Lean Engineering Research Group

Providing operations expertise for the responsive, efficient and lean enterprise

Professor Dave Stockton

Research areas
RESEARCH AREAS Operations design, planning and control of complex work environments Autonomous planning of complex systems Implementing Lean & 6- improvement practices Supply chain demand forecasting and resource planning Servitisation & service support High variety/low volume flow processing Product & process cost modelling BUSINESS RELEVANCE Increasing levels of product & demand customisation and servitisation Increasing levels of product & process development Increasing levels of complexity in the operations environment Need for increased levels of competitiveness cost, quality, lead time, delivery, productivity and choice Increasing environmental concern

Multi-Part Flexible Manpower Lines

th 100 150th Generation: st Generation: 1 Generation: th 50 Generation:

54 Operators 8 Operators 6Operators Operators

Self-optimising models for synchronous materials flow

Foreward Schedule Capacity Constrained Process SR P Process SR P Divergent Process Convergent Process SR P

Process

Process

Process SR P Process Backward Schedule

Material Entry Process SR P

Material entry points Schedule release points Capacity constrained processes Divergent, convergent bottleneck processes Shipping points

Bottleneck Process SR P

Shipping Exit Process

Process

Cost modelling using Artificial Neural Networks & Fuzzy Logic

1.00 0.80 0.60

Truth Values

Curvature is Simple

Curvature is Complex

0.40

Curvature is Moderate
Input Values
0 10 20 30

0.20

Input Layer

Hidden Layer

Output Layer

Surface Curvature Complexity

Complexity of Curves (x1) External Shape Complexity (x2) Average Ply Length (x3)

processing element

pe4

pe1

Ply Lay-Up Cost Roll Changing Cost Inspection Cost

pe5

Metric pe2

Metric pe6

pe3

pe7

Automatic development of cost models

Data mining of output from Virtual Engineering models to identify cost relationships

Accelerated process excellence using virtual process simulation

Tools to visualise the operation of complex systems Advanced Visualization Self-Organised Relationships Optimization Performance Analysis Creative Problem Solving Lean Training Change Management
Figure 1: V-DEPS
Advanced visualisation capability & lean training environment

Selforganised relationship networks External I/O

Simulation management tool Performance & results analysis tool

Creative problem solving tool Change management tool

Optimisation tool

Model updating

Run simulations & optimise

Analyse results

Identify lean changes

Improving demand forecasting and resource planning using AI techniques

Fuzzy Logic - data aggregation Artificial neural networks - knowledge retrieval and model development Genetic algorithms optimisation of system and supply chain inventory and capacity plans

Optimiser

No

Is forecasting accuracy OK?

Knowledge Identification System

Yes

Knowledge Collection System

Knowledge Analysis System

Forecasting Models Application

Principles of self-organisation