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The direct laser metal deposition (DLMD) is an emerging technology in the additive manufacturing field, which is becoming widely adopted in several industrial applications. The optimal selection of process parameters is critical, given the cost of physical tests and the requirement for high-quality manufacturing. Correct forecasting of process parameters using predictive physical models is a viable alternative to shorten the setup phase and improve the sustainability. In this paper, firstly, several models available so far in the literature are reviewed, and then, a general model is derived to evaluate the best combination of process parameters in single track operations. The proposed phenomenological model allows simple forecasting based on three main process parameters: laser power (P), powder feed rate (F) and translation speed (V). An innovative approach is proposed to generalise the model and overcome the “try and error” method used in numerous works to determine the exponents (α, β, γ). The model was designed considering the physical parameters which best explained the variability of the exponents: the thermal diffusivity of the base material and the density of the powder material. The best ranges of the process parameter exponents are suggested to establish the most suitable combined parameters for the prediction of geometric characteristics of the clad. The potentialities of the model are proven based on an experimental case performed over a commercially available Nickel-based super-alloy powder. New formulations are recommended, which are in good agreement with the behaviours defined in the literature, as shown in the test case. more...

Sustainability of buildings and constructions is almost a mandatory feature nowadays. New low-cost solutions are quite often pursued for increasing the structural and aesthetic quality of the manufactured units. This paper discusses a new idea of a modular component easy-to-assemble for low-cost structural arches on site, mainly for civil building applications. The related producibility issues are also discussed by presenting an appropriate manufacturing process able to propose a modular technology that could be easily implemented at industrial level, thus widening the use of easy-to-mount arches for civil buildings. The new concept of dimension stones, the different and appropriate use of materials may allow the reduction of resource consumption and assure the sustainability of the arches according to the proposal here discussed. The idea of a new assembled modular arch is here supported by scientific and technical evidences to show the potentialities for its use in real applications. The prototype of this modular arch has been subjected to static experimental tests whose results are discussed also by means of a numerical model able to predict the actual behaviour. more...

International audience; Manufacturing enterprises are facing the need to align themselves to the new information technologies (IT) and respond to the new challenges of variable market demand. One of the key enablers of this IT revolution toward Smart Manufacturing is the digital twin (DT). It embeds a “virtual” image of the reality constantly synchronized with the real operating scenario to provide sound information (knowledge model) to reality interpretation model to draw sound decisions. The paper aims at providing an up-to date picture of the main DT components, their features and interaction problems. The paper aims at clearly tracing the ongoing research and technical challenges in conceiving and building DTs as well, according to different application domains and related technologies. To this purpose, the main questions answered here are: ‘What is a Digital Twin?’; ‘Where is appropriate to use a Digital Twin?’; ‘When has a Digital Twin to be developed?’; ‘Why should a Digital Twin be used?’; ‘How to design and implement a Digital Twin?’; ‘What are the main challenges of implementing a Digital Twin?’. This study tries to answer to the previous questions funding on a wide systematic literature review of scientific research, tools, and technicalities in different application domains. more...

Direct metal laser deposition (DMLD) is an additive manufacturing technique suitable for coating and repair, which has been gaining a growing interest in 3D manufacturing applications in recent years. However, its diffusion in the manufacturing industry is still limited due to technical challenges to be solved—both the sub-optimal quality of the final parts and the low repeatability of the process make the DMLD inadequate for high-value applications requiring high-performance standards. Thus, real-time monitoring and process control are indispensable requirements for improving the DMLD process. The aim of this study was the optimization of deposition strategies for the fabrication of thin walls in AISI 316L stainless steel. For this purpose, a coaxial monitoring system and image processing algorithms were employed to study the melt pool geometry. The comparison tests carried out highlighted how the region-based active contour algorithm used for image processing is more efficient and stable than others covered in the literature. The results allowed the identification of the best deposition strategy. Therefore, it is shown how this monitoring methodology proved to be suitable for designing and implementing the right building strategy for DMLD manufactured 3D components. A fast and stable image processing method was achieved, which can be considered for future closed-loop monitoring in real-time applications. more...

International audience; This article presents and compares the characteristics of most studied energy storage techniques, their technological development status, and performances highlighting the advantages of Vanadium redox flow battery. In more details, this article aims to describe the principal characteristics and the challenges of the vanadium redox flow battery. The challenges focus on three different aspects, namely membrane development, electrolyte optimization and electrode development underlining the precipitation problems of the vanadium ions, transportation issues and costs in vanadium redox flow batteries. Different methods and solutions have been presented in this article for overcoming these problems, defining also progress in the large-scale vanadium redox flow battery. more...

This review critically evaluates the latest trends in fuel cell development for portable and stationary fuel cell applications and their integration into the automotive industry. Fast start-up, high efficiency, no toxic emissions into the atmosphere and good modularity are the key advantages of fuel cell applications. Despite the merits associated with fuel cells, the high cost of the technology remains a key factor impeding its widespread commercialization. Therefore, this review presents detailed information into the best operating conditions that yield maximum fuel cell performance. The paper recommends future research geared towards robust fuel cell geometry designs, as this determines the cell losses, and material characterization of the various cell components. When this is done properly, it will support a total reduction in the cost of the cell which in effect will reduce the total cost of the system. Despite the strides made by the fuel cell research community, there is a need for public sensitization as some people have reservations regarding the safety of the technology. This hurdle can be overcome if there is a well-documented risk assessment, which also needs to be considered in future research activities. more...

International audience; Manufacturing enterprises are presently facing with an array of industry 4.0 (I4.0) challenges. "Digital requirements" need to be really assessed by an accurate analysis and deep understanding of the operational and technological criticalities in the manufacturing operations. It is required to structure a monitoring strategy for industry 4.0 that contains: 1. The definition of the measuring parameters. 2. The application of the sensor. 3. The execution of the measurement. The goal in fact is to present and to analyse the monitoring strategy adopted in a design for the digital transformation of a real Italian SME company: Master Italy s.r.l. Master Italy s.r.l. is a SME Italian company producing small accessories for civil window frames, is here considered to implement a monitoring strategy. The monitoring strategy is a hybrid approach between the life cycle analysis (LCA) and the exergetic analysis (EA) based on the evaluation of the mass balance (Fig.1.) and the energy balance (Fig.2.). LCA is an analytical tool used to quantify and to interpret the flows to-and-from the environment through the whole life cycle of a product, process or service. LCA appreciates quantities of elements flowing in the processes (say, energy, materials, etc.) but it depends on standard databases. The exergetic analysis is a thermodynamic method [1] that permits to: • Evaluate the quality of energy usage. • Identify and quantify the energy inefficiency of the process. Life cycle analysis (LCA) enables to identify the critical manufacturing process and the critical product of the company in terms of resource consumption and pollutions (green line). The critical process and the critical product in analysis are respectively the die casting aluminium and the steel corner (Fig.1 and Fig.2). The exergetic analysis allows to: 1. Split the manufacturing process in different subsystems. 2. Identify the critical subsystem evaluating the contribute of the exergy loss (E xloss). 3. Define the critical parameters to control. Die casting is a metal casting process that is characterized by forcing molten metal under high pressure into a mould cavity. The injection cycle of die casting aluminium process is composed by four different phases: 1. Melting: the aluminium enters at the solid state and exits at the molten state. 2. Injection: the molten aluminium is transferred, thought a plunger, into a chamber where it is injected into the mould. 3. Moulding: the molten aluminium solidifies in the mould cavity. 4. Extraction: an ejection mechanism pushes the casting out of the mould cavity. The optimization criterion of the monitoring strategy is to minimize the term E xloss , since the exergy loss is proportional to the generated entropy and this one is responsible for the less-than-theoretical efficiency of the system. The application of the exergetic analysis shows that the moulding phase (Subsystem 3) is the critical subsystem because the exergy loss is highest than other subsystems (Fig.1 and Fig.2). The first goal of the monitoring strategy, for Industry 4.0 implementations, is to select and to define where, what and why to sensorize (red rectangle). more...

International audience; Despite the recent growing interest in the " factory smartness " , still there are few small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that adopt effective I4.0 solutions. The main reasons can be related to the lack of formalized processes, lack of ICT knowledge as well as low-cost commercial systems. To cope with these issues, this work focuses on the development and the application of an approach to provide SMEs with a multipurpose , modular, knowledge-based system: the main aim is to provide a modular and extensible system that can be incrementally implemented without requiring a huge initial investments. This system is based on a core design-knowledge metamodel. From this core metamodel, multi-purposes modules can be built: in this paper, we present modules for the traceability support, the AR-powered assembly support, the machine-to-machine control and the data analysis support. more...

The manufacturing trend nowadays seems to be in contrast with the ecosystem needs, as it is based on the exploitation of limited natural resources. A new paradigm is now driving manufacturing in the direction of sustainability: the green and circular thinking. This latter can now guide SMEs in optimizing its processes and products to be more eco-friendly, and this in turn may lead to significant competitive advantages. The purpose of the study is to analyze the environmental lifecycle performance of a 100% PET fabric used for the outer cover of bed mattresses made by an Italian company, with looms of recent technology (2009–2010). The emissions defined in the community labeling system for textile products and mattresses have been taken into account as well as the mid and final impact categories established by the guidelines for the Product Environmental Footprint developed by European. Results show that the fiber and yarn production processes are the most impacted due to transport from China and the use of Chinese electricity grid mix (rich in coal). Furthermore, the disposal of fabric is another environmental critical point. In order to evaluate the improvements in the environmental sustainability of supply of PET yarns and the disposal phase, a number of scenarios were analysed, while a Monte Carlo simulation was performed to evaluate the sensitivity of the results respect to data uncertainty. A number of recommendations for the textile sector are provided, useful to assure sustainability of production. Critical points to achieve environmental labeling are highlighted and new data about textile, not already available in databases and literature, are provided due to the company's engagement. Finally, hints on the best recycling process of the product are given. more...

The increasing rate of production and diffusion of photovoltaic (PV) technologies for industrial and domestic applications urges improvement of the sustainability of their demanufacuring processes in order to reduce the amount of electronic wastes. Sustainability of demanufacturing processes concerns the reduction of energy consumption, the reduction of polluting substances as well as the reduction of the effort spent in recovery of the components. No optimal process exists so far, provided a number of different approaches have been devised. A promising choice relies on the use of thermo-mechanical treatments for inducing a delamination process where interfacial bonding between layers are weakened and, finally, broken inducing delamination of the layers. In this view, the paper presents a preliminary theoretical industrialization study. We introduce a mathematical model based of the equations of thermo-elasticity to prove the feasibility of the technological process; the results of a Finite Element (FE) Analysis are then discussed to show the validity of the new sustainable demanufacturing process endeavouring the delamination process. The analysis is performed searching the optimal thermally induced cycles at cryogenic temperatures. more...

The reliance on fossil fuels is one of the most challenging problems that need to be dealt with vigorously in recent times. This is because using them is not sustainable and leads to serious environmental issues, such as: air pollution and global warming. This condition affects economic security and development. An alternative to fossil fuel is highly possible which will be more environmentally friendly, sustainable and efficient as well. Among all the different technologies associated with renewable energy, fuel cell technologies represent one of the most promising technological advancement to curb the situation. In this paper, an overview of the technology and its advantages and disadvantages compared with competitive technologies was revealed. The application of different fuel cell types in the stationary and portable sectors was covered. Furthermore, recent challenges and promising developments of current fuel cell technologies in different studied applications were reviewed. Some possible solutions to the challenges were named in this paper for both the portable and stationary fuel cell applications. The paper further seeks to expose the world to the current progress made in the fuel cell industry up to date and possible areas that needs intensified research and modifications to make the fuel cell industry more vibrant and buoyant. more...

Among the enabling technologies of the fourth industrial revolution, additive manufacturing (AM) is considered as a key factor for the success of the new production paradigm.

Part 14: Data Management for Collaboration in Value Creation Networks; International audience; The digital transformation of collaborative networked manufacturing enterprises requires building and applying digital models representing the set of resources and processes knowledge. Modelling such digital copy of the physical system to perform real-time validation and optimization is quite complex and thus needs a big amount of data and some modelling patterns representing the operational semantics of the modelled elements. Generally, the modelling action has a specific application type. For this reason, the core challenge of the digital transformation modelling is to create a modular "digital model", namely a decomposable and re-composable model, towards different applications. The authors propose an approach based on the combination of data-driven and model-driven approaches, to identify and formalize modelling patterns, that combine for developing a modular executable model of the studied system. more...

Electrical energy production from renewable sources has dramatically grown in the recent years in the developed countries, putting the hard problem to be solved of supply discontinuity. How to reach high efficiency and reliability of electrical energy storage system is thus now one of the most challenging goals to be reached: among all, one of the most simple and widespread to use is the electrochemical storage systems. This paper analyzes the sustainability of a small vanadium redox flow battery performed by an LCA approach. This electrical energy storage system was selected for its significant advantages in use, such as the almost infinite lifetime of the vanadium electrolytes, which represent a potentially significant advantage in terms of a sustainable future made of less fossil fuels and more renewable energy. In fact, the LCA analysis performed shows that the production of the battery has a moderate impact, including the effect toxicity while at the end of life, the material and the electrolyte are completely reusable with a small fraction that goes to landfill disposal. more...

Decision concerning manufacturing process design and management, under sustainable constraints, are difficult to draw when taking into account variability of process conditions. Life-cycle analysis and exergetic analysis are even more jointly adopted to improve the accuracy of resource use efficiency – the so-called hybrid approach – even though these are based on the assumption of constant operating conditions. The paper discussed a new idea to take into account variability in hybrid exergetic LCA due to contingent conditions, by proposing an exergetic control-chart (ExCC) scheme to formalise the variable conditions. The idea behind the ExCC approach is that manufacturing sustainability analysis may change its outcomes when taking into account this ‘dynamic’ point of view. The control-charting scheme here proposed provides a mean to formalise explicitly the effects of variability in time, under the real operating conditions. The main advantage of the approach is to allow a more complete view of the process and to drive hints for improvements or innovations of processes. A real industrial case here presented of an Italian SME explains the potentialities of the idea as well as the limits of the current hybrid approaches available. more...

The development and implementation of the smart factory paradigm seems to be a must almost widespread all over the Western manufacturing companies so far. This article explores the application of exergetic analysis models as a feasible approach to customize such an announced paradigm shift: the implementation criteria as well as the true expected benefits are, in fact, far to be clearly understood or even perceived. An Italian medium enterprise located in the south of Italy operating in the automotive sector is adopted as a test bench. The standard use of exergetic model was adopted to assess and improve the sustainability of the manufacturing processes performed by the company, namely: turning, milling, grinding, plating and dehydrogenation. This thermodynamic view of the processes, on the other hand, represented a guideline to design a smart factory solution, and thus to structure the critical variables and the paths to digitalize processes for the intelligent control of the core production processes. more...

International audience; Highly customized products with shorter life cycles characterize the market today: the smart manufacturing paradigm can answer these needs. In this latter production system context, the interaction between production resources (PRs) can be swiftly adapted to meet both the variety of customers' needs and the optimization goals. In the scientific literature, several architectural configurations have been devised so far to this aim, namely: hierarchical, heterarchical or hybrid. Whether the hierarchical and heterarchical architectures provide respectively low reactivity and a reduced vision of the optimization opportunities at production system level, the hybrid architectures can mitigate the limit of both the previous architectures. However, no hybrid architecture can ensure all PRs are aware of how orienting their behavior to achieve the optimization goal of the manufacturing system with a minimal computational effort. In this paper, a new " hybrid architecture " is proposed to meet this goal. At each order entry, this architecture allows the PRs to be dynamically grouped. Each group has a supervisor , i.e. the optimizer, that has the responsibility: 1) to monitor the tasks on all the resources, 2) to compute the optimal manufacturing parameters and 3) to provide the optimization results to the resources of the group. A software prototype was developed to test the new architecture design in a simulated flow-shop and in a simplified job shop production. more...

To assess the sustainability of waste management scenario with energy recovery, it is necessary to carry out an adequate analysis of all influential criteria. The main problem in the analysis is to determine the indicators that clearly and fully sublimate the most important influential factors. The model for the assessment of the sustainability of waste treatment scenarios based on multi-criteria analysis AHP (analytic hierarchy process) method is developed. The model predicts an increase in the number of indicators, if it found that a selected number of indicators are not sufficient to distinguish between scenarios and new criterion for the selection of indicators: the relevance of the indicator for certain waste treatment. The model is verified in the case study the city of Nis. Four scenarios were selected and examined: business as usual scenario (landfilling of waste) and the other are created as scenarios with energy recovery and recourses preserving: composting organic waste with recycling inorganic waste, incineration of waste and anaerobic digestion of waste. The assessment of the sustainability of waste treatment scenarios was made in several steps. It is found that the best sustainable scenario is composting of organic and recycling of inorganic waste. more...

The paper proposes a methodology for the optimal dispatch of energy sources in hybrid and isolated energy systems. The proposed approach is based on the formulation and solution of a nonlinear discrete optimization problem aimed at optimizing input and output time trajectories for a set of combined generating and storage technologies. Loads and interruptible loads are among controlled variables, and are modeled according to their interruption costs. The approach is general enough to be applied to any hybrid system configuration and was developed having in mind the complex hybrid system architectures comprising several competing storage technologies (battery, pumping, and hydrogen). Test results are aimed at showing the feasibility of the proposed methodology, comparing optimal trajectories to suboptimal system behavior given by load-following strategies. more...

The increasing rate of production and diffusion of photovoltaic (PV) technologies for industrial and domestic applications urges improvement of the sustainability of their demanufacturing processes in order to reduce the amount of electronic wastes. Sustainability of demanufacturing processes concerns the reduction of energy consumption, the reduction of polluting substances as well as the reduction of the effort spent in recovery of the components. There is not an optimal process so far, provided a number of different approaches have been devised (see e.g. [1, 2, 3]). A promising choice relies on the use of thermo-mechanical treatments for inducing a delamination process where interfacial bonding between layers are weakened and, finally, broken inducing separation of the layers [4]. In this paper we present a preliminary industrialization study, based on Finite Element (FE) Analysis, to prove the validity of the new sustainable demanufacturing process endeavouring the delamination process. The analysis is performed searching the optimal thermally induced cycles at cryogenic temperatures. We finally show that it is possible to induce the delamination according to specific operating temperatures. more...

Published in Procedia Engineering 180:812-82, 2017; International audience; An exhibition system is typically a physical open space made of several buildings devoted to performing demonstrations or social activities. Several examples of exhibition systems can be found word wide. The management of these spaces, even in presence of a limited number of activities, requires significant efforts: safety, welcome, merchandising, public services, etc. Nowadays, the new trend is to offer multiple, contemporary use of exhibition spaces, allowing exhibition events and regular social activities (commercial, cultural, etc.) to be dynamically intertwined, either to endeavor the huge economic investments behind infrastructures or to increase the attractiveness of the exhibition activities.This is the case of “Fiera del Levante”, one of the oldest exhibitions located in a fascinating central area on the seaside of the city of Bari - Italy. Here, multiple social scopes, such as multi-exhibitions and contemporary social activities related to public offices, restaurants and entertainment, live together. This is an almost unique setting, which makes Fiera del Levante (FdL) a complex system and makes the management of the exhibition a challenging co-management task.The paper deals with the development and demonstration of a complex-system modeling framework for the decision support of the co-management of Fiera del Levante exhibition system, taking into account the interaction both physical aspects (building assets, infrastructure, equipment, fittings, …) and intangible aspects (permanent and temporary events, management and business activities, etc) and, of course, considering as a main input the needs of the different stakeholders involved. more...

Best track paper (1/20); International audience; Today, sustainability becomes one of the biggest challenges. It represents a key issue in every production activity. To face this issue, a possible solution is to enhance knowledge usage in manufacturing and sustainability domains. In this paper, we extend the ONTO-PDM ontology for formalizing sustainable manufacturing knowledge. An industrial case is presented for instantiating the extension. Moreover we design a knowledge-based system, which exploits sustainable manufacturing knowledge for supporting design and process planning with sustainability proposals, generating machine code starting from product specifications. more...

Many authorities have reached the conclusion that using fossil fuels, as the main source of energy to satisfy the increasing global energy demand, is ultimately unsustainable. This is because of depleting resources, and also because, if this approach is followed, emissions of carbon dioxide would continue to build up. Thus, renewable energy, including biomass has been accepted as a new energy source for sustainable development in the world. In this paper, organic material components used in the biomass to store energy were analysed. Technologies used in conversion of biomass into energy were specified. Biomass resources including woody biomass, herbaceous biomass, livestock manure, and algae were explored. For each biomass resource, the biomass structure, organic material components, technologies used in conversion of the material into energy were explained. Analysing the organic material components for each biomass material was found indispensable in order to predict and later to optimize the biomass energy resulted. more...

LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) is nowadays a commonly implemented approach for evaluating resource consumptions and for benchmarking purposes. It suffers some limitations, mainly related to its assumptions on linear resource -consumption behaviour as well as on the non-context specific data. On the other hand, it is an extremely powerful tool for decision-making support in the sustainability assessment of manufacturing processes, providing its well-structured approach and widely accepted procedure. Deepening the assessment capabilities of such a tool is thus an important opportunity. This paper is intended to build upon this concept by proposing an improved approach consisting in supplying in-process information concerning energy consumption and other process state conditions through thermography. The case of an Italian industrial company producing HDPE (High Density Polyethylene) nets for agriculture is taken as test bed case to show pros and cons of this idea. Actually, this approach resulted into a better assessment of the sustainability profile of the whole production process in terms of energy consumptions and environmental impacts. This in turn became an updated management tool for real-time decision making closer to the real conditions. more...

There is an increasing demand for the development of renewable energy system in the world to help cut CO 2 emissions and meet renewable targets set-out for 2020. Among all the different type of emerging technologies, fuel cells represent one of the most promising ones and, in particular, Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells have are considered one of the most promising options for the future of the transportation applications, especially Light-Duty Electric Vehicles. Despite all the advantages, one of the most important barriers for their commercialization is their expensiveness, because they have still not reached the mature stage of their development, and only in the last years some companies started to produce fuel cell electric vehicles for the transportation market. In this paper a walk along the last 15 years has been made, and all the estimations of the PEMFC stack and systems made by different companies from 1998 until 2014 have been summarized and compared, to understand the trend of the PEMFC cost in these years, and the main contributor to the overall cost of the PEMFC stack to find out the future possible developments in order to meet the 2017 DOE target of 15 $ kW -1 for the stack and 30 $ kW -1 for the system. more...

LabZERO is a multidisciplinary laboratory located at Politecnico di Bari and ENEA Centro Ricerche di Brindisi aimed to promote energy efficiency and renewables in both urban and industrial districts. The lab activities are oriented to provide fast-prototyping, instrumentation, methodologies and equipment for material characterization of new components in the field of energy efficiency, micro-generation, micro-grids, renewables, energy hubs, energy districts. © 2016 AEIT. more...

The reliance upon fossil fuels is one of the most important problems that we have to deal with nowadays, because using them is highly not sustainable, and leads to serious environmental issues, such as air pollution and global warming, beside its negative effect on the economic security and development. Alternatively, environmental-friendly, sustainable, efficient new power sources are needed. Among all of the different technologies associated with the renewable energy, fuel cell technologies represent one of the most promising ones. In this article, an overview of the technology and its advantages and disadvantages compared with competitive technologies was revealed. Application of different types of fuel cells is covered in the stationary, portable and transport power sectors. Furthermore, a special focus was made on the proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells; in that its structure was studied in detail. The current limitation and promising development in PEM technology were stated. more...

International audience; Standardisation initiatives (ISO and IEC) try to answer the problem of managing heterogeneous information, scattered within organizations, by formalising the knowledge related to products technical data. While the product is the centred object from which, along its life cycle, all enterprise systems, either inside a single enterprise or between cooperating networked enterprises, have a specific view, we may consider it as active as far as it participates to the decisions making by providing knowledge about itself. This paper proposes a novel approach, postulating that the product, represented by its technical data, may be considered as interoperable per se with the many applications involved in manufacturing enterprises as far as it embeds knowledge about itself, as it stores all its technical data, provided that these are embedded on a common model. The matter of this approach is to formalise of all technical data and concepts contributing to the definition of a Product Ontology, embedded into the product itself and making it interoperable with applications, minimising loss of semantics. more...

A draft architecture of a software platform is proposed to support software components interoperability in energy production systems. The scope of the platform is to address the sustainability of energy production and use efficiency. A first prototype of this platform is under development in the framework of the French ANR Plate-Form(E)3 project. Interoperability issues have been faced to design the platform. Best available candidate technologies for implementing the platform are also discussed. One architecture for facing the basic interoperability issues is also presented. A real industrial application case example is proposed to show the potential use of the proposed architecture. more...

In this paper we propose an alternative use of commercial object-oriented discrete-event simulators. We attempt to bridge the intrinsic inaccuracy of simulators in modelling real systems affected by fuzziness. The strategy adopted, called pseudo-fuzzy discrete event simulation, models fuzziness through a set of several classic simulation runs to trace an output fuzzy performance function. The idea behind the approach proposed is to use the simulator as a fuzzy operator, which embeds some stochastic functions.A benchmark industrial setting has been used to build a reference simulation model and perform evaluations of the simulation strategy proposed for a specific working case. more...

The present paper presents a hybrid approach for solving manufacturing scheduling problems, based on the integration between Constraint Logic Programming (CLP) and Genetic Algorithm (GA) approaches. The proposed methodology is applied to a single line with multiple products and sequence-dependent time. This system model derives from a real case of a company producing sheets for catalytic converters. A sensitivity analysis of the hybrid methodology is carried out to compare the performance of the CLP, GA and integrated CLP-GA approaches. more...

Many authorities have reached the conclusion that using fossil fuels, as the main source of energy to satisfy the increasing global energy demand, is ultimately unsustainable. This is because of depleting resources, and also because, if this approach is followed, emissions of carbon dioxide would continue to build up. Consequently, research on biofuel, that is fuel made from biomass, derived from materials that were recently living, has attracted attention. In this context, the generation of biofuels from algae shows promise for the following reasons. The algae can be grown quickly, all the materials produced are non-toxic and biodegradable, and during this growth there is an opportunity to cause greenhouse gas fixation. Also, since growing algae does not need arable land, it can be grown without competing with food or feed crops, the fuel derived from it being a “third generation” biofuel. This paper describes different types of algae (microalgae and seaweeds), and presents different technologies employed in making biofuels (biogas and biodiesel) from them. more...

International audience; The knowledge reuse and mapping are among the most important concerns related to the design knowledge representation. In this paper, authors focus on the importance of one specific property of a design knowledge representation: the unambiguity. Authors show 1) how the ambiguity of the representation can increase the risk of a failure in the reuse and mapping processes, 2) how most of works in the literature use formal logic constructs and finally 3) how the use of these can increase the risk of ambiguity. On the basis of these remarks, an overview on the works on the anti-logicist architecture is provided: the systems based on this architecture show an intelligent behaviour without using logic constructs. An analysis and a transposition of the anti-logicist principles are then performed to build a framework allowing to represent design knowledge without logic constructs. To do so 1) main concepts are formalised in a conceptual model; 2) an algorithm has been designed to map pieces of knowledge based only on the representation syntax; 3) two instantiations of the framework are showed using a CAD instantiation. Finally, the limits of the current deployment of the framework and the research perspectives are discussed. more...

A correct recognition of nonverbal expressions is currently one of the most important challenges of research in the field of human computer interaction. The ability to recognize human actions could change the way to interact with machines in several environments and contexts, or even the way to live. In this paper, we describe the advances of a previous study finalized to design, implement and validate an innovative recognition system already developed by some of the authors. It was aimed at recognizing two opposite emotional conditions (resonance and dissonance) of a candidate to a job position interacting with the recruiter during a job interview. Results in terms of the accuracy, resonance rate, and dissonance rate of the three new optimized neural network-based (NN) classifiers are discussed. Comparison with previous results of three NN classifiers is also presented based on three single domains: facial, vocal and gestural. more...

International audience; The product variety management is a key process to deal with the flexibility requested by the mass customisation. In this paper we show that current variety-modelling methods miss a customer representation: without a proper assessment of the customers is not possible to define the product variety that has to be developed to meet the requirements of a customer segment. Here we present an innovative approach to rationalise the product variety, i.e. to link each product variant to the customer profile who needs it. The aim is to optimise the product variety avoiding excesses (variants not related to a customer), lacks (customers not related to a variant) or redundancies (two or more variants proposed to a customer). An overview of customer modelling approaches in the classic product design (non-customisable) is presented. The innovative approach is here developed using system-thinking concepts. A knowledge-based system that uses this approach is designed. Finally the approach is explained using a real industrial case of a quasi-real coil design process. more...

Supply chain model (SCM) are potentially capable to integrate different aspects in supporting decision making for enterprise management tasks. The aim of the paper is to propose an hybrid mathematical programming model for optimization of production requirements resources planning. The preliminary model was conceived bottom-up from a real industrial case analysed oriented to maximize cash flow. Despite the intense computational effort required to converge to a solution, optimisation done brought good result in solving the objective function. more...

The most part of scientific discoveries of human being borrow ideas and inspiration from nature. This point gives the rationale of the sustainability assessment approach presented here and based on the aerobic living organism (ALO) already developed by the author, which funds on the basic assumption that it is reasonable and effective to refer to the analogy between an system organized by human (say, manufacturing system, enterprise, etc.) for several decision-making scopes. The critical review of the ALO conceptual model already developed is here discussed through an example of an Italian small enterprise manufacturing metal components for civil furniture to assess its feasibility for sustainability appraisal. more...

Aim of this work is to present a model of an intelligent short term demand side management system (DSM) based on a distributed measurement and management data system. The system is designed to improve the profitability of modern self-production energy plants reducing the power consumption and maintaining the same comfort level for users. The DSM problem is modeled as an auction based multi-agent system. The proposed system is composed of a sensor network and a central processing unit. Each network node is handled by an agent and it is able to regulate the power consumption of a single environment (in this work a room of a public building). Each agent reacts to a new critical condition entering in competition with the others to gain the access at a shared limited resource. The competition is regulated by an auction based system. As the first experimental results are showing, the proposed system can be the consumer's key to maximize the profitability of the self-production energy plants. more...

Best paper award; International audience; 'To sustain is to endure' - that is, to be able to survive and continue to function in the face of significant changes. The commonly accepted concept of 'sustainability' currently encompasses three main pillars: environmental, social/ethical and economic. In a metaphor of survival, they can be seen as water, food and air; one needs all three, only with varying degrees of urgency. In today's globally networked environment, it is becoming obvious that one cannot achieve environmental, social or economic sustainability of any artefact (be it physical or virtual, e.g. enterprise, project, information system, policy, etc) without achieving ubiquitous ability of the artefact and its creators and users to exchange and understand shared information and if necessary perform processes on behalf of each other - capabilities that are usually defined as 'interoperability'. Thus, sustainability relies on interoperability, while, conversely, interoperability as an ongoing concern relies for its existence on all three main pillars of sustainability. This paper aims to test the hypothesis that interoperability and sustainability are two inseparable and inherently linked aspects of any universe of discourse. To achieve this, it applies the dualistic sustainability / interoperability viewpoint to a variety of areas (manufacturing, healthcare, information and communication technology and standardisation), analyses the results and synthesizes conclusions and guidelines for future work more...

International audience; Sustainability is one of the biggest challenges of this century either for the environment or economical growth. The required cultural shift needs challenging action that will involve deeply software and hardware aspect of manufacturing processes. In this paper, the software part of the matter is addressed by proposing a product centric ontology, in which concepts of product, processes and resources are associated to functions and sustainable manufacturing knowledge. The aim is to design a knowledge-based system that, simulating a sustainable manufacturing expert, is able to automatically identify change opportunities and to propose alternatives on the basis of the existing production scenario. more...

The pollution caused by fuel combustion either for mechanical or electrical energy generation purposes is nowadays one of the most important environmental issues. It has been proven that combustion emissions, particularly those from cars and trucks, are linked with severe damages to the environment and human health. Along with the environmental problems, is necessary to consider that fossil resources are declining and their exploitation is getting more and more expensive. Bioenergy represent a sustainable solution for energy generation. Bioenergy is renewable energy made from plant-derived organic matter, collectively termed “biomass”. Biomass-based energy sources are potentially carbon dioxide neutral and recycle the same carbon atoms. Life cycle assessments are reported to evaluate the net environmental impacts of biofuels. The term biofuel refers to liquid or gaseous fuels for the internal combustion engines that are predominantly produced from biomass. Biofuel policy might capitalize on the production of biofuels supporting rural economic development and sustainable agriculture. Amongst biofuels pure plant oil (PPO) has been investigated. This paper sets out to review the state of the art for PPO use as fuel in diesel engines, based on a wide literature review. more...

International audience; This paper proposes an approach for facilitating systems interoperability in a manufacturing environment. It is based on the postulate that an ontological model of a product may be considered as a facilitator for interoperating all application software that share information during the physical product lifecycle. The number of applications involved in manufacturing enterprises may in fact refer to the knowledge that must be embedded in it, appropriately storing all its technical data based on a common model. Standardisation initiatives (ISO and IEC) try to answer the problem of managing heterogeneous information scattered within organizations, by formalising the knowledge related to product technical data. The matter of this approach is to formalise all those technical data and concepts contributing to the definition of a Product Ontology, embedded into the product itself and making it interoperable with applications, thus minimising loss of semantics. more...

European energy policy pursues the objective of a sustainable, competitive and secure supply of energy. In 2007, the European Commission adopted an energy policy for Europe, which was supported by several documents on different aspects of energy and included an action plan to meet the major energy challenges Europe has to face. A farsighted diversified yearly mix of energies was suggested to countries, aiming at increasing security of supply and efficiency, but a wide and contemporary view of energy interchanges between states was not available. In a previous work of the same authors, energy import/export interchanges between European States were used to develop a geographic overview at one-glance. In this paper, the enhanced Interchange Energy Network (IEN) is investigated from a modelling point of view, as a Small-World Net, by supposing that connections can exist between States with a probability depending also on economic/political relations between countries. more...

Ontologies provide an explicit and formal model of a given knowledge domain, allow knowledge sharing and reuse and are widely used in different applicative contexts. Knowledge can be reused and effectively exchanged at product, process, and system levels. Current sustainable manufacturing practices justify the interest in an in-depth study of this complex process of building ontologies. Few researches address the issue of structuring and integrating the existing corpus of knowledge concerning sustainability in the manufacturing context using ontologies. In this paper a conceptual framework is provided to support ontology development by structuring sustainability knowledge in the manufacturing domain. more...

After the successful Sixth edition in 2011, the seventh edition of the Enterprise Integration, Interoperability and Networking workshop (EI2N2012) has been organised as part of the OTM2012 Federated Conferences and is co-sponsored by the IFAC Technical Committee 5.3 Enterprise Integration and Networking, the IFIP TC 8 WG 8.1 Design and Evaluation of Information Systems, the SIG INTEROP Grande-Rgion on Enterprise Systems Interoperability, the SIG INTEROP-VLab.IT on Enterprise Interoperability and the French CNRS National Research Group GDR MACS. more...

Nowadays, factors like globalization, productivity, and reduction of time-to-market make the impact of logistics on production by far wider than in the past. Such a complex scenario originated considerable interest for the design, planning and control of warehousing systems as new research topics (De Koster et al. 2007). However, in spite of the importance of warehouse design and management, authors agree on the lack of systematic approaches (Baker and Canessa, 2009). Moreover, the existing contributions do not typically consider the problem of warehouse design in a continuous improvement context. On the contrary, with the enhanced customer demand, for most manufacturing industries it has become increasingly important to continuously monitor and progress the internal logistics. This paper presents a preliminary study for the reengineering of the logistics in a Southern Italy firm producing shoes and accessories based on formal modeling. We address a widely used solution for warehouse material handling, i.e., Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (AS/RSs) (Dotoli and Fanti 2007). These systems are a combination of automatic material handling and storage/retrieval equipments characterized by high accuracy and speed. In order to reengineer the logistic system, a Unified Modelling Language (UML) (Miles and Hamilton, 2006) model is adopted (Dassisti, 2003). more...

The paper presents a real industrial case of an Italian furniture company facing the problem of a strong evolution put by the market-scenario during the economical crisis. The new challenges to face come either for earn margins reduction, increase of customization level, swift of demand fluctuation. The aim of the paper is to provide a clear analysis of the existing problems and constraints, in the light of the project to design the transition toward a new-defined “mass craftsmanship” configuration of the company. more...