Marco Bortolini, Maurizio Faccio, Francesco Gabriele Galizia, Mauro Gamberi and Francesco Pilati
Industry 4.0 emerged as the Fourth Industrial Revolution aiming at achieving higher levels of operational efficiency, productivity and automation. In this context, manual assembly…
Abstract
Purpose
Industry 4.0 emerged as the Fourth Industrial Revolution aiming at achieving higher levels of operational efficiency, productivity and automation. In this context, manual assembly systems are still characterized by high flexibility and low productivity, if compared to fully automated systems. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to propose the design, engineering and testing of a prototypal adaptive automation assembly system, including greater levels of automation to complement the skills and capabilities of human workers.
Design/methodology/approach
A lab experimental field-test is presented comparing the assembly process of a full-scale industrial chiller with traditional and adaptive assembly system.
Findings
The analysis shows relevant benefits coming from the adoption of the adaptive automation assembly system. In particular, the main findings highlight improvements in the assembly cycle time and productivity, as well as reduction of the operator’s body movements.
Practical implications
The prototype is applied in an Italian mid-size industrial company, confirming its impact in terms of upgrades of the assembly system flexibility and productivity. Thus, the research study proposed in this paper provides valuable knowledge to support companies and industrial practitioners in the shift from traditional to advanced assembly systems matching current industrial and market features.
Originality/value
This paper expands the lacking research on adaptive automation assembly systems design proposing an innovative prototype able to real-time reconfigure its structure according to the product to work, e.g. work cycle, and the operator features.
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Maurizio Faccio, Mojtaba Nedaei and Francesco Pilati
The current study aims to propose a new analytical approach by considering energy consumption (EC), maximum tardiness and completion time as the primary objective functions to…
Abstract
Purpose
The current study aims to propose a new analytical approach by considering energy consumption (EC), maximum tardiness and completion time as the primary objective functions to assess the performance of parallel, non-bottleneck and multitasking machines operating in dynamic job shops.
Design/methodology/approach
An analytical and iterative method is presented to optimize a novel dynamic job shop under technical constraints. The machine’s performance is analyzed by considering the setup energy. An optimization model from initial processing until scheduling and planning is proposed, and data sets consisting of design parameters are fed into the model.
Findings
Significant variations of EC and tardiness are observed. The minimum EC was calculated to be 141.5 hp.s when the defined decision variables were constantly increasing. Analysis of the optimum completion time has shown that among all studied methods, first come first served (FCFS), earliest due date (EDD) and shortest processing time (SPT) have resulted in the least completion time with a value of 20 s.
Originality/value
Considerable amount of energy can be dissipated when parallel, non-bottleneck and multitasking machines operate in lower-power modes. Additionally, in a dynamic job shop, adjusting the trend and arrangement of decision variables plays a crucial role in enhancing the system’s reliability. Such issues have never caught the attention of scientists for addressing the aforementioned problems. Therefore, with these underlying goals, this paper presents a new approach for evaluating and optimizing the system’s performance, considering different objective functions and technical constraints.
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Marco Bortolini, Maurizio Faccio, Mauro Gamberi and Francesco Pilati
The kitting feeding policy creates kits with the parts of each product to assemble. Each kit contains elements with heterogeneous physical properties imposing heterogeneous…
Abstract
Purpose
The kitting feeding policy creates kits with the parts of each product to assemble. Each kit contains elements with heterogeneous physical properties imposing heterogeneous logistic facilities and management solutions for storage and handling. The purpose of this paper is to present and apply a two-step procedure to design the part warehouse layout and to assign locations in case of kitting with high-variety part attributes. The proposed procedure aims at reducing the kitting travelled distance, shortening the picker paths, best positioning the components in the warehouse to enhance the possibility of creating kits through a single corridor access. The saturation of the warehouse and the minimization of the required storage space are also considered.
Design/methodology/approach
Starting from part categorization, the proposed two-step procedure, of general applicability, designs the component warehouse, sizing the corridors (Step 1) before clustering the kits in terms of part commonality and best-assigning clusters to corridors (Step 2) with the goal of reducing the travelled distance and saturating the available storage space.
Findings
A comparison model considers the traditional versus the proposed warehouse layout highlighting the potential saving in the picker travelled distance. A case study taken from the harvesting machine agricultural sector exemplifies the applicability and the practical implications of this research.
Originality/value
Elements of originality are the warehouse design strategy and the assignment model for parts based on their physical attributes and their occurrence in the assembly kits. Finally, the case study taken from industry, with a high number of components and part categories, adds value to the research making the proposed procedure able to address large-scale industrial problems.
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Maurizio Faccio, Mauro Gamberi, Mojtaba Nedaei and Francesco Pilati
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the autoclave-pump pressured water distribution system. Pressured water is used in many manufacturing processes, as a raw material or…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the autoclave-pump pressured water distribution system. Pressured water is used in many manufacturing processes, as a raw material or as a service fluid for different applications.
Design/methodology/approach
The performances and the total installation costs of such systems are strongly related to its design and to its decision variables definition. The authors first identify the independent variables (i.e. the decision variables) and the dependent variables of the system and, second, propose a techno-economic mathematical method able to determine its minimum installation cost with an integrated approach.
Findings
The trade-off between the autoclave installation costs versus the pump installation costs is demonstrated. A sensitive analysis of the cost of the system as function of its decision variables has been performed to propose a practical graphical analysis tools to proper design the integrated pump-autoclave pressured water distribution system.
Originality/value
Many previous researches focus only on the pump system optimization or in the tank system optimization without an integrated approach. The wide utilization in industry of the autoclave-pump pressured water distribution system together with the lack of similar contributions in this area enforces the value of this research.
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Vishwajit Kumar and Gajendra Kumar Adil
Warehouses, essential nodes in the supply chain, significantly contribute to sustainability issues, accounting for about 11% of emissions related to logistics activities. The…
Abstract
Purpose
Warehouses, essential nodes in the supply chain, significantly contribute to sustainability issues, accounting for about 11% of emissions related to logistics activities. The purpose of this study is to review articles on sustainable warehouse management (SWM) from the Scopus database to analyze trends, synthesize existing knowledge, and identify research gaps for future studies.
Design/methodology/approach
The review uses text mining of initial relevant documents to create a search string for paper retrieval. Text mining is further used to generate a dendrogram of the most frequently used words in the research papers, which is then analyzed to identify themes and sub-themes in SWM.
Findings
The dendrogram reveals four major themes and their sub-themes within SWM, including two novel themes: sustainable warehouse in green logistics and sustainable warehouse location. In addition, 12 research recommendations are identified through content analysis and are subsequently linked to specific Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Research limitations/implications
The methodological innovation in keyword selection for searching relevant papers and identifying themes serves as a structured template for researchers to explore further.
Practical implications
The research recommendations, aligned with the SDGs, aim to assist managers in making informed decisions and operational strategies to enhance factors associated with the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method and the sustainable performance of warehouses.
Originality/value
This study is novel in its application of text-mining techniques to generate a search string for identifying relevant papers and discerning themes by analyzing the dendrogram.
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Daria Battini, Martina Calzavara, Alessandro Persona and Fabio Sgarbossa
Warehouse picking is often referred to as the most labour-intensive, expensive and time consuming operation in manual warehouses. These factors are becoming even more crucial due…
Abstract
Purpose
Warehouse picking is often referred to as the most labour-intensive, expensive and time consuming operation in manual warehouses. These factors are becoming even more crucial due to recent trends in manufacturing and warehousing requiring the processing of orders that are always smaller and needed in a shorter time. For this reason, in recent years more efficient and better performing systems have been developed, employing various technological solutions that can support pickers during their work. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a comparison of five paperless picking systems (i.e. barcodes handheld, RFID tags handheld, voice picking, traditional pick-to-light, RFID pick-to-light).
Design/methodology/approach
Warehouse picking is often referred to as the most labour-intensive, expensive and time consuming operation in manual warehouses. These factors are becoming even more crucial due to recent trends in manufacturing and warehousing requiring the processing of orders that are always smaller and needed in a shorter time. For this reason, in recent years more efficient and better performing systems have been developed, employing various technological solutions that can support pickers during their work. The present paper introduces a comparison of five paperless picking systems (i.e. barcodes handheld, RFID tags handheld, voice picking, traditional pick-to-light, RFID pick-to-light.
Findings
The proposed approach contributes to the understanding of the performance of different technologies in different application fields; some solutions are more suitable for a low-level warehouse, others bring greater benefits in the case of picking from multilevel shelving.
Originality/value
The study concerns an issue that until now has received very little attention in the literature. It compares some traditional solutions with some innovative ones by an economic evaluation. The presented hourly cost function also takes into account the different errors arising and their probability of occurrence.