The University of Texas at San Antonio
UTSA Digital Collections (The University of Texas at San Antonio)Not a member yet
42217 research outputs found
Sort by
Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Flexible Automation & Intelligent Manufacturing; FAIM 2014
No full textPaper presented at the Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Flexible Automation & Intelligent Manufacturing, held May 20-23, 2014 in San Antonio, Texas, and organized by the Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Lean Systems, University of Texas at San Antonio; Includes bibliographical references; The goal of this project was to provide lean income statements specific to Lancer corporation's 11 value streams. A Lean income statement, often referred to as a plain English Profit and Loss statement, is a very easy to read financial statement that does not include allocations or accruals. This format gives value stream managers a straight forward financial report specific to their value stream activities. Several criteria had to be met for the project to be successful. The main two goals were to only charge the value stream for expenses that were both controllable and measurable, no indirect allocations would be used to assign cost. The second requirement was to not change the company's current accounting methodology. Lancer uses typical standard costing methodology to track and cost inventory within an ERP system. Ultimately the project was successful, real time income statements were made by carving out data from both operational and financial transactions. Aside from some initial organization of expenses and warehouses, no additional data collection was added to support these report
Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Flexible Automation & Intelligent Manufacturing; FAIM 2014
No full textPaper presented at the Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Flexible Automation & Intelligent Manufacturing, held May 20-23, 2014 in San Antonio, Texas, and organized by the Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Lean Systems, University of Texas at San Antonio; Includes bibliographical references; Meeting customers' demand with the minimum cost, the required quality, and within the expected timeframe is the ultimatum goal of producers and logistics companies alike. To achieve this goal, real-time supply chain systems decisions are needed to address the inherent production, operations, and market uncertainties. Machine failures impact the producers’ ability to meet their scheduled demand. Logistics delays are a significant source of uncertainty, especially when perishable items are transported with direct consequences on delivery time and quality. Real-time condition monitoring for in-transit perishable items requires an adequate infrastructure system available. Two relatively new technologies for the production and logistics domain, RFID and wireless sensor networks, provide the needed sensing, processing, and data storing and communication capabilities. When integrated, the resulting monitoring and control system may allow producers and logistics companies to considerably improve their operations by gaining more visibility for the product movement across their supply chains. This work proposes a framework for the design and implementation of a monitoring and control system for production and transportation operations. The proposed system employs the RFID-wireless sensor networks integration and is intended to provide more flexibility for production, logistics and supply chain activities in the face of uncertainties inherent during operation
Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Flexible Automation & Intelligent Manufacturing; FAIM 2014
No full textPaper presented at the Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Flexible Automation & Intelligent Manufacturing, held May 20-23, 2014 in San Antonio, Texas, and organized by the Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Lean Systems, University of Texas at San Antonio; Includes bibliographical references; Vulnerable parts exist in most machines or equipment. Failure of those vulnerable parts may result in damage of the machine or the product, and may sometimes cause unnecessary down-time within a production cycle, all of which increases the production costs. Therefore, such failures should be minimized and the parts should be replaced at a point before the end of their expected lifespan, which usually follow some kind of distributions and can be known due to its mass usage attributes. On the other hand, too early replacement of the parts also means increased maintenance costs, increased inventory, and increased parts purchasing cost. This study developed a mathematical model to deal with the issue of determining the optimal stopping time of vulnerable tools. Under the preemption situation, a periodic procurement policy is investigated simultaneously to find the optimal order cycle and eventually minimize the total cost. A case study is given to show the feasibility of the model and several parameters are analyzed to show the impact on the total cost and decision variable
Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Flexible Automation & Intelligent Manufacturing; FAIM 2014
No full textPaper presented at the Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Flexible Automation & Intelligent Manufacturing, held May 20-23, 2014 in San Antonio, Texas, and organized by the Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Lean Systems, University of Texas at San Antonio; Includes bibliographical references; Simulation-Based-Training (SBT) allows to train the operators of complex machinery within a safe virtual
environment by means of effective lifelike learning experiences. SBT has been efficiently used in medical, aerospace and military fields and it may provide a competitive advantage also for the training of operators in mechatronic plants. In fact, at the current state of the art, human-machine interaction still heavily impacts on the final performances of automated plants. Since the fast-evolving process dynamics of the machinery is controlled and supervised by complex software logics, the main challenge for effective and valid SBT concerns the development of a real-time simulation, where the control system responsiveness is fully reproduced. This paper deals with a novel SBT workbench used for steel plants operator training, discussing the real-time simulation architecture developed for the purpose. Following a hybrid process simulation approach, real-time control Hardware-In-the-Loop technology assures seamless and accurate reproduction of the real plant, also achieving the desired Man-in-the-Loop practice for the operator interaction. A conceptual architecture for a virtual interactive prototype is proposed, including controllers and interfaces for trainer and trainees. A case study on an electric arc furnace is implemented within a Virtual Commissioning tool, analyzing its capabilities and limitation
Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Flexible Automation & Intelligent Manufacturing; FAIM 2014
No full textPaper presented at the Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Flexible Automation & Intelligent Manufacturing, held May 20-23, 2014 in San Antonio, Texas, and organized by the Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Lean Systems, University of Texas at San Antonio; Includes bibliographical references; The actuation properties of carbon nanotube buckypaper have been proved and demonstrated in many researchers’ studies. Sandwiched buckypaper/porous film+ion liquid/buckypaper structure showed the lightweight and high efficient morphing displacement actuator at a low electrical power with square wave frequency. However, the buckypaper actuation performance showed the huge variation due to their material components and manufacturing process. Buckypapers are made by different type’s carbon nanotubes and fabricated by difference preparation processes will result in various electrical properties and actuation performance. This work first will understand the buckypaper electrical properties which are fabricated by two manufacturing process of positive pressure filtration process and negative pressure filtration process. In addition, we will compare and optimize the displacement performances of two different buckypapers, analyze the relationship between the electrical properties and displacement and blocking force performance buckypaper actuator via Design of Experiment (DOE) methodology. To incorporate buckypaper actuators into engineering systems, it is of high importance to understand their material property-actuation performance relationships in order to model and predict the behavior of these actuators. The electromechanical actuation of macroscopic buckypaper structures and their actuators will be investigated and analyzed. Using DOE methodology, the optimal or appropriated manufacturing parameter settings will be suggested for high displacement, stable actuation, and good durability within fewer experimental run
Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Flexible Automation & Intelligent Manufacturing; FAIM 2014
No full textPaper presented at the Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Flexible Automation & Intelligent Manufacturing, held May 20-23, 2014 in San Antonio, Texas, and organized by the Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Lean Systems, University of Texas at San Antonio; Includes bibliographical references; This paper highlights some of the reasons for the oil production decline in petroleum wells and underlies principles to produce a new model for the oil wells’ production performance. The research starts by introducing some information about the available world energy resources which shows that petroleum and natural gas are used more than any other energy sources. The research also presents further information about the productivity index of oil producing wells and their performance including how this is affected and how it can be enhanced using different available methods. The total world oil reserves, gap in production and demand and how this research is important for increasing the oil production is explained. The analysis shows that a 15.47% increase in the oil reserves between the years 2008 and 2012 had caused the total world oil reserves to increase from 1,280,114 million barrels in 2008 to reach 1,478,211 million barrels in 2012. The research has showed that the additional 198,097 million barrels are sufficient to cover the world's demand for oil for about six years based on the rate of oil demand in 2012 of 32,459 million barrels. However, the total world's oil production in 2012 is 26,611 million barrels which is not enough to meet the demand. Therefore, the aim of this research is to find suitable methods for producing oil from the available oil reserves to cover the demand by reducing the losses in the oil producing wells rather than depleting the newly found reserves. However, this research is still ongoing and it is expected to give more interesting and valuable results in the futur
Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Flexible Automation & Intelligent Manufacturing; FAIM 2014
No full textPaper presented at the Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Flexible Automation & Intelligent Manufacturing, held May 20-23, 2014 in San Antonio, Texas, and organized by the Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Lean Systems, University of Texas at San Antonio; Includes bibliographical references; Supply Chain Management is the integration of business processes along the value chain, from suppliers to end customer. Performance measurement of these processes has so far received little attention from researchers and practitioners. This paper reports the results from a study of a discrete products supply chain and measures its performance. In particular, a case study was conducted on a wood product supply chain, with a focus on quality performance measurements. The research question was whether current practices were consistent with end customer satisfaction and if improvements were possible. Interviews with quality management personnel and onsite evaluations were conducted at all stages of the supply chain, and a new visualization tool was developed. Quantitative and qualitative analysis tools were used to evaluate current practices. Opportunities for improvement were found in external integration and information sharing between supply chain partners. Also, a need for true measures of supply chain performance measures was identified. A 5-step process to develop such metrics is proposed, and an application example is provided. The proposed supply chain performance measurement system uses Six Sigma measures and facilitates collaboration between supply chain partners and provides information that allows focusing on improvement projects more efficientl
Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Flexible Automation & Intelligent Manufacturing; FAIM 2014
No full textPaper presented at the Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Flexible Automation & Intelligent Manufacturing, held May 20-23, 2014 in San Antonio, Texas, and organized by the Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Lean Systems, University of Texas at San Antonio; Includes bibliographical references; In order to model the effect of processing variables including primary gas flow rate, stand-off distance, powder flow rate, and arc current on the plasma spraying coating properties including thickness, porosity and micro-hardness, adaptive neural fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) and neural network based models are proposed to understand the spraying process and estimate process parameters. In order to overcome the difficulty of small size of sample data, bootstrap method is applied for the resampling technique and cross validation is applied for the performance evaluation. The ANFIS model and NN model are compared on the performance metrics of 1) mean square error (MSE), and determination coefficient (R2). The comparisons illustrated that ANFIS based modeling showed significant superiority than the other approach. This may be due to the fact that ANFIS combines the strength of NN's learning capability and fuzzy logic's knowledge interpretation ability. With this ANFIS model and identified control rules, feedback control strategy can be effectively implemented to regulate the coating quality in plasma spraying proces
Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Flexible Automation & Intelligent Manufacturing; FAIM 2014
No full textPaper presented at the Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Flexible Automation & Intelligent Manufacturing, held May 20-23, 2014 in San Antonio, Texas, and organized by the Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Lean Systems, University of Texas at San Antonio; Includes bibliographical references; The trend towards more and more individual products leads to new challenges for production planning and scheduling. Rising numbers of variants, high fluctuations of demand and smaller production volumes require flexibility in production, which fixed assignments of products to lines often can’t provide. A network of numerous internal and external manufacturing resources is necessary. The centralized production planning methods, used today, have reached the limit of their abilities in finding the best manufacturing route through this complex networks for each product. Approaches like industry 4.0 and smart manufacturing are current responses to handle mass customization by decentralization and enhanced computerization. In the future products will communicate with the machines as autonomous entities and find their optimal route through production on their own (managed by multi-agent systems). To reach this degree of self-control, systems need implemented criteria as basis for decision-making. This paper considers the different objectives of a product as it flows through the production (punctual delivery to low costs) on the one hand and, separately on the second hand, which factors the machines or resources need to optimize their schedules and what their goals are (high utilization and low costs). The different perspectives between the product objectives and the resources objectives are vividly illustrated in the analogy of a traveler planning his tour and a railroad company planning it´s time tables. This paper provides the important factors of influence and thereby supports the formation of a target system for software agents. It shows how product agents can decide which route to take through production and how resource agents find the optimal production progra
Andrea Figueroa - CAUSA
No full textElectronic Records related to MS 434, Community Alliance for A United San Antonio (CAUSA). The CAUSA\Andrea Figueroa\CAUSA folder contains documents related to the appointment of an interim mayor