This book provides a justification and optimisation model that is complete enough to capture the important features required for a complex decision-making environment for computer integrated manufacturing investment analysis. The model provides facilities to quantify qualitative attributes.

Designing Innovations in Industrial Logistics Modelling describes practical methods for approaching the task of designing industrial logistics systems. It surveys the development of logistics models and their application in manufacturing to designing, planning, and implementing the movement of supplies, equipment, and products. This text/reference book discusses the combination of operation and production research to obtain solutions for designing and integrating advanced logistics systems. It provides the reader with a set of prescriptive and descriptive models and methods that have been developed exclusively for the purpose of designing, managing, and optimizing the architecture of such advanced systems. The design and application of new tools and methods is presented in such a way that emphasizes the competitiveness of manufacturing industries, and case studies are presented in a manner that demonstrates successful models and methods in advanced industrial logistics systems. In addition, Designing Innovations in Industrial Logistics Modelling explains the various formal tools and methodologies employed in evaluating new programs and covers program management and dynamic evaluation techniques.

Modern information technology has opened up new possibilities of flexibilization and cost reduction in production. The author defines CIM - Computer Integrated Manufacturing - as a concept for the structuring of industrial enterprises. Manufacturing technologies demand a CIM concept which can be realized through the capabilities of information processing available today. The idea of integrating different areas of CIM, such as production planning and control (PPC), computer aided design (CAD) and computer aided manufacturing (CAM), is explained through operating chains and put into a CIM architecture based on a hierarchy of EDP systems. The stance taken in this book of defining CIM as a total concept for industrial enterprises is increasingly gaining ground. The book does not aim to put the functional details of the individual CIM components (PPC, CAD, CAP and CAM) in the foreground, but rather to emphasize the integration principles for the functional demands of the individual components. This book appeared in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1987, and within one year it had run to three editions. The author contributes to this book not only his scientific knowledge but also his experience as a consultant for implementing CIM concepts.

Industrieroboter gehoren heute zum Alltag. In den letzten zehn Jahren verlagerte sich der Schwerpunkt der Neuentwicklungen weg von den Robotern selbst, hin zu alternativen Formen der kunstlichen Intelligenz, mit denen die Gerate ausgestattet werden. Dem Rechnung tragend, beschaftigt sich die zweite Auflage dieses Handbuchs vor allem mit Anwendungen und Strategien zur Problemlosung in der Industrie. Angesprochen werden Themen wie Graphiksimulatoren, objektorientierte Software, Kommunikationssysteme und Mikro- und Nanoroboter. (04/99)

This text illuminates the contemporary issues and technologies related to the economic evaluation and justification of advanced technologies. Included are modern tools, as well as application-based cases that demonstrate the use of these tools. Students, researchers and decision makers will benefit from this useful resource.

In the competitive business arena organizations must continually strive to create new and better products faster, more efficiently, and more cost effectively than competitors to gain and keep the competitive advantage. Computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided engineering (CAE), and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) are now the industry standard, in all major industries. The seven volumes in Computer-Aided Design, Engineering, and Manufacturing: Systems Techniques, and Manufacturing provide a comprehensive treatment of the techniques and applications of CAD, CAE, and CAM.

This thesis reports on an innovative production-scheduling model for virtual computer-integrated manufacturing (VCIM) systems. It also describes a robust genetic algorithm for production scheduling in VCIM systems. The model, which is the most comprehensive of its kind to date, is not only capable of supporting collaborative shipment scheduling and handling multiple product orders simultaneously, but also helps cope with multiple objective functions under uncertainties. In turn, the genetic algorithm, characterised by an innovative algorithm structure, chromosome encoding, crossover and mutation, is capable of searching for optimal/suboptimal solutions to the complex optimisation problem in the VCIM production- scheduling model described. Lastly, the effectiveness of the proposed approach is verified in a comprehensive case study.