Process platform representation based on Unified Modelling Language (original) (raw)
Related papers
Process Platform-Based Production Configuration
Volume 2: 31st Design Automation Conference, Parts A and B, 2005
In nowadays' changing manufacturing environment, designing product families based on product platforms has been well accepted as an effective means to fulfill product customization. The current production practice and academic research of platform based product development mostly focus on the design domain, whereas limited attention is paid to how production can take advantage of product families for realizing economy of scale through enormous repetitions. This paper puts forward a concept of process platforms, based on which an efficient and cost saving production configuration for new members of a product family can be achieved. A process platform implies three aspects, including generic representation, generic structures and generic planning. The issues and rationale of production configuration based on a process platform are presented. A multilevel system of nested colored object-oriented Petri Nets with changeable structures is proposed to model the configuration of production processes. To construct a process platform from existing process data, a data mining approach based on text mining and tree matching is introduced to identify the generic process structure of a process family. An industrial example of high variety production of vibration motors for hand phones is also reported.
Function and process modeling for integrated product and manufacturing system platforms
Journal of Manufacturing Systems, 2014
Manufacturing companies face increasingly tougher individual customer requirements that force them to revise conceptual solutions for the redesigning of products. This situation limits the reuse of ready-made components and requires physical changes to the manufacturing system. In these settings, platforms must be prepared with greater flexibility to allow development over time. The corresponding platform models need to include conceptual considerations for products and manufacturing systems. The literature advocates functional modeling to capture these considerations but applies it separately to either the product domain or to the manufacturing domain. Further, its relationship to manufacturing processes is not expounded. Thus, functional modeling falls short of its potential to facilitate the integrated development of products and manufacturing systems. This paper puts forth an integrated platform model using functional modeling to capture the conceptual considerations for products and manufacturing systems together with the manufacturing processes. The model is tested for consistency and is illustrated by retrospectively studying a real case example from the automotive industry by modeling it according to the approach suggested. The example shows that the model facilitates an understanding of the design of products and their manufacturing systems, including functions shared across domains and across lifecycle phases. Thus, the model is proposed for the conceptual phase of designing aimed at reusing and redesigning components, machinery, manufacturing processes and design solutions.
Process platform planning for mass customisation production
International Journal of Mass Customisation, 2006
Current practice in developing product platforms only encompasses the design domain. It seldom, if at all, considers the impact of product platforms on production and, in turn, the implication of process data for product platform development. Hence, it is imperative for platform development to synchronise product and process variety from both design and production perspectives. In this paper, the concept of process platform planning is proposed to support variety synchronisation from design to production. A process platform involves three main aspects: 1 a common process structure shared by all process variants 2 the derivation of specific process variants from the common structure 3 the correspondence between product and process variety. The study suggests that planning a process platform is conducive to the synchronisation of product and process variety.
Product and production process modeling and configuration
Fundamenta Informaticae, 2013
Product configuration systems are an emerging technology that supports companies in deploying mass customization strategies. Such strategies need to cover the management of the whole customizable product cycle. Adding process modeling and configuration features to a product configurator may improve its ability to assist mass customization development. In this paper, we describe a modeling framework, PRODPROC, that allows one to model both a product and its production process. We first introduce our framework by describing how configurable products are modeled. Then, we describe the main features and capabilities offered to model production processes and to link them with the corresponding products models. The configuration task (namely, the procedure that, from a configurable object/activity generates a configured product/process) is then analyzed. We also outline a possible CSP-based implementation of a configurator. A comparison with some of the existing systems for product configuration and process modeling emphasizes that none of the considered system/tools offers the complete set of features supported by PRODPROC for interdependent product and process modeling/configuration. by combining a series of available components and options (modules, accessories, etc.) or by specifying suitable parameters (lengths, tensions, etc.). Actually, a configurable product does not correspond to a specific physical object, but identifies a set of (physical) objects that a company can realize. A configured product is a single variant of a configurable product, obtained by specifying each of its customizable attributes, which corresponds to a fully-specified physical object. The configuration process consists of a series of activities and operations ranging from the acquisition of information about the variant of the product requested by the customer, to the generation of data for its realization.
Process Platform and Production Configuration for Integrated Manufacturing and Service
2006 IEEE International Conference on Industrial Informatics, 2006
In regard to global competition, integrated manufacturing and service systems has emerged as a new manufacturing paradigm to assist manufacturers in achieving faster design, manufacturing and delivery of customer-specified products at low costs. The linchpin of realizing an economy of scale in production in such systems lies in routings to be adopted to produce product variety. This paper thus proposes a concept of production configuration as a means for manufacturers to obtain the set of optimal and similar routings for families of customized products. In turn the economy of scale in production can be achieved through production activity repetition and manufacturing resources reuse. Production configuration has been applied to the high variety production of vibration motors in a local electronics company. The preliminary results show the potential of production configuration for the quick and low cost product fulfillment for integrated manufacturing and service.
An Approach for Manufacturing Process Representation in Product Lifecycle Management
Key Engineering Materials, 2013
Current PLM systems have concentrated on product design, not on manufacturing engineering with its development of e.g. Material flows and layouts. This paper proposes an approach to describe how to represent the main required manufacturing process data using ontologies together with generic data standards. This approach makes it possible to develop translations between different software, and also providing users with the meaning of different concepts. It contributes to an efficient management of manufacturing information, with a focus on the material flow information as used in Discrete Event Simulation - DES.
IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 2000
The key challenge of implementing mass customization manufacturing lies in the variety dilemma exhibited by frequent design changes and recurrent process variations. A holistic view of variety handling gives rise to the importance of variety coordination from design to production. This paper proposes a concept of process platform for coordinating product and process variety. Fundamental issues of process platforms are studied regarding generic product and process structures, generic planning, and generic variety representation. Variety handlers and associated states are introduced to model the meta-structure inherent in variety coordination. A set of modeling formalisms are developed to provide a powerful syntactic model to support rigorous analysis and manipulation of process platforms, while facilitating the application of semantics to support process platform enactment and detailed observations from a number of perspectives involving customers, design and production. Also reported is a case study of mass customization manufacturing of vibration motors for mobile phone products. The managerial implications of process platform planning are further discussed.
Representing function-technology platform based on the unified modelling language
International Journal of Production Research, 2012
Product platforms are used in many industries to allow a variety of products to be offered to the market while levering commonality in components. The reported methodologies to design product platforms assume mature and stable design and manufacturing technologies. Consequently, product platforms are not applicable in the semiconductor equipment manufacturing industries, where the technologies keep evolving and cannot be frozen in the product development process. In response to the application limitations of traditional platforms, a concept of function-technology (FT) platform is put forward to assist the semiconductor equipment manufacturers to efficiently design product families by reusing, in a structured way, functions and technologies. To shed light on the diverse constituent elements and the complex relationships inherent in an FT platform, this study focuses on its structural representation. A formalism of FT platform representation is developed based on the Unified Modeling Language (UML). It consists of a generic functional structure, a generic technology structure and the mapping relationships in between. An application case in a well-known semiconductor equipment manufacturer is also reported to present the structure of an FT platform and its representation based on the UML.
Product-Process-System Information Formalization
This chapter introduces a conceptual framework for the integrated modeling of product, process and production system data. The work focuses on the Manufacturing System Design problem and aims at providing a common data structure as a reference for different methodologies and tools in this domain. The framework is flexible, extendible, scalable and has been developed as an object-oriented model by means of UML (Unified Modeling Language). Moreover, the proposed data model can have a wider applicability since it is based on shared standards and previous general frameworks. The concept of evolution has been introduced into the model, since it is essential to include market uncertainty in the design of competitive production systems. Finally, the developed framework has been translated into a relational database which can be interfaced with all the main phases of the system design approach presented in this book.