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Applied Sciences
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Assembly System Design in the Industry 4.0
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Assembly System Design in the Industry 4.0

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Mechanical Engineering".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2021) | Viewed by 22808

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Maurizio Faccio

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Guest Editor
Department of Management and Engineering, University of Padova, 36100 Vicenza, Italy
Interests: internal logistics; material handling; smart manufacturing; automation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Mauro Gamberi

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Guest Editor
Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Bologna, 40136 Bologna BO, Italy
Interests: the design and control of renewable energy plants and Manufacturing Systems & Logistics sustainable design and optimization
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Francesco Gabriele Galizia

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Guest Editor
Department of Industrial Engineering, Alma Mater Studiorum—University of Bologna, Viale del Risorgimento 2, 40136 Bologna, Italy
Interests: manufacturing systems; lean production; production systems; operations management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Francesco Pilati

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Guest Editor
Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Trento, 38122 Trento TN, Italy
Interests: digital production systems; assembly line design; urban logistics; healthcare processes optimization; environmental impact; social fairness
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In the last few years, Industry 4.0 (I4.0) has emerged as the fourth industrial revolution, enhancing manufacturing and assembly paradigms and driving them forward on the way to a knowledge-based and digital era. The final challenge is to create the so-called Smart Factory, an intelligent industrial context in which all the elements are integrated together and communicate in real-time.

In this scenario, reconfigurable, changeable, smart, and self-adaptive manufacturing and assembly systems falling in this category will be equipped with actuators, sensors, and control architectures to achieve elasticity and agility, and to enable the integration of real time data sources into service-oriented architectures.

This Special Issue aims to collect advanced research in theory and application on the “Assembly System Design in the Industry 4.0.”

Reviews, original models and quantitative methods, technologies, management techniques and disruptive approaches are welcomed as well as industrial case studies and experiences from the field. Relevant topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Design and management of smart assembly systems
  • Digital assembly and digital-twins
  • Human-Machine interaction in assembly systems
  • Machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques for assembly and manufacturing
  • Self-adaptive and self-learning assembly systems;
  • Intelligent support systems and augmented reality technologies for operator assistance
  • Human factors in assembly systems 4.0
  • Optimization and self-optimisation models for assembly line balancing and sequencing to quickly reconfigure the system
  • Self-configuration and self-diagnosis methods based on Internet of Things technologies
  • Novel industrial and real world case studies to test and spread the adoption of “Assembly System Design in the Industry 4.0”

Prof. Dr. Maurizio Faccio
Prof. Dr. Mauro Gamberi
Dr. Francesco Gabriele Galizia
Dr. Francesco Pilati
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

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Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

15 pages, 1134 KiB  
Article
Sales Kit Automated Production: An Integrated Procedure for Setup Reduction in Case of High Products Variety
by Matteo Bottin, Maurizio Faccio, Riccardo Minto and Giulio Rosati
Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(21), 10110; https://doi.org/10.3390/app112110110 - 28 Oct 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1963
Abstract
Nowadays, the demand for personalized goods is increasing, with small batches of customized products. Companies are asked to cope with this need to be more competitive; thus, it is crucial to optimally set up the production process to cope with the demand. Among [...] Read more.
Nowadays, the demand for personalized goods is increasing, with small batches of customized products. Companies are asked to cope with this need to be more competitive; thus, it is crucial to optimally set up the production process to cope with the demand. Among the products composed of several parts, sales kits occupy a significant role. Sales kits are sets of different components, supplied as a single unit. Automation is usually used to reduce the unit direct production costs for assembled products, and this is especially true for kitting since it has minimum added value, compared to other technologies. The wide range of components leads to frequent reconfiguration of the feeding devices between different products, increasing the setup time. The aim of this work is to provide a model that minimizes the setup times of automatic kitting systems when working with a high variety of products. To reach this goal, we propose to apply the traveling salesman problem (TSP) to the production process by integrating a multi-clustering model, thus increasing its appeal to several applications. This method is applied both to simulations and to a real case study, and proves to be able to provide a good solution in a reasonable time. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Assembly System Design in the Industry 4.0)
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31 pages, 1558 KiB  
Article
A Trimming Design Method Based on Bio-Inspired Design for System Innovation
by Peng Zhang, Xindi Li, Zifeng Nie, Fei Yu and Wei Liu
Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(9), 4060; https://doi.org/10.3390/app11094060 - 29 Apr 2021
Cited by 21 | Viewed by 3124
Abstract
The application of design knowledge determines the innovativeness of a technical scheme obtained by trimming (a tool for problem analysis and solving in TRIZ). However, limitations in the knowledge, experience and expertise of designers constrain the range of design knowledge that they can [...] Read more.
The application of design knowledge determines the innovativeness of a technical scheme obtained by trimming (a tool for problem analysis and solving in TRIZ). However, limitations in the knowledge, experience and expertise of designers constrain the range of design knowledge that they can apply, thus reducing the effectiveness of trimming. In this paper, biological strategies are introduced to the trimming process to compensate for limitations imposed by the insufficient professional knowledge of designers, thereby improving design innovation. Therefore, this paper proposes a new design method that combines the trimming method and bio-inspired design (BID). First, a trimming analysis of the target system is carried out. Taking the missing functions of the trimmed system as a potential breakthrough point, a keyword search mode based on “V(verb)O(object)P(property) + the effect/features of the associated function” is used to search for biological prototypes in the biological knowledge base. Second, a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method is used to analyze the biological prototypes from three dimensions, namely, compatibility, completeness and feasibility, and the best-matching biological prototype is selected. Finally, the biological solution is transformed into an engineering design scheme through a resource derivation process based on structure–function–attribute analogies. The proposed method can expand the range of design solutions by adding biological strategies as a new resource to solve trimming problems. The feasibility and effectiveness of the method are verified by redesigning a steel tape armoring machine. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Assembly System Design in the Industry 4.0)
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19 pages, 2273 KiB  
Article
Automotive Body Shop Design Problems Using Meta-Models Considering Product-Mix Change and Reconfiguration Strategy
by Dug Hee Moon, Dong Ok Kim and Yang Woo Shin
Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(6), 2748; https://doi.org/10.3390/app11062748 - 18 Mar 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2369
Abstract
The estimation of production rate (or throughput) is important in manufacturing system design. Herein, we consider the manufacturing system of an automotive body shop in which two types of car are produced, and one car (engine car) is substituted by the other car [...] Read more.
The estimation of production rate (or throughput) is important in manufacturing system design. Herein, we consider the manufacturing system of an automotive body shop in which two types of car are produced, and one car (engine car) is substituted by the other car (electric car) gradually. In this body shop, two different underbody lines are installed because the underbody structures of the two types of cars differ completely; however, the side body line and main body line are shared by the two cars. Furthermore, we assume that the underbody lines are reconfigurable based on an increase in the product mix of the electric car. A simulation-based meta-model, which is in the form of a quadratic polynomial function, is developed to estimate the production rate. In the meta-modelling process, we group some buffer locations and represent them as one variable to reduce the number of variables included in the meta-model. Subsequently, the meta-models have been used to optimize two types of buffer allocation problems, and optimal solutions are obtained easily. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Assembly System Design in the Industry 4.0)
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31 pages, 5402 KiB  
Article
A Dynamic Context-Aware Workflow Management Scheme for Cyber-Physical Systems Based on Multi-Agent System Architecture
by Fu-Shiung Hsieh
Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(5), 2030; https://doi.org/10.3390/app11052030 - 25 Feb 2021
Cited by 17 | Viewed by 2776
Abstract
Although Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) provides a paradigm to accommodate frequent changes in manufacturing sector, modeling and managing operations of CPS are challenging issues due to the complex interactions between entities in the system. Development of an effective context-aware workflow management system to guide [...] Read more.
Although Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) provides a paradigm to accommodate frequent changes in manufacturing sector, modeling and managing operations of CPS are challenging issues due to the complex interactions between entities in the system. Development of an effective context-aware workflow management system to guide the entities in the system is a critical factor to attain the potential benefits of CPS. In this paper, we will address the issue on the design of context-aware workflow management systems for CPS in IoT-enabled manufacturing environment. A CPS consists two parts, the Physical World and the Cyber World. To achieve the goal to design a context-aware information system for CPS, the Cyber World models of the entities in the system are constructed based on discrete timed Petri nets (DTPN) and a multi-agent system architecture in which each entity in the system is modeled as an agent to capture the interactions of entities in CPS. To develop context-aware workflow management systems for CPS, a Configuration/Scheduling Feasibility Problem and a Context Generation Problem in CPS are formulated. A condition for configuration/scheduling feasibility based on transformation of the Cyber World Models is established to develop an algorithm to generate contextual information to guide the operation of CPS. The proposed method is illustrated by examples. A series of experiments have been conducted to demonstrate the practicality of the proposed method in terms of computation time and response time. The results indicate that the computation time and total response time increase polynomially with respect to problem size parameters and show that the proposed method is effective in solving real problems. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Assembly System Design in the Industry 4.0)
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17 pages, 38218 KiB  
Article
Adaptive Automation Assembly Systems in the Industry 4.0 Era: A Reference Framework and Full–Scale Prototype
by Marco Bortolini, Maurizio Faccio, Francesco Gabriele Galizia, Mauro Gamberi and Francesco Pilati
Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(3), 1256; https://doi.org/10.3390/app11031256 - 29 Jan 2021
Cited by 39 | Viewed by 6624
Abstract
Industry 4.0 emerged in the last decade as the fourth industrial revolution aiming at reaching greater productivity, digitalization and operational efficiency standard. In this new era, if compared to automated assembly systems, manual assembly systems (MASs) are still characterized by wide flexibility but [...] Read more.
Industry 4.0 emerged in the last decade as the fourth industrial revolution aiming at reaching greater productivity, digitalization and operational efficiency standard. In this new era, if compared to automated assembly systems, manual assembly systems (MASs) are still characterized by wide flexibility but poor productivity levels. To reach acceptable performances in terms of both productivity and flexibility, higher automation levels are required to increase the skills and capabilities of the human operators with the aim to design next-generation assembly systems having higher levels of adaptivity and collaboration between people and automation/information technology. In the current literature, such systems are called adaptive automation assembly systems (A3Ss). For A3Ss, few design approaches and industrial prototypes are available. This paper, extending a previous contribution by the Authors, expands the lacking research in the field and proposes a general framework guiding toward A3S effective design and validation. The framework is applied to a full-scale prototype, highlighting its features together with the technical- and human-oriented improvements arising from its adoption. Specifically, evidence from this study show a set of benefits from adopting innovative A3Ss in terms of reduction of the assembly cycle time (about 30%) with a consequent increase of the system productivity (about 45%) as well as relevant improvements of ergonomic posture indicators (about 15%). The definition of a general framework for A3S design and validation and the integration of the productivity and ergonomic analysis of such systems are missing in the current literature, representing an element of innovation. Globally, this research paper provides advanced knowledge to guide research, industrial companies and practitioners in switching from traditional to advanced assembly systems in the emerging Industry 4.0 era matching current industrial and market features. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Assembly System Design in the Industry 4.0)
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37 pages, 5657 KiB  
Article
Development of Morphology Analysis-Based Technology Roadmap Considering Layer Expansion Paths: Application of TRIZ and Text Mining
by Lijie Feng, Yuxiang Niu and Jinfeng Wang
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10(23), 8498; https://doi.org/10.3390/app10238498 - 28 Nov 2020
Cited by 14 | Viewed by 4372
Abstract
Morphology analysis (MA)-based roadmapping has been considered an effective means to support the process of technology innovation in a business environment. However, previous research on MA-based roadmaps has commonly focused on the process of developing existing technology roadmaps (TRMs), while the paths of [...] Read more.
Morphology analysis (MA)-based roadmapping has been considered an effective means to support the process of technology innovation in a business environment. However, previous research on MA-based roadmaps has commonly focused on the process of developing existing technology roadmaps (TRMs), while the paths of layer expansion for seeking new opportunities is rarely a focus. Thus, the aim of this research is to develop MA-based TRMs by utilizing MA to describe the characteristics of the technology and product layers in the TRMs and apply the improved theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ) inventive principles to establish innovation paths for new opportunities with the aid of text mining tools. This study suggests using a morphological matrix to construct existing TRMs by calculating the correlations among different technology and product nodes and two sparse generative topographic mapping (SGTM)-based maps to discover new technology and product opportunities by identifying technology and product development trends and innovation elements in sparse areas, which is the objective of simplifying TRIZ application. To illustrate the performance of the proposed approach, a case study is conducted using patents and product manuals for underwater vehicles, which are becoming popular high-tech and secure tools to explore sub-sea resources. This approach contributes by suggesting a semi-autonomous and systematic procedure to extend the existing MA-based TRM and simplifying TRIZ application according to the occurrence frequency of the keywords. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Assembly System Design in the Industry 4.0)
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