By Aïssatou Sidimé
It takes only a second to produce the plastic components of a pen, but it may take days to get that pen assembled.
“It’s mostly because of the waiting,” says F. Frank Chen, the Lutcher Brown Distinguished Chair in Advanced Manufacturing and professor of mechanical engineering. “Waiting for other outsourced parts, waiting between assembly stations.”
Those delays often translate to increased cost for the consumer. Efficient production and fast delivery of all products are critical to the success of manufacturing companies. When manufacturers miss production goals, consumers take a hit to their wallets.
It has been estimated that manufacturing companies lose billions of dollars each year due to inadequate systems and poor production planning.
Chen, Can (John) Saygin, associate professor of mechanical engineering, and their colleagues are working on ways to improve production and therefore ease the price crunch consumers often face. Their Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Lean Systems (CAMLS) looks at the integration of intelligent machines (such as robots), Web-based software and automatic sensors with a company’s infrastructure. This can improve production processes—which include planning, implementation and output—in a variety of manufacturing settings, and can pinpoint where waste occurs.
The center’s efforts are garnering attention. In its first year, CAMLS attracted more than $1.2 million in federal research funding and corporate membership fees, including a recent $499,856 grant from the U.S. Department of Defense Infrastructure Support Program. The research team also received a three-year, $375,402 grant from the National Science Foundation’s Major Research
Instrumentation Program.
The CAMLS research team has grown from five people in April 2007 to 37 today, including four faculty members, one research fellow, 10 graduate students and 19 undergraduates in three labs. Their awareness of industry needs is resulting in products that will not only help manufacturers and consumers save money, but also will improve companies’ competitiveness in the global marketplace, according to Chen and Saygin.
In the CAMLS labs, the team analyzes how a company makes decisions, from production to the final product, to determine how automatic scanning technology can help. “Our goal is to eliminate waste, which is anything that does not add value, such as waiting time,” Chen says.
He and assistant professor Hungda Wan use three Web-based software packages that they co-designed. By using this system, corporate clients can assess their own organization’s “leanness”—that is, how well they minimize waste—by responding to more than 100 questions that cover training, inventory turns, standardization of processes, preventive maintenance and continuous improvement processes. Companies can also implement waste-reduction practices and six-sigma process improvement, a widely used business management strategy, at the same time.
In addition, Wan and Chen turned production instruction boards of the famous Toyota Production System into a Web-based system that allows manufacturers to better control production to meet customers’ demand rates. In the future, Chen and Wan hope to develop software that can be used to describe the full process of converting raw materials into finished goods, called value-stream mapping, using real-time data supplied by automatic sensors.
“Now most companies are doing value-stream mapping by using pens and paper,” Chen says. With real-time analysis, companies would be able to pinpoint just how efficient they are currently and where to focus their efforts next to further reduce waste.
Other current research in the CAMLS labs involves applications of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. This technology is used in hospitals to keep track of newborns and patients with mental disabilities by scanning their ID bracelets. The CAMLS team is looking to expand this technology into the manufacturing sector to enhance sales, customer service and marketing activities.
By combining RFID tags with other automatic sensors on the shop floor to track parts and inventory, receiving docks that take
in huge quantities of goods on pallets could also benefit greatly, Saygin says.
“Somebody going through the pallet, even with a barcode scanner, takes some time,” says Saygin, who runs UTSA’s Manufacturing Systems and Automation Laboratory. “But RFID can read them seamlessly, saving time and warehouse space.”
But the technology still needs tweaking. Current RFID systems can read only about 60 to 70 percent of tagged items on any pallet. That’s because the accuracy depends on the orientation of tags, type of tagged items, number of items on the pallet and power setting on the RFID readers. When active RFID readers are placed too close together, they can generate duplicate counts or cancel each other out. Saygin is testing ways to optimize usage of the devices.
So far, San Antonio–based Lancer Corporation, which manufactures soft-drink beverage dispensers and other food service equipment; ABB Robotics, a leading manufacturer of industrial robots; the Chism Co., a family-owned awning manufacturer in San
Antonio; and Spain-based SMC International Training, a provider of automated systems for educational environments, have joined the CAMLS research consortium to benefit from its applied research and onsite training.
“The fundamental motivation in creating the center is to be a one-stop source for advanced manufacturing and enterprises systems that can support the ever-strengthening manufacturing base in San Antonio and the South Texas region,” Chen says. With government and corporate funding, CAMLS plans to be self-sustaining within three to five years.
Manufacturing in San Antonio has blossomed in just the last few years. Port San Antonio (at the site of the former Kelly Air Force Base), the new Toyota truck assembly plant and its suppliers, and Caterpillar’s acquisition of a manufacturing facility have created thousands of new manufacturing jobs. The city also has hundreds of manufacturers with fewer than 500 employees. These enterprises play a critical role in supporting San Antonio’s economy—they added $14.4 billion in 2006—making the need for training and education in advanced machining, lean manufacturing and integrated manufacturing systems vital, the CAMLS researchers say.
“When it became clear that the manufacturing industry was growing rapidly in San Antonio and there was no university-level workforce development program available in the area, we were quick to respond and established the center,” says UTSA President Ricardo Romo. “We want to be a true partner in bringing about
solutions in our community.” |
