Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

This chapter deals with the central role of manufacturing in developed and developing countries, assessing how relevant it is from economic and social perspectives. The current international and Italian manufacturing contexts are analysed by highlighting the main criticalities and the impact of relevant global megatrends. Then, the main ongoing industrial research initiatives are presented both at international and Italian level. Based on the elaboration of current context and research initiatives, the Italian Flagship Project defined five research priorities for the future of the manufacturing industry. Based on these priorities, the flagship project funded a total of 18 small-sized research projects after a competition based on calls for proposals. The results of the funded research projects are analysed in terms of scientific and industrial results, while providing references for more detailed descriptions in the specific chapters.

The analysis and design of control system configurations for automated production systems is generally a challenging problem, in particular given the increasing number of automation devices and the amount of information to be managed. This problem becomes even more complex when the production system is characterized by a fast evolutionary behaviour in terms of tasks to be executed, production volumes, changing priorities, and available resources. Thus, the control solution needs to be optimized on the basis of key performance indicators like flow production, service level, job tardiness, peak of the absorbed electrical power and the total energy consumed by the plant. This paper proposes a prototype control platform based on Model Predictive Control (MPC) that is able to impress to the production system the desired functional behaviour. The platform is structured according to a two-level control architecture. At the lower layer, distributed MPC algorithms control the pieces of equipment in the production system. At the higher layer an MPC coordinator manages the lower level controllers, by taking full advantage of the most recent advances in hybrid control theory, dynamic programming, mixed‐integer optimization, and game theory. The MPC-based control platform will be presented and then applied to the case of a pilot production plant.

Flexibility and reconfigurability of production systems are typically exploited to cope with the changing production demand in terms of volume and variety. This work addresses the problem of enhancing the current flexibility of Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMSs) by designing pallet configurations with zero-point modular fixtures. This class of equipment provides the ability of rapidly reconfiguring the pallets to match the production requirements, thus providing a strategic option to quickly manage the joint evolution of products and processes. An approach consisting of methods and tools is presented to overcome the main obstacles related to the use of zero-point clamping technologies in modern FMSs. The proposed approach ranges from the design of the pallet configuration to the pallet verification during the manufacturing executing phase. The feasibility of the overall approach has been demonstrated through the development of a prototype.

Modern automation systems are asked to provide a step change toward flexibility and reconfigurability to cope with increasing demand for fast changing and highly fragmented production—which is more and more characterising the manufacturing sector. This reflects in the transition from traditional hierarchical and centralised control architecture to adaptive distributed control systems, being the latter capable of exploiting also knowledge-based strategies toward collaborating behaviours. The chapter intends to investigate such topics, by outlining major challenges and proposing a possible approach toward their solution, founded on autonomous, self-declaring, knowledge-based and heterarchically collaborating control modules. The benefits of the proposed approach are discussed and demonstrated in the field of re-manufacturing of electronic components, with specific reference to a pilot plant for the integrated End-Of-Life management of mechatronic products.

Materials recycling is a key process to close the loop of materials in the direction of circular economy. However, the variability of waste and the high volatility of the price of recovered materials are posing serious challenges to the current rigid design of mechanical recycling systems. This is particularly true for Waste Electric and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), whose volume is growing more than other waste streams in Europe due to the diffusion of electronic products and to their short technology cycles. This study is aimed at the development of new flexible recycling systems through the implementation of a Hyper Spectral Imaging system and a simulation model enabling the real-time characterisation of shredded particles and the dynamic optimisation of process parameters for efficient sorting. A hardware and software prototype was realised and tested at the De- and Re-manufacturing pilot plant of CNR-STIIMA. The positive economic impact of flexible recycling systems enabled by new technologies was assessed through scenario analysis.

This work aims to develop methodologies and tools to support the design and management of sustainable processes for the production of biodegradable polyhydroxyalcanoates (PHAs) biopolymers. PHAs are linear polyesters produced in nature by bacteria through aerobic fermentation of many carbon sources, completely biodegradable and biocompatible. We carried out a study inherent to the advancement of an innovative, cost-effective and environmentally sustainable technology for isolating PHAs from bacteria mixed cultures by combining: (a) innovative cells’ pre-treatments and polymer purification’s strategy by means of TiO/UV or Ag nanostructured materials; (b) polymer extraction through a green and safe system directly applicable to bacterial cultures, which combines the advantages of solvent extraction and these of dissolution of the non-PHAs cellular matrix through surfactants; (c) monitoring and control tools for process energy and efficiency management. The outcomes put the basis for the design and subsequent building of a working pilot system for the production of completely biodegradable and biocompatible PHAs. The efficiency can be improved and the investments and operating costs can be decreased thanks to the optimization of the production process with the introduction of safe and cheap PHAs extraction route without use of toxic and harmful chemicals and the integration of monitoring and automation tools. The engineering and integration of nano-TiO phase within textile fibres and their use as photocatalytic active media for bacteria pre- and post-treatment of waste water added a new opportunity for improving process efficiency and sustainability.

The demand for key metals for the production of high-tech products is constantly growing in Europe, leading to relevant problems both in terms of supply risks and costs. Waste from Electric and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) is growing very fast in Europe, with an annual increase rate between 3 and 5%. Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs), which are embedded in electric and electronics products, are very valuable waste products, since they are composed also of precious metals and key metals (about 25–30%). Recycling of PCBs is a very challenging task that has not been solved yet: recycling rates for traditional metals are around 30–35% and many critical key metals, as well as the non metal fraction, are not recycled. This work proposes a set of solutions to be adopted towards the automated zero-waste treatment of PCBs. They address selective disassembly of PCBs components, mechanical pre-treatments, chemical processes for the characterisation of metals material content of PCBs, as well as for the recycling of their non-metal fraction. New business models are finally proposed for the uptake of such solutions in a framework of integrated recycling chain.

Smart factories must speed up their processes to face new manufacturing challenges and, at the same time, demonstrate an extremely high degree of flexibility to reduce production costs and time. This kind of issues can be addressed by the cooperation between humans and robots in a mixed human-robot working environment. Robots have the compelling advantage of spatial precision and repeatability as well as the capability of applying defined forces. Humans, on the other hand, are especially skilled at complex manipulations and adapting to changing task requirements. In this complicate scenario of co-shared workplace and continuous human-robot interaction, safety strategies are a key requirement to avoid possible injuries to humans or fatal accidents. This chapter proposes a systemic approach to respond to these requirements. The approach merges and manages multiple sensing sources, redundant transmission protocols and software decision mechanisms, aiming to guarantee a continuous and reconfigurable co-share scenario that enables an operative interaction between human workers and robots in a controlled and safe environment. Furthermore, new technological solutions and innovative methodologies are presented for the definition of a safer workplace in human-robot interaction scenarios.

Large scale factories such as steel, wood, construction, recycling plants and landfills involve the procurement of raw material which may include radiating parts, that must be monitored, because potentially dangerous for workers. Manufacturing operations are carried out in unstructured environments, where fully autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) inspection is hardly applicable. In this work we report on the development of a haptic teleoperated UAV for localization of radiation sources in industrial plants. Radiation sources can be localized and identified thanks to a novel CZT-based custom gamma-ray detector integrated on the UAV, providing light, compact, spectroscopic, and low power operation. UAV operation with a human in the loop allows an expert operator to focus on selected candidate areas, thereby optimizing short flight mission in face of the constrained acquisition times required by nuclear inspection. To cope with the reduced situational awareness of the remote operator, force feedback is exploited as an additional sensory channel. The developed prototype has been demonstrated both in relevant and operational environments.

The full implementation of collaborative production networks is crucial for companies willing to respond to consumer demand strongly focused on product customisation. This chapter proposes an approach to evaluate the performance of different Supply Chain (SC) configurations in a customised production context. The model is based on discrete-event simulation and is applied to the case of supply chain in the fashion sector to support the comparison between mass and customised production. A prototype web-based interface is also developed and proposed to facilitate the use of the model not only for experts in simulation but for any user in the SC management field.