to market is the utilized production system and a well stated manufacturing strategy. The choice of a certain production system depends on company conditions and requirements as well as the market demands. The current production systems performance and ability to handle different production volumes and divergence must be considered and evaluated from an economical perspective. During this thesis work the benefits and disadvantages with batch flow and one-piece flow have been examined. Generally one-piece flow had been considered the most efficient regarding performance and economical aspects. Meanwhile, batch flow had some benefits associated to it regarding high level of flexibility to handle several different product variants and better possibilities to govern the material flow compared to one-piece flow. There has also been examined which are the most crucial factors affecting the choice between one-piece flow and batch flow. It emerged during the thesis work that the most crucial factor affecting the choice of production system was the Manufacturing Strategy. It can be considered as the ground for every decision regarding the production system and future investments. It determines where the company currently stands, where they want to be in the future and which steps they need to take to get there. The economical factor is as least as important because all decisions include more or less costly investments. At the same time the chosen production system must be as efficient as possible and generate money for the company. Based on these two main factors other interesting factors have been presented. These factors may not affect the choice as much, but are to be considered as important in this context The most crucial factors found to affect the choice of a production system were; Manufacturing Strategy, Economical factors, Production planning and control, Flexibility and capacity, Production volume, variants and trends. The research work has been conducted over a twenty-week period, during which data collection has been performed via Multiple Case Studies at four companies manufacturing similar components within the light and heavy automotive industry. Additional data collection has been performed through a literature review by examining relevant material for the research questions. This have led to a collected knowledge base regarding benefits and disadvantages with each production system along with underlying reasons for deciding on one of them. Based on the collected material from the Case Studies and the theoretical findings, a Mind map visualizing the crucial factors affecting the choice of a production system is presented. This can be utilized by the companies in order for structured evaluation of their current production system and for planning for future changes within production.
Globaliseringen och den ökande pressen på företag att producera och få ut produkter på marknaden på kortast möjliga tid har lett till att det ställs allt högre krav på produktionssystemen. Allför ofta leder kortsiktigt tänkande och jakten på vinster till att företag väljer enkla och billiga snabblösningar. Tillverkningsindustrin förändras långsamt medans marknaden ändras fort, vilket kräver att företagen kan planera för långsiktiga kapacitetsökningar och ändå ha beredskap för att snabbt kunna anpassa sig till förändringar. Det som till allra största del avgör hur effektivt man kan producera och leverera en produkt till marknaden är vilket produktionssystem ett företag använder samt en välformulerad tillverkningsstrategi. Vilket produktionssystem man väljer är beroende av vilka förutsättningar och krav ett företag har lika mycket som av marknadskraven. Man måste ta hänsyn till det nuvarande produktionssystemets prestanda och möjlighet att hantera ändrade produktionsvolymer och variantflora och utvärdera detta ur en ekonomisk synvinkel. Under detta examensarbete har för- och nackdelar med batchflöde och enstycksflöde undersökts och utvärderats. Generellt sätt har enstycksflöde konstaterats vara mest effektivt rent ekonomiskt och prestandamässigt. Däremot, har batchflöde tilldelats fördelar som hög flexibilitet att hantera olika produktvarianter och bättre möjligheter att styra materialflödet jämfört med enstycksflöde. Det har även undersökts vilka som är de mest avgörande faktorerna som styr valet av enstycksflöde eller batchflöde. Under arbetets gång framkom det att den mest avgörande faktorn som påverkar valet av produktionssystem var företagets Produktionsstrategi. Den kan anses vara grunden för alla beslut rörande produktionssystemet och framtida satsningar. Där visar man var företaget befinner sig idag samt var man vill vara i framtiden och vilka beslut man måste ta för att ta sig dit. Den ekonomiska faktorn är minst lika viktig, då alla beslut i slutändan handlar om mer eller mindre kostsamma investeringar. Samtidigt måste det valda produktionssystemet vara så effektivt som möjligt och generera pengar till företaget. Med utgångspunkt från dessa två huvudfaktorer har andra intressanta faktorer tagits fram, som inte påverkar valet av produktionssystem i lika hög grad, men som ändå kan anses vara viktiga i sammanhanget. Forskningsarbetet har bedrivits under 20 veckors tid, där datainsamling har utförts via fallstudier på fyra företag som tillverkar liknande komponenter inom fordonsindustrin. Vidare datainsamling har gjorts genom en litteraturstudie där relevant material för forskningsfrågorna har undersökts. Detta har lett till en samlad kunskapsbas gällande för- och nackdelar med de respektive produktionssystemen samt bakomliggande orsaker till att välja något av dessa produktionssystem. Utifrån det samlade materialet från fallstudierna samt de teoretiska rönen har sedan en tankekarta tagits fram, som visualiserar de avgörande faktorerna som påverkar valet av ett produktionssystem. Denna tankekarta kan företag använda sig av för att på ett strukturerat sätt utvärdera nuvarande produktionssystemet samt planera för framtida förändringar inom produktionen.

This paper proposes an innovative way to address real cases of production prediction. This approach consists in the decomposition of original time series into time sub-series according to a group of factors in order to generate a predictive model from the partial predictive models of the sub-series. The adjustment of the models is carried out by means of a set of statistic techniques and Automatic Learning. This method was compared to an intuitive method consisting of a direct prediction of time series. The results show that this approach achieves better predictive performance than the direct way, so applying a decomposition method is more appropriate for this problem than non-decomposition.

As integrated circuits and printed circuit boards increase in complexity, testing becomes a major cost factor of the design and production of the complex devices. Testability has to be considered during the design of complex electronic systems, and automatic test systems have to be used in order to facilitate the test. This fact is now widely accepted in industry. Both design for testability and the usage of automatic test systems aim at reducing the cost of production testing or, sometimes, making it possible at all. Many design for testability methods and test systems are available which can be configured into a production test strategy, in order to achieve high quality of the final product. The designer has to select from the various options for creating a test strategy, by maximising the quality and minimising the total cost for the electronic system. This thesis presents a methodology for test strategy generation which is based on consideration of the economics during the life cycle of the electronic system. This methodology is a concurrent engineering approach which takes into account all effects of a test strategy on the electronic system during its life cycle by evaluating its related cost. This objective methodology is used in an original test strategy planning advisory system, which allows for test strategy planning for VLSI circuits as well as for digital electronic systems. The cost models which are used for evaluating the economics of test strategies are described in detail and the test strategy planning system is presented. A methodology for making decisions which are based on estimated costing data is presented. Results of using the cost models and the test strategy planning system for evaluating the economics of test strategies for selected industrial designs are presented.

Based on the description and definition of technology and processes falling within the vision of the fourth industrial revolution with the aim of creating intelligent factories, this diploma thesis deals with the principles of the Industry 4.0 concept in Hilti's production plant with a focus on transport and supply of production equipment. The aim of the work is to create a comprehensive proposal that takes into account all the necessary aspects associated with upgrading the existing state of inter-operational transport in a particular production line to fully automated, flexible and autonomous transport of materials and products in the context of Industry 4.0. A prerequisite for creating a design is the connection of automatically guided vehicles (AGVs) serving individual transport orders. The selection of the vehicle was made taking into account the safety of movement, the method of charging, the system and network integrity of existing and proposed technologies and components. The intention is not only to automate the inter-operational service, but also on the basis of the created automation concept, the ability to autonomously procure the flow of material and products. The mathematical calculation of capacity planning in the production line helped to determine the total load and the number of vehicles needed for continuous procurement of transport requirements. The result of the design part is also the design of specific transport routes and transport conditions that AGV vehicles must comply with in order to maintain a high level of safety. Transparency and a constant overview of transported products is provided by the presented scheme for identification of production batches, Auto-ID system. The financial efficiency of the whole project elaborated in the diploma thesis is evaluated as payable after 4 years from the implementation of the proposal. The financial efficiency of the whole project elaborated in the diploma thesis is evaluated as payable after 4 years from the implementation of the proposal due to high labor costs.

Batch processing is a means of improving the efficiency of transaction processing systems. Despite the maturity of this field, there is no rigorous theory that can assist in the design of batch systems. This thesis proposes such a theory, and shows that it is practical to use it to automate system design. This has important consequences; the main impediment to the wider use of batch systems is the high cost of their development and intenance. The theory is developed twice: informally, in a way that can be used by a systems analyst, and formally, as a result of which a computer program has been developed to prove the feasibility of automated design. Two important concepts are identified, which can aid in the decomposition of any system: 'separability', and 'independence'. Separability is the property that allows processes to be joined together by pipelines or similar topologies. Independence is the property that allows elements of a large set to be accessed and updated independently of one another. Traditional batch processing technology exploits independence when it uses sequential access in preference to random access. It is shown how the same property allows parallel access, resulting in speed gains limited only by the number of processors. This is a useful development that should assist in the design of very high throughput transaction processing systems. Systems are specified procedurally by describing an ideal system, which generates output and updates its internal state immediately following each input event. The derived systems have the same external behaviour as the ideal system except that their outputs and internal states lag those of the ideal system arbitrarily. Indeed, their state variables may have different delays, and the systems as whole may never be in consistent state. A 'state dependency graph' is derived from a static analysis of a specification. The reduced graph of its strongly-connected components defines a canonical process network from which all possible implementations of the system can be derived by composition. From these it is possible to choose the one that minimises any imposed cost function. Although, in general, choosing the optimum design proves to be an NP-complete problem, it is shown that heuristics can find it quickly in practical cases.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Mathematical and Computer Sciences (Department of Computer Science), 1999.

碩士
國立臺灣大學
工業工程學研究所
98
This paper studies the admission control method for different manufacturing system with process queue time constraints. In semiconductor, Thin Film Transistor-Liquid Crystal Display (TFT-LCD), other industries, the waiting time of WIP is limited to upper bound in system, the time constraint is called the process queue time constraint (PQT). When the PQT constraint is violated, a significant scrap cost will be accrued. The queue time constraint makes the production control difficult, production managers need to balance the need for achieving production targets and yield quality. To raise the productivity, batch process machine is widely applied in manufacturing system. The batch machine can process several jobs to reduce waiting time and improve system throughput rate, the increased productivity will facilitate industries to gain more revenue. To fulfill the variety customer demand, multiple product machine is also broadly used in manufacturing system. The multiple product machine can process different type of jobs to meet customers’ diversified demand, the overall revenue will be increased. Hence, this research focuses the batch process manufacturing system and multiple product manufacturing system. Under the PQT problem, we develop the optimal production control method for the manufacturing systems aforementioned. We use Markov decision processes (MDP) to formulate a batch process admission control (BPAC) model in batch process manufacturing system under PQT constraint. Moreover, we also propose a dynamic admission selection control (DASC) model in multiple product manufacturing system under PQT constraint. The objectives of our policies are to minimize the sum of inventory holding costs and scrap costs. We also conduct simulation study to verify the robustness of our method. The simulation results reveal that our policies significantly reduce total costs while improving throughput and system utilization.

Doctoral Thesis Production & Systems Engineering
Formal Theories (FTs) have proved their utility in “traditional” engineering areas. They permit analytical derivation of the specified system’s performance even before the system’s actual physical implementation. This is of great help giving the system’s designer and user to critical insight into the system being implemented, but before actually investing resources. However, concerning the “state-of-the-art” of the development of a FT of production systems (PS) or Virtual Enterprise (VE), we are not aware of any consistent and rigorous approach in this direction, except the initial results managed in the Centre of Production and Systems Engineering at the University of Minho. It is commonly perceived that the FTs are difficult to understand (from the cognitive point of view), difficult to learn, and therefore, difficult to develop. In terms of complexity theory, the formal theory development process is considered as a highly complex problem. Also, it is difficult to cover all the user requirements while developing a FT. On the other hand, the lack of a Formal Theory of production systems and VE is a serious obstacle to effective and efficient development, and application, especially of advanced and emerging production systems and VE concepts. In the modern times, these are the great drivers of economy and encourage innovation as well as entrepreneurship. A FT also permits an analytical synthesis, i.e. design, of the system through formal methods. This guarantees the fulfilment of the system design objectives. These are the motivational factors behind the presented thesis. The principal objective of the presented thesis is the validation of the scientific thesis concerning the problem of automatic synthesis and use of FT of production systems and VE. For the automatic synthesis of FT, the inductive inference approach is selected because of its ability to “learn” effectively from a set of examples (comparable to real-life case studies or hypothetical/abstract models for the purpose of learning). The Formal Theories are modelled through Formal Grammar and thus the problem of automatic synthesis of FT is actually reduced to the problem of Grammatical Inference. There are several methods for Grammatical Inference for different classes of formal grammars. For the presented work, the Context-free class of grammar was selected to model the intended formal theories of production systems and virtual enterprises. Through a machine learning algorithm, the formal theories were “learned” and these learned (synthesised) formal theories could generate other more complex architectures than the ones used for learning. Several experiments were carried out and a quantitative as well as qualitative analysis was carried out. The analysis of experiments’ results showed that the approach proved to be effective and with potential for real-life applications for synthesis of formal theories for virtual enterprise and similar architectures.
As Teorias Formais (TFs) têm provado a sua utilidade nas áreas de engenharias tradicionais. Elas permitem uma análise derivativa do desempenho de um sistema específico mesmo antes da sua implementação física. Isto é de grande ajuda, oferecendo ao criador e utilizador do sistema uma visão crítica sobre o sistema a ser implementado, antes de investir em recursos. No entanto, e no que diz respeito ao estado da arte do desenvolvimento da TF de sistemas de produção (SP) ou Empresa Virtual (EV), não se está consciente de qualquer abordagem consistente e rigorosa nesta direção, com exceção aos resultados obtidos pelo Centro de Engenharia de Sistemas de Produção da Universidade do Minho. Regra geral, TFs são difíceis de compreender (do ponto de vista cognitivo), difíceis de aprender e, por isso, difíceis de desenvolver. No âmbito da teoria da complexidade, o processo de desenvolvimento da teoria formal é considerado um problema de elevada complexidade, bem como de difícil satisfação de todas as necessidades dos utilizadores. Por outro lado, a ausência da Teoria Formal de SP e de EV é um obstáculo para o desenvolvimento e aplicação eficaz e eficiente, especialmente para os conceitos de SP avançados e emergentes e de EV. Nos tempos que correm, estes são os grandes motores da economia e inovação, bem como o empreendedorismo. A TF permite também uma síntese analítica, isto é o design do sistema a partir de métodos formais, garantindo que os objetivos deste sejam alcançados. Estes são os fatores motivacionais por detrás da presente tese. O principal objetivo é a validação da tese científica relativo ao problema da síntese automática e uso de TF de SP e EV. A abordagem da inferência indutiva é selecionada, para a síntese automática da TF, devido à sua capacidade de “aprender” efetivamente a partir de um conjunto de exemplos (comparável com casos de estudos da vida real ou modelos hipotéticos/abstratos para o propósito da aprendizagem). As TFs são modeladas através de Gramática Formal e, por isso, o problema da síntese automática da TF é reduzido atualmente ao problema da Inferência de Gramática, para a qual existem vários métodos para diferentes classes de gramaticas formais. Para o presente trabalho, a classe de gramática livre de contexto foi selecionada para modelar as teorias formais pretendidas de SP e EV. A partir de um algoritmo de “machine learning”, as teorias formais são “aprendidas” e estas teorias formais aprendidas (sintetizadas) podem gerar outras arquiteturas mais complexas do que as que foram usadas para aprender. Várias experiências foram levadas a cabo, bem como uma análise quantitativa e qualitativa. A análise dos resultados das experiências mostraram que a abordagem provou ser eficaz e com potencial para aplicações na vida real, para a síntese de TFs para EV e arquiteturas similares.
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia grant number SFRH/62313/2009

碩士
國立高雄科技大學
電子工程系
107
The government has strongly promoted the concept of Industry 4.0 in recent years. Many industries have begun to transform and move toward the goal of unmanned factories. A great deal of efforts had paid to replace traditional manpower with robotic arms or automated machines on production line. However, enterprises are focusing on technical computer applications. The development of testing of consumer electronics parts is less concerned in the automated innovation. Especially in the production of consumer electronics control panels, fully automated functional testing is still difficult to achieve. Many small to medium sized enterprises are developing small-volume production of a wide range of different items. The functions of each product are different. It is necessary to manually check whether the function is normal or not, and it takes too much labor cost. On the other hand, a fully automated testing approach requires a large number of different functional test equipment. It will cost too much for the cooperative. This thesis mainly focuses on the design of a scalable automatic detection system at low cost to reduce the cost of transformation in production test, to speed up the test process, to lower personnel cost, and to record abnormal data for analysis to improve production yield. This study uses Microchip’s PIC16F1947 controller chip to implement the experimental board, uses C language to write control function program at PC-end. On the main board, there are pre-designed simulated analog temperature output, power communication module, transistor communication module, AC/DC power detection module, stepper/ DC motor control verification module, short circuit detection module, DC 0-10V input detection, DC 12V output, and so on, covering features of most air conditioning, freezing/ cold storage control boards. It reserves multiple sets of SPI communication interfaces for subsequent expansion. To provide subsequent expansion of stable power supply, the design is to supply power by switching power. Java language is used to design PC-side human-machine interface for improved system portability. The main board has a record function for information such as production date, model and fault type. The related production information is exported into the database for analysis and improvement. To the data can be applied to the development product, the action logic is pre-designed. It has been found through experiments that automatic testing is very important. In addition to improving production speed and yield, it can improve the overall production line operation schedule effectively. On the other hand, transferring manpower away from the repetitive and troublesome working environment improves the productivity of employees. The overall working environment can be improved. At the same time, the company’s reputation can be strengthened due to the effective monitoring and improvement of product quality.

Dissertação apresentada à Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores (área de especialização de Sistemas de Energia), sob a orientação do Prof. Dr. João Abel Peças Lopes

Dissertação apresentada à Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores (área de especialização de Sistemas de Energia), sob a orientação do Prof. Dr. João Abel Peças Lopes

The automation of industrial processes has been one of the greatest innovations in the industrial sector. It allows faster and accurate operations of production processes while producing more outputs than old manual production techniques. In the beverage industry, this innovation was also well embraced, especially to improve its bottling processes. However it has been proven that a continuous optimization of automation techniques using advanced and current trend of automation is the only way industrial companies will survive in a very competitive market. This becomes more challenging for small to medium scale enterprises (SMEs) which are not always keen in adopting new technologies by fear of overspending their little revenues. By doing so, SMEs are exposing themselves to limited growth and vulnerable lifecycle in this fast growing automation world. The main contribution of this study was to develop practical and affordable applications that will optimize the bottling process of a SME beverage plant by combining its existing production resources to basic principles of the current trend of automation, Industry 4.0 (I40). This research enabled the small beverage industry to achieve higher production rate, better delivery time and easy access of plant information through production forecast using linear regression, predictive maintenance using speed vibration sensor and decentralization of production monitoring via cloud applications. The existing plant Siemens S7-1200 programmable logic controller (PLC) and ZENON supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system were used to program the optimized process with very few additional resources. This study also opened doors for automation in SMEs, in general, to use I40 in their production processes with available means and limited cost.
School of Computing
M.Tech (Engineering, Electrical)

Les outils de programmation sont des programmes informatiques qui aident les humains à programmer des ordinateurs. Les outils sont de toutes formes et tailles, par exemple les éditeurs, les compilateurs, les débogueurs et les profileurs. Chacun de ces outils facilite une tâche principale dans le flux de travail de programmation qui consomme des ressources cognitives lorsqu’il est effectué manuellement. Dans cette thèse, nous explorons plusieurs outils qui facilitent le processus de construction de systèmes intelligents et qui réduisent l’effort cognitif requis pour concevoir, développer, tester et déployer des systèmes logiciels intelligents. Tout d’abord, nous introduisons un environnement de développement intégré (EDI) pour la programmation d’applications Robot Operating System (ROS), appelé Hatchery (Chapter 2). Deuxièmement, nous décrivons Kotlin∇, un système de langage et de type pour la programmation différenciable, un paradigme émergent dans l’apprentissage automatique (Chapter 3). Troisièmement, nous proposons un nouvel algorithme pour tester automatiquement les programmes différenciables, en nous inspirant des techniques de tests contradictoires et métamorphiques (Chapter 4), et démontrons son efficacité empirique dans le cadre de la régression. Quatrièmement, nous explorons une infrastructure de conteneurs basée sur Docker, qui permet un déploiement reproductible des applications ROS sur la plateforme Duckietown (Chapter 5). Enfin, nous réfléchissons à l’état actuel des outils de programmation pour ces applications et spéculons à quoi pourrait ressembler la programmation de systèmes intelligents à l’avenir (Chapter 6).
Programming tools are computer programs which help humans program computers. Tools come in all shapes and forms, from editors and compilers to debuggers and profilers. Each of these tools facilitates a core task in the programming workflow which consumes cognitive resources when performed manually. In this thesis, we explore several tools that facilitate the process of building intelligent systems, and which reduce the cognitive effort required to design, develop, test and deploy intelligent software systems. First, we introduce an integrated development environment (IDE) for programming Robot Operating System (ROS) applications, called Hatchery (Chapter 2). Second, we describe Kotlin∇, a language and type system for differentiable programming, an emerging paradigm in machine learning (Chapter 3). Third, we propose a new algorithm for automatically testing differentiable programs, drawing inspiration from techniques in adversarial and metamorphic testing (Chapter 4), and demonstrate its empirical efficiency in the regression setting. Fourth, we explore a container infrastructure based on Docker, which enables reproducible deployment of ROS applications on the Duckietown platform (Chapter 5). Finally, we reflect on the current state of programming tools for these applications and speculate what intelligent systems programming might look like in the future (Chapter 6).