Applied Research

Download Model Based Approach to Design Modular Plant Architectures

Download Collaborative Production on the Basis of Object Oriented Software

Engineering Principles

Download MULTI-AGENT MANUFACTURING CONTROL: AN INDUSTRIAL CASE STUDY

Programme: FP5

Project full title: Modular Plant Architecture

Partners WZL, ITIA, PMA, TTS, Picanol, Schreiter, Becker, Behr, Bosch, RBET, Aditec, CertiCon, SZTAKI

Technologies Object Oriented Data Base (OODB), virtual reality, agent-based production control, Java-based simulation and emulation systems.

Concept:

Modern production industry in Europe facing the challenges of an open, dynamic and distributed market is forced to react appropriately in order to promote competitive and sustainable growth. There are various levels on which this reaction can be done. The MPA-project addresses three of them.

First, the level of production resources (machinery and equipment): Multiple production sites and dynamic customer requirements in different European regions induce a field of tension in which resources should be standardised and specialised, flexible and adaptive. Standardised and specialized resources serve to getting technology expertness at all sites. Flexible resources facilitate an agile reaction on changing boundary conditions and customer needs. Adaptive resources make possible the (re-) combination of resource modules and their increased reusability. The MPA-project aims at a new generation of production resources which are positioned optimally in this field of tension and combine the advantages of standardisation and specialisation.

Second, the level of factory organisation: The use of a new generation of production resources reveals innovative opportunities and challenges in designing factory's shop floor organisation. Production structures, processes, resources and their interrelation have to be built up and organised effectively. For instance, interfaces between material and information flow within one production site as well as between distributed sites have to be coordinated in order to decrease waste of time and capacity and to increase productivity. So called modularised architectures and platforms are promising concepts for future factories. The MPA-project aims at a modern, modular platform-oriented factory organisation.

Third, the level of the factory planning processes: Expenditures for planning and design of production systems are up to 10 to 20 percent of the total investment amount. Additionally, factory planning is intensively time-consuming. Newer information technologies, like producing engineering software which is based on Virtual Reality (VR), are suitable means to reduce the time on a certain job and to improve planning results. The MAP-project aims at easily using VR-technology for factory planning with a new agent-based component which leads especially to a (semi-) automated configuration and control of resource and organisation modules. 

Finally, applying the results at the above three levels leads to an integrated Modular Plant Architecture (MPA).