SHARING AND PLANNING OF DISTRIBUTED EQUIPMENT FOR NETWORKED MANUFACTURING

Efficient utilization of the equipment distributed in different enterprises and optimal allocation of these resources is an important concern for networked manufacturing. The third party based equipment sharing approach is put forward to optimize the utilization of distributed equipment for networked manufacturing; Taking advantage of the shared equipment offered by equipment providers by means of lease agreement, the third party carries out production by establishing networked virtual factory. Operational mechanism of the third party based equipment sharing is discussed, and characteristics of this approach in achieving resource allocation are analyzed. Shared equipment planning is formulated as an optimization problem with the objective of maximizing profits for equipment coordinator, a mathematical model for shared equipment planning is developed. Finally a case study is discussed to show the effectiveness of the planning model.

On the Quasi-Concavity of Equipment Sharing Games with Perishable Raw Materials

We study the equipment sharing problem where a group of food&beverage companies share the same equipment of a contractor and wish to have their processing tasks coordinated such that the total cost is minimized.The raw materials to be processed are perishable,which incur a decay cost as time goes.One key issue of this equipment sharing problem is how to allocate the total cost among the participants.We apply cooperative game theory to tackle this issue and formulate the problem as an equipment sharing game.First,we study the 1-equipment sharing game in which all participants share one equipment.We show that the 1-equipment sharing game is quasi-concave when the fixed operation cost is larger than a certain value.We then discuss the special case where the processing time for all participants is equal.For this case,we further investigate the properties of the 1-equipment sharing game and the multi-equipment sharing game.We identify the conditions under which the Shapely value and the T-value can be easily calculated for the 1-equipment and multi-equipment sharing games.

Study on Driving Force by Coupling Constraints in NC Equipments Grid

The burgeoning grid technology provides a practical possibility to share Numerical Control （NC） equipment under a Web environment via many-w-many mode which is faced with the difficulty of a driving force for grid workflow. This paper proposes the novel methodology of coupling constraints to overcome this difficulty. First, the complex constraints and the structure attributes of NC tasks are detailed in the NC equipment grid that illustrates the possibility of forming a grid workflow force by coupling constraints. Second, the principle of driving force by coupling constraints in an NC equipment grid and the relative algorithm are proposed. Finally, the case study of comparative experiment is detailed to demonstrate the efficiency of this novel tactic.

Layout Planning Technology of Cellular Manufacturing System Based on Process Interconnection Analysis

With sustaining change of production mode,layout planning is no longer a thing built once for all.Cellular layout(CL) is becoming a hotspot in the research field of manufacturing system layout.Traditional researches on layout planning are mainly concentrating on aspects of layout arithmetic,style and evaluation,etc.Relatively seldom efforts are paid to CL and its specific problems as cell formation(CF),equipment sharing and CL analysis.Through problem analyzing of layout in cellular manufacturing system(CMS),research approach of cell formation,interactive layout and layout analysis threaded with process interconnection relationship(PIR) is proposed.Typical key technologies in CL like CF technology based on similarity analysis of part processes,interactive visual layout technology,layout evaluation technology founded on PIR analysis and algorithm of cell equipment sharing are put forward.Against the background of one enterprise which encounters problems of low utility of key equipments and disperse material logistic,an example of four-cell layout is given.The CL adjustment and analysis results show that equipment with high level of sharing degree should be disposed around the boundary of its main cell,and be near to other sharing cells as possible; process route should be centralized by all means,so equipment adjustment is to be implemented along direction that route intersection can be decreased; giving consideration to the existence of discrete cell,logistic route and its density should be centralized to cells formed.The proposed research can help improve equipment utility and material logistic efficiency of CL,and can be popularized to other application availably.