In this research, the wide variety of constitutive axis specific to multi-tasking multi-axis machine tools and the possible condition to machine in parallel were divided. First, diversity of post-process by structures of multi-tasking multi-axis machine tools were investigated for the good reason that post-process depend structures of machine tools. 13 kind of constitutive axis of multi-tasking multi-axis machine tools in 18 companies were investigated. Result of the investigation shows that post-process is divided into only two kind of coordinate transform. Next, conditions with involvement of processing method and synchronous and region of simultaneous machining for the case of constitutive axis is tool type of evolution were divided to show possible condition to machine in parallel. Finally the result of applying the condition to sample model shows conditions to frequently machine in parallel and usefulness.

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Dies and Molds are generally used for press forming. However they are expensive and need much time for production so that they are not suitable for prototyping and low-volume production. Laser forming is an effective tool for prototyping and low-volume production because it enables one to form sheet material without dies and molds. Laser forming is the deformation process caused by the thermal stresses which is generated in the sheet by laser irradiation. In this paper, a Laser Forming CAM System is proposed for determining laser irradiation conditions for forming demand shape.

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Machine tools are recognized as key components of manufacturing systems, and product quality and cost mainly depend on performances of the machine tools. Much progress has been made in the machine tool technologies, aimed at improving the performances of the machine tools from various viewpoints, such as accuracy, reliability, productivity, and flexibility. The machining accuracy is one of the most important characteristics of the machine tools. From the viewpoints of the design and the manufacturing of the machine tools and their components, one of the important issues is to clarify the relationships between the kinematic motion deviations of the machine tools and the geometric tolerances of the components, such as the guide ways and the bearings. The objective of the present research is to establish mathematical models representing the kinematic motion deviations of the machine tools, on the basis of the geometric tolerances of the components, and to apply the models to theoretical analysis of the kinematic motion deviations of the machine tool components.

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Production cost is one of the most important factors to decide the manufacturing process and manufacturing strategies. A cost prediction method due to a machine tool operation is proposed based on Activity-based-Costing in this research. For this purpose, some direct and indirect activities related to electric consumptions, a cutting tool, cutting oil, lubricant oil and metal chips are considered. A feasibility of the cost prediction method due to a machining operation is described in a case study.

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In recent years, it increases in the management operation of the factory information, and is requested to understand adequately and to be made the best use of. In the equipment maintenance of the factory, equipment information when the breakdown occurs is requested to be made the best use of for another equipment. Then, it aims at the construction of the factory equipment maintenance system architecture that horizontally progresses to another equipment by positively using the result of the failure diagnosis and cause and effect information on the breakdown occurrence in mutual operation of information in the factory equipment management.

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In dynamically changing manufacturing environment, optimization of total schedule for all manufacturing divisions such as raw material procurement, machining, assembling and shipping is quite difficult. Therefore, each division tries to optimize only their own schedule with the constraint of given delivery date. And in case of delay in supplying to next division, shop floor managers of both divisions adjust the schedule with each other. To solve this problem, we propose a new interdivisional scheduling method which decomposes the whole problem into process-dependent problems and cooperates between processes using Lagrangean decomposition coordination method and adjusting production lead time. Additionally we examine the effectiveness of this method by numerical experiments.

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Resent semiconductor manufacturing feature is high-product-mix and small-lot-size production, and the productivity becomes much worse owing to the short life cycle of production goods and the frequent change in the specification and demand within a short time period. Therefore, a solution method to optimize the efficiency, cost, and TAT (Turn Around Time) in a comprehensive way is indispensable. In this paper we applied the Lagrangian Decomposition and Coordination Method, which is the well-known cooperative scheduling methods, into an abstracted model of the actual Semiconductor production line, which has a feature of a re-entrant flow model, and studied the characteristic concerning the utilization of the model.

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In this report, an interoperable collaboration using standardized technologies is proposed for manufacturing systems. Many software products such as BOM, production schedulers, MES and controllers in the market are available today. Integrating these products into a whole manufacturing system is difficult and expensive because of differences between architectures adopted. IEC 62264-1 had been published as referencing architecture for a guideline of integration of manufacturing systems. Collaboration protocol between products or packages based on the IEC 62264-1 has been proposed from MESX joint project. The MESX protocol provides integration method using XML technologies. A demonstration system using the protocol had been developed by MESX joint project. This report proposes the knowledge representation of MESX, and describes collaboration between products of level 3 and 4 of IEC 62264-1 in the demonstration system.

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It is difficult to evaluate how flexibly and rapidly the production system can cope with changes in demand. In this study, production systems are likened to control systems. In order to evaluate their dynamic characteristics for assumed changes of quantity, the technique of dynamic programming is applied to the determination of flexibility parameters of the production system that minimizes Life Cycle Cost. The proposed method is applied to the production systems developed at DENSO CORPORATION, and its effectiveness is verified.

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In this paper, Capacity Planning based on the Orders Synchronized Production System is proposed. In the Synchronized Production System, production orders are received at any time without a period for load leveling. It is difficult to keep a balancing between capacity of the production system and loading of the received orders. Therefore, in this paper, the new method of capacity planning is proposed, and the allocation rule of order is defined.

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In this paper, supply chain planning problem that considers selection of the contracted suppliers, production quantity and inventory simultaneously is addressed. Quantity discount is the decision making of trade price between suppliers and manufacturers while the production is changeable due to the unknown demand in the real market. The goal of research is to introduce the quantity discount method in order to formulate the mathematical model to help the decision making in the supply chain management.

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This paper discusses the vehicle routing problem with time windows and stochastic demands. This problem can be described as the problem of designing least cost routes from one depot to a set of customers. We must design the routes such that each customer is visited only once by exactly one vehicle within a given time interval; all routes start and end at the depot. The customers' demands are characterized by a known probability distribution and a customer's actual demand is only revealed when the vehicle reaches the customer location. When the total demands of customers on a route exceed the capacity of the vehicle, extra path to depot for replenishment must occur. We formulate this problem as set covering problem and we solve this problem by column generation method.

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Engineering for manufacturing systems inevitably include a time factor as well as a spatial factor. Thinking objects and behaviors in four-dimentional framework of space-time is effective and rational. This report introduces the development of a four-dimentional mesh modeling system, and then discuss several potential applications for manufacturing systems engineereing.

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An intensive SD-simulation method for special vehicle design considering human operator actions has been developed. Basic motions necessary for the vehicle handling such as "stable-riding, carefully-sitting, field view -checking, etc" are presented as examples of the most important factors for efficient design scheme. A rich human-body model with 44-DOF has been introduced. The model is utilized for formulation the concept of SecurePath as well as Secure View estimating adequate vehicle-related human actions in uncertain field environment.

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This paper proposes the analysis system of NC data based on a feature information representation. This model is a next-generation CMC control language (ISO 14649) which contains machining information such as machining features, machining operation, and machining conditions enabling feature-based description of the machining process. The machining features and the process information are extracted from a traditional NC program based on a form-shaping function. The proposed analysis system is implemented using data mapping language EXPRESS-X between two sets of model data which are described in EXPRESS data modeling language. The implemented system is applied to the ISO 6983 NC data for the milling machine generated by commercial CAM software.

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In this paper, we discuss a technique for the dynamic generation of a production plan in an autonomous production system using product agent, parts agent and assembly machine agents. A product agent and a parts agent lead the promotion of processes in this type of assembly system. In the proposed system, product agents generate the process plan that contains the assembly sequence to complete the product. Parts agents forward assembling processes in a coordinated with other parts agents. The dynamically assembling process plan is achieved by monitoring and notification the progress in each agent. Finally, we show experimental results with simply examples.

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MESX joint project aims to realize integration of entire manufacturing systems that organically link enterprise system and control system. To achieve this, we have positioned system components on each level of the function hierarchy defined in the IEC 62264-1 and have standardized coordination protocols among these components. Moreover, a demonstration system composed of multi-vendor components has been developed and exhibited to illustrate effectiveness. We have implemented the demonstration system with PSLX platform that contains standard terms and communication software libraries for manufacturing application coordination. This paper proposes the method for integrating between level 2 and level 3 in the IEC 62264-1, and reports the developed coordination protocol and the demonstration system.

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A framework for decentralized manufacturing systems is discussed from view point of homogeneous property of system elements in this paper. A job-shop scheduling problem is also formulated in order to consistently manage every production equipment such as machine tool, assembly robot, AGV, storehouse, material shelf in the manufacturing systems.

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We consider the initial procurement problem for a reparable inventory system. For this problem, we develop an application which minimizes an inventory cost. The inventory cost consists of the backorder penalty, which is computed by the product of the backorder-cost by the steady state expected number of backorders of the random item with the most backorders, and the cost of spares purchases. Our application is based on the fact that the inventory cost function has L^#-convexity, which is an inportant concept of discrete convexity in the theory of optimization.

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This study considers a production planning problem of a two-stage production system. The system consists of an assembly process and a lot production process. Two cases are considered; each process has an expert planner, and both processes are planned by one planner. In the former case, each planner can fully utilize the production capacity, but may produce inferior plans to the other process. In the latter case the planner can consider the both processes jointly but may underutilize the production capacity of these processes. Three mathematical planning models are formulated and numerical examples showed that increased production efficiency under the local optimization condition is attractive. A heuristic method to consider the condition of the other process is also proposed.

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This paper deals with an integrated management method of production planning and scheduling to minimize the lead-time of jobs in the constraints of meeting due-dates. This method uses backward/forward scheduling simulation to determine the release times of jobs in production planning level. Numerical experiments with consideration to processing time uncertainty are used to examine the effectiveness of the methods.

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Logistics in production systems become including high variety and small-lot products, and just-in-time delivery is also required to fulfill customer needs. It is important to build proper plan to improve efficiency of the logistics. In this study, multi-agent learning based scheduling method for logistics based on evolutionary artificial neural networks (EANN) is proposed. It is expected that both near optimal and adaptive solution can be obtained according to cooperation among learning agents. Computer simulation is conducted to confirm the validity of the proposed method.

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In this study, we discuss human resource development of the expert skills in machine tool industry. We firstly clarify the present situation of the personnel training. Then process of an effective method to educate expert skills to young person who needs high expert skills is suggested. In that industry field, the success of personnel training largely depends on OJT(On-the-Job Training). Thus, additional personnel training programs including Off-JT(Off-the-Job Training), have not been improved until today. We therefore build a framework of effective personnel training programs for getting higher skills by developing a skill acquisition flow.

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Decision-making capabilities are needed to sustain technology after it is transferred. However, they are difficult to transfer. For this challenge, this research proposes the Iterative Methodology of Analysis and Synthesis of Technology Components for Technology Transfer. This research believes that successful technology transfer may be realized by the iterative combination of the transferor's breakdown of the technology (analysis) and the recipient's sum-up of the technology in a story (synthesis). The analysis process begins after obtaining the inputs from the customer and the transferor. The output of the analysis process would be the Recipient-specific Analysis Module. This will be composed of the common and the user-specific components as defined or specified by the recipient. In the synthesis process, given the Recipient-specific Analysis Module, the Transferor's demonstration of the technology and the Synthesis Module Template as inputs, the recipient should create the story of the technology. The resulting story will be reviewed by the transferor. Two case studies have been conducted to evaluate the proposal.

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In this study, we discuss required conditions for organizing valuable structures of a company or a group of cooperated companies which is a new concept about regional industrial concentration named the Virtual Concentration of Production Bases. Also, we attempt to theoretically design the network structure of production bases by which a distance on the geographical space between production bases provides added values with surpassing a distal cost. Our approach is realized by integrated methodology of the conventional business administration technique and the theory of the complex network science. Thus, the case study analysis of real successful examples and the results of computer simulation are adopted.

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Recently, PMO (Program Management Office) is payed attention in manufacturing industries as an organization to supports project management implementation at a corporate level. This is because the business of the project type business is increasing to cope with the environment changes such as shorter product life cycle and diversifying customers' needs. But, the background and the purpose to deploy PMO are different depending on strategy of the organization. Therefore, there exists varieties of PMO implementation. However, we believe all PMO should have a common role to support implementation of corporate business strategy. Because of the belief, we named those PMOs as "Strategic PMO". In this paper, we propose "Strategic PMO" for sustainable competitive advantage.

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In this research, we focus on the manufacturing cell simulation for automated visual inspection using robots. In this paper, we firstly describe current problems to establish the automated visual inspection using robots. In order to solve the problems, the manufacturing cell simulation for automated visual inspection using robots is proposed. Seven requirements for the simulation are defined. Five functions to implement the simulation and the fundamental system structure are proposed and implemented. Finally a case study was carried out with cooperation.

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In this research, we focus on the manufacturing cell simulation for automated visual inspection using robots. We assume that the virtual images which are created in our developed manufacturing cell simulator can be used as the input information to evaluate automated visual inspection programs. In this paper, we analyzed and summarized the procedures to execute the automated visual inspections. We clarified the differences between the virtual image and the real image which is made by the industrial camera. We propose the method to solve the differences. Finally case studies were carried out to confirm effective for one of the proposed methods.

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To achieve efficient development of the manufacturing system, we have been studying the manufacturing simulation. In this paper, we propose a method and a system using the method to drive directly a real manufacturing system without converting a simulation program to a real device program. Moreover, we show the effectiveness of the system by a case study that the system controls a real manufacturing system directly.

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In this study, an analysis simulation for shape and surface texture of grinding process for gear with threaded grinding wheel is proposed. By considering the depth of cut, not only shape but also surface texture of gear tooth surface is analyzed when the generating motion. The surface grinding theory was applied to grinding point on the gear tooth surface by thinking the relative movement of worm wheel to the gear tooth surface. Processing accuracy of gear, surface roughness of gear tooth surface, width and length of the scratch generated in the grinding were analyzed in the simulation. Analysis results of the simulation were compared with measuring results of the gear actually processed by same processing condition. And analysis results was confirmed by the comparing.

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Cellular manufacturing systems are well known as flexible and reliable manufacturing systems for assembly processes. A suitable control method is required for the cellular manufacturing systems to keep the production capacity in the case where unforeseen changes, such as delays of assembly processes, occur during the progress of assembly processes. This research proposes a new method for dynamic production management in the cellular manufacturing systems. When delays of assembly processes occur in the cellular manufacturing systems, delayed production schedules are modified in real-time by changing initial task allocations for workers and orders of the allocated tasks in order to minimize the total tardiness of products. The proposed method considers learning levels of workers in the task allocation processes. The method allocates various tasks for untrained workers in order to enhance workers' capabilities and productivities in the case where the total tardiness is less than zero and the cellular manufacturing systems still have enough production capacities. A prototype of reallocation supporting system is developed to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

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This paper deals with a work scheduling method considering preferences of human operators. The human operators indicate the weights of preference for their holidays, in the proposed scheduling method. The machining skills of human operators are also considered to generate the work schedule. The proposed work scheduling method is formulated by integer programming problem. Its objective function is to maximize the number of holidays which correspond to requests of human operators. And its constraints are number of holidays which are determined by the labor standards act, and the number of human operators which can carry out the machining processes from the view point of their skills.

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The competitiveness of a manufacturing system has a dynamic nature and hence should be maintained through innovations and continuous improvements. How to accomplish effective innovations and continuous improvements is not simply a matter of how to choose an optimal one from a given set of solutions, but is rather the matter of how to create the solutions themselves as well as to find the problems to solve. This means that conducting innovations and continuous improvements in a manufacturing system can be deemed as another typical example of the organizational knowledge creation process. In order to establish a basis on which it can be considered how to manage and support the process, this research provides a state transition model explaining the process of how innovation and improvement ideas are being created through interactions among the members of a kaizen team. The model treats the knowledge creation process as a process of updating the set of mental models of the subject manufacturing system shared by the team members through utterance elements. An actual discussion process on how to improve a two-stage assembly cell is also analyzed according to the proposed model.

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Product design and manufacturing systems from ecological view point are required as urgent needs. In this paper, an information system called eco-agent systems to promote reuse and recycle processes of product modules is proposed. This system uses a sensor system for diagnosing each product module and managing reuse plan. Since the system can always grasp conditions of modules, it can start reuse planning while users use the products and reduce the lead time to remanufacturing. As a realization model, a system architecture that uses sensor network systems and software agents is proposed. And a prototype for a motor-assisted bicycle is developed.

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In our research, we develop simulation environment to support simulation modeling for manufacturing system based on labor operations. In this paper, we analyzed simulation modeling for manufacturing system based on labor operations through past cases and summarized the structures of the simulation models and these problems. The simulation modeling method to solve the problems is proposed. Hypothetic case studies are carried out to confirm effective of our proposed modeling method.

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In the past, major education in a design and development divisions at our company was the OJT (on the job training) based on a success or failure development experience. However, in recent years, the improvement requirement of quality, and cost and delivery is growing as expectation for a design development section, and a young engineer is also in the situation where failure in development is not allowed. Also, outsourcing of development becomes general, therefore, the opportunity to make an engineer experiencing development in the wide scope decreased. Currently, the OJT education through experiencing development is faced with a difficult situation. In order to deal with this subject, we are trying developer's training based on the PEL (Project Based Learning) technique for new employees. Attendees have an experience covering a whole development process which is hard to experience at the actual development scene. When training finished, attendees were able to learn design skill and understand the spirit of the MONOZUKURI (the process of producing excellence products).

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It is not explicit for a matter in guidance for the person of technology reception only by getting possible to merely accomplish technology and the ability standard that you should convey by the technical tradition. I set a hypothesis to "be acquisition of the technology ability a person of technical reception depends, and to get result of high work actively with the technical tradition" in this study based on such present conditions. As a viewpoint to examine an ability standard based on this hypothesis, I weigh two diverse aspects called the technology tradition to be connected for result of the work actively against past technical tradition. Based on this examination, there is that I analyze end-point of the ability for technical reception about the latter and a standard and come up with the idea for the purpose of this study.

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[in Japanese]

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Important activities in manufacturing such as R&D, design, production management, production engineering, and manufacturing operation need advanced skills formed as results of a number of practices and thinking. We name these skills manufacturing phronesis. Manufacturing phronesis in Japanese industry has been decreasing while it is a key resource for competitive products. This paper reports the present state of manufacturing phronesis in Japanese manufacturers based on the analysis of questionnaire survey and interviews to engineers.

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This paper describes for developing a new continual manufacturing process, we named "Synchronized" & "Harmonized". The Synchronized Line has non WIP from welding to assembling by one set flow. The Harmonized Line has 2 hours WIP from welding to assembling by minimum rot flow, which painted different colors. As a result, we achieved that reduction of manufacturing leadtime form 5 days to 6 hours and we decrease work-in-process by 63% down.

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Solid State Relays for Heater Control have many kinds of products. Their Power circuit parts have five structures to satisfy heat radiation, insulation and reliability. Each structure of power circuit has a particular production line, and it takes long lead time to production. Therefore it is the bottleneck of production. We developed common module of power circuit which solves long lead time and variation of Power circuit part. By using this module, we constructed a production platform of SSR and five special lines were consolidated in one line. Much reduction of lead time and production cost were achieved. At the same time, performance gain of product, for example correspondence to ROHS, range expansion of load current, were achieved.

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This paper proposes new 3D process planning system for MEMS device manufacturing. The process planning system can derive fabrication process from 3D MEMS device models based on the deposition precedence relationships between fabrication features. The basic of the method for the process planning was proposed by previous papers. The system can derive the fabrication process and the device model estimated to be fabricated by the fabrication process. And the shape of the device model which is difficult to fabricate is modified to fabricate shape, but it is likely to become the shape without satisfying the design specifications. To solve the problem, this paper proposes a redesign function which enables the designer to redesign the modified device model which has a manufacturable shape and satisfy the design specification based on the association of the device shape with the fabrication process.

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In the keen competition in manufacturing industries worldwide, the products' improvement cycle and the model-change cycle become shorter and shorter. In such circumstances, the facility life cycle cost of automated production lines increase. Transition to the manual production lines, however, leads to the transfer of production to overseas. To cope with this problem, we propose a Flexible Hybrid Manufacturing System, in which robots and operators can work together in a same working space with an advanced safety technology developed in recent years. In this paper, we present human and robot allocation method for minimizing overall production cost.

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