Computer-aided production engineering

Computer -aided production engineering ( CAPE ) is a relatively new and important branch of the art. Global production has changed the environment in which goods are produced. It is now required by the rapid development of electronics and communication technologies design and manufacturing to keep up.

Description

CAPE is regarded as a new type of computer -aided engineering environment, which aims to improve the productivity of the manufacturing or industrial engineers. This environment would be used by engineers to design future manufacturing systems and subsystems and implement. Currently working on the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST ) to CAPE systems. The NIST project aims at supporting the development of software environments and tools for the development and design of manufacturing systems to the target.

CAPE and the future of manufacturing

The future of manufacturing will be determined by the efficiency with which they can integrate new technologies. The current process of the development of manufacturing systems is often an ad hoc and used with only limited computer-based tools. Given the cost and resources in the construction and operation of production, 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, in need of the product designers CAD systems, manufacturing and industrial engineers need sophisticated calculation capabilities to solve complex problems and to manage the huge associated with the construction of a manufacturing system data.

To solve these complex problems and manage design data computer-based tools must be used in scientific and engineering methods to the problem of design and implementation of manufacturing systems. Engineers have the entire factory as a system, consider its interactions and its surroundings. Components of a factory system are:

• The physical system in which the production is housed,
• The production facilities that perform the manufacturing operations,
• The technologies used for the production,
• Jobs / stations, machines, equipment, tools and materials that are included in production or used
• The various support facilities and
• The relationship between the plant and its environment.

CAPE does not only relate to the original design and the design of the factory, but also improvement in the course of time. CAPE should support standard engineering methods and problem solving techniques to automate simple tasks and provide reference data to support decision making.

The environment should help to ensure that engineers are more productive and effective in their work. CAPE would be implemented on personal computers or engineering workstations that are configured with appropriate peripherals. Engineering tool developers will need to incorporate the following functions and data that are used by different disciplines:

• Manufacturing, industrial and systems engineering,
• Material processing and quality control,
• Environmental technology,
• Mathematical modeling / simulation, statistical process control and computer science and
• Profitability and cost analysis, and business management.

Many methods, formulas, and data are assigned to these technical fields, there are currently only in engineering handbooks. Although some computer-based tools are available, they are often very specialized, difficult to use and do not share information or do not work together. Engineering software from different manufacturers must be made compatible with an open system architecture and interface standards.

How CAPE will look

CAPE is based on computer systems that provide a set of integrated design and engineering tools. These software tools are used by manufacturing engineers a company to improve production systems continuously. They will continue to manage information about manufacturing resources, improve production capacity and develop new equipment and systems. Engineers working at various jobs will share information on a common database.

With CAPE a team of engineers will be able to prepare detailed plans and working models for an entire factory within days. Alternative solutions for production problems could be quickly developed and evaluated. This would be a significant improvement over previous manual methods that can require weeks or months of intense activity.

To achieve this goal, a new set of engineering tools is needed. Examples of functions that should be supported include:

• Identification of product specifications and requirements of the production,
• Feasibility Study for products and modification of product designs to account Herstellbarkeitsfragen, management, planning and tracking projects,
• Modeling and specification of manufacturing processes, plant layout and building design,
• Into account the different Wirtschaftlichkeits-/Kostenkompromisse various manufacturing processes, equipment, tools and materials,
• Analysis to support the selection of systems / suppliers and procurement of production equipment and support systems,
• Tasks and workplace design and
• Compliance with various regulations, norms and standards and the control of hazardous materials.

The tools to implement these functions must be highly automated and integrated, and must allow a fast access to a wide range of data. This data must be in a format that is accessible and usable by the engineering tools, maintained. Some examples of the information that may be contained in these electronic libraries include:

• Production process models and data and generic manufacturing system configurations,
• Machinery and equipment specifications and supplier catalogs,
• Recommended methods, practices, algorithms, etc., and benchmarking data,
• Typical Anlagen-/System-Layouts,
• Cost estimation models, labor costs, other cost data and budget templates and
• Time standards, industry standards, project plans and laws / authorities.

These online libraries would allow engineers to rapidly develop on the work of others based solutions.

Another critical aspect of this engineering environment is affordability, which can best be achieved by designing an environment that, instead, is composed of special hardware and software from inexpensive, mass-produced commercial products. The basic engineering environment must be affordable. For cost and technical reasons, it must be designed so that it is able to perform incremental upgrades. Incremental upgrades would allow companies to add features that they need. Commercial software products simply need to install and can be integrated into other already in operation in the software. These functions already exist to a limited extent in commercial universal software, such as word processing, databases and spreadsheets.

Technical concerns

Many technical issues must be considered in the design and development of 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
• Installation of intelligent behavior in the tools.

There are three important elements that will be addressed: the creation of a common manufacturing system - information model with the help of an engineering life-cycle approach and the development of a software tool integration frameworks.

The resolution of these elements will help to ensure that independently developed systems will be able to work together. The common information model should

• The core elements of the manufacturing process and their relationships to each other,
• Carried out by each member functions or processes,
• The tools, materials and information that are needed to perform those functions and
• The efficiency measurements, the model and its component elements

Identify.

In recent years many efforts have been made to develop information models for different aspects of the production, but no known existing model to meet the needs of a CAPE environment. Therefore, a life cycle approach is needed to identify the different processes that must support a CAPE environment, and define all the phases of a manufacturing system or the existence of a subsystem. Some of the important phases that can be contained in a system life- cycle approach, are requirements for identification, system design specifications, vendor selection, system development and upgrades, installation, testing and training and benchmarking of production.

Management, coordination and administrative functions must be performed in each phase of the life cycle. Phases can be repeated over time, such a system can be expanded or redeveloped to meet changing requirements or integrate new technology environment.

A software tool integration framework should specify how the tools independently designed and developed. The framework would specify how CAPE tools to deal with shared services, interact with each other and coordinate problem -solving activities. Although employ some existing software products and standards with shared services, the problem of tool interaction remains largely unresolved. The problem of tool interaction is not limited to the field of computer -aided manufacturing engineering systems - it is pervasive in the software industry.

Capes current status

A first CAPE environment was established by COTS software packages (of English. Commercial off -the-shelf ). This new environment is used to

• Commercially available tools that CAPE functions can be performed to demonstrate,
• To develop a better understanding and to define functional requirements for individual engineering tools and the entire environment and
• To identify integration issues that must be resolved in order to implement compatible environments in the future.

Several technical demonstrations with COTS tools are in development. Those demonstrations are designed to illustrate the different types of functions that must be carried out in the development of a manufacturing system. Functions that are supported by the current COTS environment: system specification / charting, flow charting, computer simulation, CAD products, plant layout, material flow analysis, ergonomic workplace design, mathematical modeling, statistical analysis, line balancing, simulation of manufacturing processes, investment analysis, project management knowledge-based system development, spreadsheets, document preparation, the development of user interfaces, documents, illustrations, forms and database management.