The fourth industrial revolution is evolving in a context where (i) customer demand is characterized by its versatility, mass customization and increasingly short deadlines, (ii) the useful life of products is decreasing and (iii) the scarcity of resources and the increase in waste. The production system must be agile and eco-responsible.
In this context, researchers from CRAN/ISET are conducting work related to the industry of the future around Regeneration, Intelligent Product, and hybrid production control. To support their research, these researchers are involved in a "Industry 4.0" platform project: ProGreSS4.0 (PROduction & REGeneration SyStem 4.0).
Controlling a production and regeneration system is a priori more difficult than for a classic production system. Indeed, the regeneration system must guarantee the quality requirements of customer demands despite a significant variability in the quality and past uses of incoming used products. This high variability implies that 1) the regeneration range is not determined in advance (number of steps and operations required), 2) the number of possible nomenclature variants of a product with n elementary components increases due to the different health states of these components, 3) the control of the production system is complicated by the double flow (manufacturing/regeneration) on a reconfigurable system and shared resources, with a regeneration flow difficult to anticipate. The objective of the PROGRESS4.0 platform is to support and illustrate the research themes of the ISET department of CRAN (and in particular the S&0-2I and SdF-PHM2 teams):
- Product regeneration: define the ranges allowing to regenerate components of a used product in order to be able to reinject them into a manufacturing flow. In order to implement them, several scientific barriers are identified: (i) evaluate the health status of a product, by proposing methods of aggregation of heterogeneous information, but also of its components by proposing methods of projection of a health status from a level n to a level n-1 (ii) Manage production strategies by proposing methods for evaluating the choice of resources and regeneration ranges, taking into account uncertainties about the health status and the result of regeneration, (iii) propose process engineering approaches consistent with the engineering of the product to be regenerated.
- The intelligent product: this concept proposes to develop products augmented by IoT technologies to associate them with an informational representation (a kind of digital twin). The product is then intelligent and decides its future in the regeneration system. The issues considered aim to: (i) structure product information by proposing a new ontology of the knowledge necessary for regeneration, (ii) propose for reconfiguration, an architecture of the global information system integrating enterprise systems (such as ERP and MES) with intelligent products, (iii) study the effect of information sharing between workshop entities on the quality of product decision-making.
- Centralized/distributed hybrid production control: the distributed decision-making capabilities on the intelligent products defined above and the resources require a shift to a centralized/distributed hybrid control. The challenge is to find the right level of decision between these two modes with issues such as: (i) model the control problem related to regeneration (proximity to classical problems, specific constraints, relevant objective function), (ii) define locally made decisions taking into account the effects of myopia that may result, (iii) distribute decision-making capabilities by applying, evaluating and evolving known architectures (such as PROSA), (iii) control the change from centralized/distributed mode, (iv) identify the right tools for implementing the hybrid system (Operational Research, Multi-Agent Systems, Simulation, Hybridization).
The PROGRESS4.0 platform integrates all the production means of AIP-PRIMECA de Lorraine for the manufacture of new products or the regeneration of used products. The products considered are scooter engines. Figure 60 proposes a block diagram of PROGRESS4.0 and illustrates the product flows between resources. The detailed equipment is as follows:
- mobile robotics (integrate product flows): (1) 40 two OMRON Lynx;
- mobile robotics cells (facilitate reconfigurability): (2) two FANUC cells;
- cobotics (perform tasks in collaboration with humans): (3) one YUMI cobot, (4) one UR cobot with integration on a Lynx mobile robot, (9) one UR cobot for Automated Store;
- intelligent product (carry product information): (5) RFID system, (6) indoor GPS;
- augmented/virtual reality (Support the operator): (7) 1 HoloLens augmented reality headset, (8) 1 virtual reality headset.
