A New Book
On Lean Manufacturing
From Manufacturing &
Technology News
One of the largest and perhaps most successful projects started under the Intelligent Manufacturing Systems (IMS) international R&D program has completed its first phase of research with some stupendous results. The Next Generation Manufacturing Systems (NGMS) project, one of 14 IMS-sanctioned programs, has demonstrated a manufacturing system based upon biological concepts that reduces the operational cost of a production line by almost 90 percent. Given the successes achieved over the past five years, participants have agreed to start phase two, which will be a three-year effort expected to consume $140 million.
In one NGMS project, Honda Engineering and Fujitsu replaced a traditional automobile assembly line with a simulation of one based upon biological concepts of learning and evolving. Honda designed an automobile welding operation capable of producing 1,000 vehicles per day of 20 different body styles based upon a concept of repulsion fields and attraction fields.
Intelligent mobile welding robots are attracted to an automobile body that is mounted onto its own automatic guided vehicle (AGV) capable of moving around the shop floor. Both dock up to each other and the welder performs its hundreds of welds as the AGV moves through the plant.
"As you run the comparison and look at the shop floor, the welder availability, the number of welders required and the productivity that is achieved, and do a side-by-side comparison with the existing process, there was an 87 percent reduction in the operation cost of that part of the automobile manufacturing facility," says NGMS program director Charles Anderson of the Consortium for Advanced Manufacturing - International, which is the international coordinating partner for the NGMS program.
When the biological manufacturing systems research partners ran their financial comparisons, they found that the initial cost of facilities, conveyors, AGVs and power sources were pretty much the same as for a traditional assembly line. But the operational cost of the "line-less" system was dramatically lower, with an 80 percent reduction in the cost of personnel.
The total cost of running a traditional automobile welding assembly line is $35 million per year as compared to $4.3 million per year for the one based upon a biological approach. "The bottom line is there is a tremendous reduction in operator costs," says Anderson.
Given the success of the project, NGMS participants plan on taking the research to the next phase by building a pilot plant. The NGMS program is also conducting research into autonomous distributed manufacturing systems and adaptable, flexible and reconfigurable manufacturing systems. It has completed initial projects that have relevance to six industries: aerospace, automotive, electronics, small device apparatus equipment, buildings and construction and heavy equipment.
Twenty-two companies have been involved in the effort and CAM-I plans to hold a public meeting describing the results of phase one on May 17 in Gaithersburg, Md., with speakers from Honda Engineering, Rockwell Collins, and Kawasaki Heavy Industries. A meeting describing NGMS’s proposed second phase of research will follow on May 18 and 19 at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. It is reserved for NGMS partners and those companies seriously considering joining the program. For more information on the meetings or to purchase a copy of the 500-page, $49.95 report describing the NGMS phase one accomplishments, go to www.cam-i.org.