Collaborative design and manufacturing of industrial products.

Parpala, Lidia Florentina ; Popa, Cicerone Laurentiu

1. INTRODUCTION

We have started this case study from the idea of customer demands propagation in industrial products manufacturing.

In this paper is presented a case study based on the membership to a European research network, VRL-KCiP (Figure 2) trough a national network, INPRO (Figure 3).

The connexion with the European network is University POLITEHNICA of Timisoara, which is the coordinator of the national network INPRO and is also representing Romania in the European Network.

2. CASE STUDY

Part of the VRL-KCiP network were taken into account for the manufacturing of the piece chosen for this case study: the first member of the VRL-KCiP network is University of Ljubljana, Advanced Technologies Laboratory and the second one is the 3S Laboratory, which is a mixed research institution having members from three institutions (INPG (Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble), CNRS (Centre National de Recherche Scientifique) and UJF (Universite Joseph Fourier)).

After an economical study of the technologies existing at the two partners, we have decided to localize the manufacturing department at the University of Ljubljana, Advanced Technologies Laboratory. The economical department is a team with representatives from University of Ljubljana, Advanced Technologies Laboratory and University Politehnica of Bucharest, Machines and Production Systems Department, PREMINV Laboratory.

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At the PREMINV laboratory were also located the design department. (Dragoi, Guran & Cotet, 2002)

Figure 1 is a schematic representation of the architecture of an INTERNET/INTRANET/EXTRANET platform for customer demands propagation which was the starting point for this case study. (Parpala & Popa, 2008)

Figure 4 represents the INTERNET/ INTRANET/EXTRANET platform for collaborative design and manufacturing that we have developed in order to improve collaboration between the virtual enterprise departments. One can see that the customer may have an active role in product manufacturing trough the CRM application.

Figure 5 presents the way that customer demands are propagated in a virtual environment. There are also present the main virtual enterprise applications (CRM, SCM, ERP).

The design of the product was made using CAD/CAE software (CATIA V5). The chosen manufacturing technology was abrasive water jet cutting, so the software used was OMAX Make (delivered with the OMAX AWJC Machine).

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3. CONCLUSION

As opposed to the classical enterprise model, inside a Virtual Enterprise first we perceive the customers requirements and then the product design and manufacturing is started, keeping a continuous relation with the customer. (Camarinha-Mathos, 2002)

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The technologies, techniques and methods used in Virtual Enterprises bring to cost, design and manufacturing time reduction, distribution time reduction and higher customers satisfaction.

The 3D modelling of the product was made in the design department. The following operation was the finite elements analysis. That helped as to make a topological optimization of the product in order to reduce its mass.

The design department delivers information also for the manufacturing department (2D model of the product) and for the economical department (bill of material).

4. REFERENCES

Camarinha-Mathos L.M. (2002). Virtual Organization in Manufacturing: Trends and Challenges in Proceedings of International Conference on Flexible Automation and Intelligent Manufacturing (FAIM), Germania, 2002

Dragoi G., Guran M., Cotet C.E. (2002)---The PREMINV platform for training in management and engineering for virtual enterprise, Colaborative Business Ecosystems and Virtual Enterprises, Portugalia, 2002

Guran M. (2005). The Architecture of Virtual Industrial Enterprise--A New Paradigm in Distributed Data Processing and communications in Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Control Systems and Computer Science, Bucure[section]ti, Mai, 2005.

Parpala L.F. (2007), Contributii privind platforma INTERNET/INTRANET/EXTRANET pentru propagarea cerintelor clientilor in realizarea produselor industriale, Contributions on INTERNET/INTRANET/EXTRANET platform for customer demands propagation in industrial products realisation, PhD Thesis, Bucuresti, 2007

Parpala L.F., Popa C.L. (2008), INTERNET/INTRANET/EXTRANET platform for customer demands propagation in products manufacturing, ACADEMIC JOURNAL OF MANUFACTURING ENGINEERING, VOL. 6, NO.1/2008