Material handling of compliant parts is one of the most critical and underresearched problems in the sheet metal stamping industry. The fundamental shortcoming of currently studied material handling systems for sheet metal stamping is the lack of analysis of its impact on part dimensional quality and production throughput. This paper addresses this problem by development of a generic methodolog...

An offshore elements layout project consists of positioning oil wells, manifolds and platforms in offshore areas, as well as routing the pipelines that connect these elements. The design process involves a set of restrictions, a great number of decisions and an infinite number of design alternatives. This paper presents a new model to solve this problem based on combining two strategies: divide...

In very deep-submicron very large scale integration (VLSI), manufacturing steps involving chemical-mechanical polishing (CMP) have varying effects on device and interconnect features, depending on local characteristics of the layout. To reduce manufacturing variation due to CMP and to improve performance predictability and yield, the layout must be made uniform with respect to certain density c...

Due to the increased competition in manufacturing industries play a driving force towards reducing the manufacturing costs by efficient design of facility layout. The success of manufacturing industries depends on the design of the facility that is able to adapt quickly and effectively for any changes in market requirements, technological changes, etc. The Facility Layout Problem (FLP) is a com...

This thesis explores techniques for the automated production of schematic diagrams, in particular those in the style of metro maps. Metro map style schematics are used across the world, typically to depict public transport networks, and therefore benefit from an innate level of user familiarity not found with most other data visualisation styles. Currently, this style of schematic is used infre...

This paper analyses what kind of coordination between cells is necessary when using cellular manufacture compared to a production situation that is functionally organized. Three levels of coordination are distinguished: internal, horizontal and vertical. Two types of relations between units are considered: sequential and lateral. It is shown that there is a change in coordination requirement if...