REENGINEERING THE ASSEMBLY PROCESSES OF PRINTED CIRCUIT BOARDS:A CASE STUDY

This paper reports the reengineering of the assembly processes of printed circuit boards (PCBs) used in computers.The new designed assembly processes are quite different from the traditional ones,and the business performance is dramatically improved through establishing parallel workstations,off line workstation,merging workstations and organizing a small teamwork who cooperates in stations.“ITHINK”,a software package of business process reengineering (BPR),was used to analyze the current processes and create new processes.ITHINK is a powerful tool of BPR in modeling business processes,“soft” variables and conducting sensitivity analysis.The new assembly processes were tested over a period of 8 hours simulation.The results show that the new processes can increase throughput by 80% with only requiring less additional resources.The throughput can increase further by 17.5% when a small teamwork cooperates in some stations.

Integrated Virtual Assembly Process Planning System

Assembly process planning（APP） for complicated products is a time-consuming and difficult work with conventional method. Virtual assembly process planning（VAPP） provides engineers a new and efficiency way. Previous studies in VAPP are almost isolated and dispersive, and have not established a whole understanding and discussed key realization techniques of VAPP from a systemic and integrated view. The integrated virtual assembly process planning（IVAPP） system is a new virtual reality based engineering application, which offers engineers an efficient, intuitive, immersive and integrated method for assembly process planning in a virtual environment. Based on analysis the information integration requirement of VAPP, the architecture of IVAPP is proposed. Through the integrated structure, IVAPP system can realize information integration and workflow controlling. In order to mode/the assembly process in IVAPP, a hierarchical assembly task list（HATL） is presented, in which different assembly tasks for assembling different components are organized into a hierarchical list. A process-oriented automatic geometrical constraint recognition algorithm（AGCR） is proposed, so that geometrical constraints between components can be automatically recognized during the process of interactive assembling. At the same time, a progressive hierarchical reasoning（PHR） model is discussed. AGCR and PHR will greatly reduce the interactive workload. A discrete control node model（DCNM） for cable harness assembly planning in IVAPP is detailed. DCNM converts a cable harness into continuous flexed line segments connected by a series of section center points, and designs can realize cable harness planning through controlling those control nodes. Mechanical assemblies （such as transmission case and engine of automobile） are used to illustrate the feasibility of the proposed method and algorithms. The application of IVAPP system reveals advantages over the traditional assembly process planning method in shortening the time-consumed in assembly planning and in minimizing the handling difficulty, excessive reorientation and dissimilarity of assembly operations.

Digital Twin-based Quality Management Method for the Assembly Process of Aerospace Products with the Grey-Markov Model and Apriori Algorithm

The assembly process of aerospace products such as satellites and rockets has the characteristics of single-or small-batch production,a long development period,high reliability,and frequent disturbances.How to predict and avoid quality abnormalities,quickly locate their causes,and improve product assembly quality and efficiency are urgent engineering issues.As the core technology to realize the integration of virtual and physical space,digital twin(DT)technology can make full use of the low cost,high efficiency,and predictable advantages of digital space to provide a feasible solution to such problems.Hence,a quality management method for the assembly process of aerospace products based on DT is proposed.Given that traditional quality control methods for the assembly process of aerospace products are mostly post-inspection,the Grey-Markov model and T-K control chart are used with a small sample of assembly quality data to predict the value of quality data and the status of an assembly system.The Apriori algorithm is applied to mine the strong association rules related to quality data anomalies and uncontrolled assembly systems so as to solve the issue that the causes of abnormal quality are complicated and difficult to trace.The implementation of the proposed approach is described,taking the collected centroid data of an aerospace product’s cabin,one of the key quality data in the assembly process of aerospace products,as an example.A DT-based quality management system for the assembly process of aerospace products is developed,which can effectively improve the efficiency of quality management for the assembly process of aerospace products and reduce quality abnormalities.

COMPUTER-AIDED BLOCK ASSEMBLY PROCESS PLANNING IN SHIPBUILD-ING BASED ON RULE-REASONING

Computer-aided block assembly process planning based on rule-reasoning are developed in order to improve the assembly efficiency and implement the automated block assembly process planning generation in shipbuilding. First, weighted directed liaison graph （WDLG） is proposed to represent the model of block assembly process according to the characteristics of assembly relation, and edge list （EL） is used to describe assembly sequences. Shapes and assembly attributes of block parts are analyzed to determine the assembly position and matched parts of parts used frequently. Then, a series of assembly rules are generalized, and assembly sequences for block are obtained by means of rule reasoning. Final, a prototype system of computer-aided block assembly process planning is built. The system has been tested on actual block, and the results were found to be quite efficiency. Meanwhile, the fundament for the automation of block assembly process generation and integration with other systems is established.

Optimization of Rotor Assembly Process of Rotor Initial Unbalance of an Aeroengine Gas Generator

The rotor initial unbalance of an aeroengine gas generator of turboshaft engine seriously affects rotor assembly process.To reasonably optimize rotor assembly process,the effect analyses of rotor initial unbalance of single disc and combined discs on rotor dynamic characteristics are firstly implemented in respect of the dispersity of rotor initial unbalance.It is found that the most important factors contributing to rotor vibration are the unbalances of the first stage compressor disc and the second stage turbine disc.However,reducing the mass of two discs conflicts with the control of the whole gas generator rotor balance resulting from the unbalance increase of single components.Thus,we further analyze the key control factors of affecting rotor initial unbalance,and give the strict control measures of centrifugal impeller runout in the assembly process by adjusting the angle of central tie rod axis.The purpose of this measures to make the assembly process simpler and more effective for timely controlling rotor initial unbalance.The efforts of this study validate that the proposed method is workable for the rotor tightened by a central tie rod and possesses the significant meaning of practical application in engineering.

Quality Stability of Multi-Station Assembly Process Based on Variation Stream

To analyze the physical structure of assembly process and assure product quality, the quality stability of multi-station assembly process was investigated. First, the assembly process was modeled as a one-dimensional discrete variant system by state space equation based on variation stream. Then, the criterion to judge whether the process is stable or not and the index, stability degree, to show the level of stability were proposed by analyzing the bounded-input bounded-output (BIBO) stability of system. Finally, a simulated example of a sheet metal assembly process with three stations, was provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Semantic Entity Recognition and Relation Construction Method for Assembly Process Document

Assembly process documents record the designers'intention or knowledge.However,common knowl-edge extraction methods are not well suitable for assembly process documents,because of its tabular form and unstructured natural language texts.In this paper,an assembly semantic entity recognition and relation con-struction method oriented to assembly process documents is proposed.First,the assembly process sentences are extracted from the table through concerned region recognition and cell division,and they will be stored as a key-value object file.Then,the semantic entities in the sentence are identified through the sequence tagging model based on the specific attention mechanism for assembly operation type.The syntactic rules are designed for realizing automatic construction of relation between entities.Finally,by using the self-constructed corpus,it is proved that the sequence tagging model in the proposed method performs better than the mainstream named entity recognition model when handling assembly process design language.The effectiveness of the proposed method is also analyzed through the simulation experiment in the small-scale real scene,compared with manual method.The results show that the proposed method can help designers accumulate knowledge automatically and efficiently.

Soil amendment strategies determining microbial community composition and their assembly processes in a continuously cropped soil

Reductive soil disinfestation(RSD)is an important tool for sustainable agricultural productivity.However,the differences in soil bacterial communities and their community assembly processes among RSD and other treatment strategies(e.g.,biochar and chemical fumigation)are still subject to open questions.In this study,soils subjected to various treatments–un-treated control(CK),chemical soil fumigation with CaCN2(CF),1%biochar(1%B),3%biochar(3%B),and reductive soil disinfestation(RSD)are investigated.Soil samples were collected,incubated,and then used for growth of tomato plants.The Sloan neutral community model indicates that stochastic processes dominate in bacterial community assembly for both biochar and CF amendments.In contrast,this work shows that RSD treatment can have a strong impact on soil bacterial community composition.The relative abundance of Firmicutes increased during unplanted soil incubation,whereas Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes dominated in the rhizosphere after planting of tomatoes.Normalized stochasticity ratio reveals that deterministic selection played an important role in the bacterial assembly under RSD amendment.We found that RSD amendment yielded lower biomass than that for other treatments after 28 days of tomato growth.Our results suggest that although RSD treatment has great potential to rebuild soil bacterial ecology by shaping bacterial communities and their assembly processes,it is important to monitor and manage soil conditions(e.g.,soil nutrients or physical properties)before planting to ensure plant productivity.

Assembly process and source tracking of microbial communities in sediments of Dongting Lake

●Soil erosion resulted in homogenization of bacterial communities in the watershed.●Microbial community heterogeneity among erosion sites made soil tracing possible.●Assembly process results showed that the tracking results can achieve high precision.●Dryland was the main source of sediment deposition based on the result of FEAST.Sediment source tracing can accurately provide a theoretical basis for controlling soil erosion effectively,by identifying the most serious types of land use.Traditional sediment tracing methods are based on physical,chemical,biological,and composite fingerprinting,which have not included microbes.As high-throughput sequencing becomes more prevalent,microorganisms can provide more information than what we think.Thus,whether the microorganism can also be used as a special fingerprint factor for sediment source identification during soil erosion,we have tested it by using microbial source tracking tool FEAST to quantify the microbe contribution from five types of eroded land(including dryland,urban,paddy field,forest and grassland)to the depositional areas(Niubitan)in the Yuanjiang basin.The source microbial community in the erosive area was heterogeneous,and assembly process analysis further demonstrated that the source tracking results could reach higher accuracy.The results of FEAST showed that dryland(35.50%),urban(17.21%),paddy field(8.14%),and forest(1.07%)were the major contributors to Niubitan.Our results follow the general soil erosion rules and prove its validity.Taken together,a new perspective is provided by these results for tracing sediment sources in erosion-sedimentary systems.

Evaluating Methods of Visual Assistance for Workers to Improve Quality and Usability in Individualized Kitchen Cabinet Assembly

In times of digitalisation, visual assistance systems in assembly are increasingly important. The design of these assembly systems needs to be highly complex to meet the requirements. Due to the increasing number of variants in production processes, as well as shorter innovation and product life cycles, assistance systems should improve quality and reduce complexity of assembly processes. However, many large kitchen manufacturers still assemble kitchen cabinets manually, due to the high variety of components, such as rails and fittings. This paper focuses on the analysis and evaluation of virtual assistance systems to improve quality and usability in individualised kitchen cabinet assembly processes at a large German manufacturer. A solution is identified and detailed.

An Interactive Assembly Process Planner

This paper describes the implementation and performance of the virtual assembly support sys-tem (VASS), a new system that can provide designers and assembly process engineers with a simulation and visualization environment where they can evaluate the assemblability/disassemblability of products, and thereby use a computer to intuitively create assembly plans and interactively generate assembly process charts. Subassembly planning and assembly priority reasoning techniques were utilized to find heuristic information to improve the efficiency of assembly process planning. Tool planning was imple-mented to consider tool requirements in the product design stage. New methods were developed to reduce the computation amount involved in interference checking. As an important feature of the VASS, human interaction was integrated into the whole process of assembly process planning, extending the power of computer reasoning by including human expertise, resulting in better assembly plans and better designs.

The spatial variation of soil bacterial community assembly processes affects the accuracy of source tracking in ten major Chinese cities

Urban soils harbor billions of bacterial cells and millions of species.However,the distribution patterns and assembly processes of bacterial communities remain largely uncharacterized in urban soils.It is also unknown if we can use the bacteria to track soil sources to certain cities and districts.Here,Illumina MiSeq sequencing was used to survey soil bacterial communities from 529 random plots spanning 61 districts and 10 major cities in China.Over a 3,000 km range,community similarity declined with increasing geographic distance(Mantel r=0.62),and community composition was clustered by city(R^(2)=0.50).Within cities(<100 km),the aforementioned biogeographic patterns were weakened.Process analysis showed that homogenizing dispersal and dispersal limitation dominated soil bacterial assembly at small and large spatial scales,respectively.Accordingly,the probabilities of accurately tracking random soil sources to certain cities and districts were 90.0% and 66.7%,respectively.When the tested samples originated from cities that were more than 1,265 km apart,the soil sources could be identified with nearly 100% accuracy.Overall,this study demonstrates the strong distance-decay relationship and the clear geographic zoning of urban soil bacterial communities among cities.The varied importance of different community assembly processes at multiple spatial scales strongly affects the accuracy of microbial source tracking.

COMPUTER SIMULATION OF 3-DIMENSIONAL DYNAMIC ASSEMBLY PROCESS OF MECHANICAL ROTATIONAL BODY

Focusing on the study of the components of mechanical rotational body,the data structure and algorithm of component model generation are discussed.Some problems in assembly process of 3 dimensional graph of components are studied in great detail.

Effect of soil archaea on N_(2)O emission in alpine permafrost

Soil microbial communities are pivotal in permafrost biogeochemical cycles,yet the variations of abundant and rare microbial taxa and their impacts on greenhouse gas emissions in different seasons,remain elusive,especially in the case of soil archaea.Here,we conducted a study on soil abundant and rare archaeal taxa during the growing and non-growing seasons in the active layer of alpine permafrost in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau.The results suggested that,for the archaeal communities in the sub-layer,abundant taxa exhibited higher diversity,while rare taxa maintained a more stable composition from the growing to non-growing season.Water soluble organic carbon and soil porosity were the most significant environmental variables affecting the compositions of abundant and rare taxa,respectively.Stochastic and deterministic processes dominated the assemblies of rare and abundant taxa,respectively.The archaeal ecological network influenced N_(2)O flux through different modules.Rare taxa performed an essential role in stabilizing the network and exerting important effects on N_(2)O flux.Our study provides a pioneering and comprehensive investigation aimed at unravelling the mechanisms by which archaea or other microorganisms influence greenhouse gas emissions in the alpine permafrost.

A review of cable layout design and assembly simulation in virtual environments

The layout and assembly of flexible cables play important roles in the design and development of complex electromechanical products.The rationality of cable layout design and the reliability of cable assembly greatly affect product quality.In this paper,we review the methods of cable layout design,cable assembly process planning,and cable assembly simulation.We first review research on flexible cable layout design(both interactive and automatic).Then,research on the cable assembly process planning,including cable assembly path and manipulation planning,is reviewed.Finally,cable assembly simulation is introduced,which includes general cable information,cable collision detection data,and cable assembly process modeling.Current problems and future research directions are summarized at the end of the paper.

An Optimal Solutions to Job Planning Problems in the Assembly Shop by Timed Petri Net

Job planning (JP) systems shop oriented provide a basis for job shop scheduling and control in organizing short term production activities. This paper presents a method based on timed Petri net (TPN) method that is used to program optimal JP for assembly shop. It includes three parts further. Firstly, an architecture of solutions to JP problems for any kind of shop oriented is presented to define a particular JP for a designated JP problem. Secondly, Petri net model is specified for aircraft part assembly processes. Finally, algorithms for optimizing generation of dynamic mechanism and a simulating case are then discussed. In comparison with traditional methods such as PERT or CPM, it is obviously convenient for planners or schedulers to schedule and manage assembly processes.

Phylogenetic diversity of eastern Asia-eastern North America disjunct plants is mainly associated with divergence time

The underlying causes of biodiversity disparities among geographic regions have long been a fundamental theme in ecology and evolution.However,the patterns of phylogenetic diversity(PD) and phylogenetic beta diversity(PBD) of congeners that are disjunctly distributed between eastern Asia-eastern North America(EA-ENA disjuncts) and their associated factors remain unknown.Here we investigated the standardized effect size of PD(SES-PD),PBD,and potentially associated factors in 11natural mixed forest sites(five in EA and six in ENA) where abundant EA-ENA disjuncts occur.We found that the disjuncts in ENA possessed higher SES-PD than those in EA at the continental scale(1.96vs-1.12),even though the number of disjunct species in ENA is much lower than in EA(128 vs 263).SESPD of the EA-ENA disjuncts tended to decrease with increasing latitude in 11 sites.The latitudinal diversity gradient of SES-PD was stronger in EA sites than in ENA sites.Based on the unweighted unique fraction metric(UniFrac) distance and the phylogenetic community dissimilarity,PBD showed that the two northern sites in EA were more similar to the six-site ENA group than to the remaining southern EA sites.Based on the standardized effect size of mean pairwise distances(SES-MPD),nine of eleven studied sites showed a neutral community structure(-1.96 ≤SES-MPD ≤1.96).Both Pearson’s r and structural equation modeling suggested that SES-PD of the EA-ENA disjuncts was mostly associated with mean divergence time.Moreover,SES-PD of the EA-ENA disjuncts was positively correlated with temperaturerelated climatic factors,although negatively correlated with mean diversification rate and community structure.By applying approaches from phylogenetics and community ecology,our work sheds light on historical patterns of the EA-ENA disjunction and paves the way for further research.

Environmental similarity is more important than distance in the community structuring processes of ammonia-oxidizing archaea in agricultural soils

Ammonia-oxidizing archaea(AOA) are important in converting ammonia into nitrate in soils. While many aspects of their community structure have been studied, the relative importance of stochastic versus deterministic processes has poorly been understood. We compared AOA communities across the North China Plain, targeting the amoA gene. A phylogenetic null modelling approach was used to calculate the beta nearest taxon index to quantify the influence of stochastic and deterministic processes. We found that spatial distance between samples predicted the perceived processes involved in community structuring, with stochastic processes dominating at local scales. At greater distances, stochasticity became weaker. However, soil pH, which was also the strongest determinant of AOA community, was a much stronger predictor of community structuring, leaving the distance effect redundant as an explanation of community structuring processes. The communities of AOA differing by less than 1 pH unit differed mainly stochastically in terms of operational taxonomic unit composition. At larger pH differences, deterministic processes based on heterogeneous selection between clades became increasingly dominant. It appears that AOA community composition is largely determined by the environment. However, very similar pH environments are the exception. In environments with very close pH values, stochastic effects dominantly cause differences in community composition, whether spatially near or far.

Oil Pocket's Bearing Capacity Analysis of Liquid Hydrostatic Worktable in Gantry Moving Milling Center

Durning the design process of hydrostatic rotary worktable,the processing and assembly tolerance,（the offset of worktable and the gap of the oil film’s thickness）is ignored.But it will cause that the real bearing of oil pocket deviates from the initial design value,and then the performance of rotary worktable will be reduced significantly.Up to now,no effort is found toward the research of influence of the processing and assembly tolerance on the performance of the rotary worktable.So the hydrostatic oil film is assumed as the elastomer in this paper,and then the bearing capacity of the oil pocket is studied with and without the mass offset of the worktable by taking an expression between the bearing capacity and the oil film’s thickness of the oil pocket as the deform compatibility equation.The influence of the processing tolerance of the oil sealing belt’s gap on the bearing capacity of the oil pocket is analyzed.In the light of the liquid hydrostatic worktable of Gantry Moving Milling Center using on the scene,the oil pocket’s pressure of the worktable is tested using Rotary Worktable Test System under the circumstance of the mass offset of the worktable and the gap tolerance of the oil sealing belt,and then the equivalent offset of worktable,the average pressure of the oil pocket and the actual thickness of the oil film are analyzed respectively.The test results show that the bearing capacity component of the oil pocket caused by G is consistent,and the component caused by M is relative to the position of the oil pocket.When the oil sealing belt’s gap is larger than the theoretical value,the bearing capacity of the oil pocket is smaller than the others;whereas the bearing capacity of the oil pocket is larger than the others.The maximum and minimum equivalent offsets are 0.256 4 mm and 0.047 5 mm,respectively,and the average oil pocket pressure varies from 0.345 MPa to 0.460 MPa,the maximum and minimum value of the actual oil film thickness are 109.976？m（No.7 oil pocket）and 93.467？m（No.10 oil pocket）,respectively.The research results can be used to detect the offset of the worktable and the actual thickness of the oil film under processing and assembly tolerance,and provides a basis way for detecting the processing and assembly tolerance of rotary worktable signing reasonably of Gantry Moving Milling Center.

Cladophora as ecological engineer:A new test from the largest lake of Qinghai-Tibet plateau with filamentous algal blooms

Filamentous algae blooms(FABs)have been increasing globally in recent years,and their presence can have both harmful and beneficial effects on aquatic ecosystems.As one of the most common FABs,Cladophora blooms have been reported in the lakes of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau during the past few years.However,there have been few studies focused on how FABs impact other aquatic organisms,especially in alpine lakes since these are at the forefront of responding to global climate change.In this study,the phytoplankton communities in different regions of Qinghai Lake were profiled in different seasons using meta-barcode sequencing.The phytoplankton assemblages in areas with Cladophora blooms were compared to those without Cladophora.The phytoplankton community structure correlated with physicochemical properties including water temperature,electrical conductivity,nitrate,and the presence or absence of Cladophora blooms.The relative abundance of Bacillariophytes was found to be higher in zones with Cladophora blooms than in other regions.Significant seasonal changes in phytoplankton biomass andβdiversity were observed in zones with Cladophora blooms.Growth and microbial degradation of Cladophora can change the pH,dissolved oxygen,secchi depth,and nitrate.Together with seasonal temperature and electrical conductivity changes,Cladophora growth can significantly impact the phytoplankton biomass,community dissimilarity and assembly process.These results showed that Cladophora plays a key role in littoral aquatic ecosystem ecology.