Zero-defect manufacturing strategies towards on-line production management

Z-fact0r (PI): Zero-defect manufacturing strategies towards on-line production management for European factories

Manufacturing represents approximately 21 % of the EU’s GDP and 20 % of its employment, providing more than 30 million jobs in 230 000 enterprises, mostly SMEs. Moreover, each job in the industry is considered to be linked to two more in related services. European manufacturing is also a dominant element in international trade, leading the world in areas such as automotive, machinery and agricultural engineering. Already threatened by both the lower-wage economies and other high-tech rivals, the situation of EU companies was even made more difficult by the downturn.

The Z-Fact0r consortium has conducted extensive state-of-the-art research and realized that although a number of activities have been trying to address the need for zero-defect manufacturing, still there is a vast business opportunity for innovative, high-ROI (Return on Investment) solutions to ensure, better quality and higher productivity in the European manufacturing industries.

The Z-Fact0r solution comprises the introduction of five multi-stage production-based strategies targeting:

• the early detection of the defect (Z-DETECT),
• the prediction of the defect generation (Z-PREDICT),
• the prevention of defect generation by recalibrating the production line (multi-stage), as well as defect propagation in later stages of the production (Z-PREVENT),
• the reworking/remanufacturing of the product, if this is possible, using additive and subtractive manufacturing techniques (Z-REPAIR) and
• the management of the aforementioned strategies through event modelling, KPI (key performance indicators) monitoring and real-time decision support (Z-MANAGE).

To do that we have brought together a total of thirteen EU-based partners, representing both industry and academia, having ample experience in cutting-edge technologies and active presence in the EU manufacturing.

Publications

• Morad Danishvar, Alireza Mousavi, Sebelan Danishvar, Afsahin Mansouri (2020). Implementing Multi-Objective Batch Base Flow-Shop Scheduling Optimisation (MOBS-NET) using Fully Connected Deep Neural Network. Under review at International Journal of Production Research
• Morad Danishvar, Alireza Mousavi, Sebelan Danishvar (2019). The Genomics of Industrial Process through the Qualia of Markovian Behaviour, under review at IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics: Systems.
• Foivos Psarommatis, Morad Danishvar, Ali Mousavi, Dimitris Kiritsis (2019). Cost-Based Optimisation of manufacturing Key Performance Indicators for Zero Defect Manufacturing, Under review at International Journal of Production Research.
• Morad Danishvar, Alireza Mousavi, Peter Broomhead (2018). EventiC: A Real-Time Unbiased Event-Based Learning Technique for Complex Systems, 2018 IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics: Systems.
• Huang, Z., Li, M., Mousavi, A., Danishvar, M., & Wang, Z. (2018). EGEP: An Event Tracker Enhanced Gene Expression Programming for Data-Driven System Engineering Problems. IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computational Intelligence.