Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Material Handling In A Flexible Manufacturing Systems Processing Part Families, Paul Savory, Gerald Mackulak, Jeff Cochran

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

The objective of this simulation study is to analyze the system performance of a six machine flexible manufacturing system cell in which a material handling system is to be incorporated. The analysis focuses on determining the production potential of the cell by grouping common parts into "families". To accomplish this, computer simulation models are developed using the SIMAN simulation language.

Initially the manufacturing cell is modeled with no material handling system to get an upper bound estimate of production output. We next explore the impact that an automatic guided vehicle (AGV) has on system performance of the manufacturing system cell. …

Acuta Enews December 1991, Vol. 20, No. 12

ACUTA Newsletters

In This Issue

10-XXX gives occasion for fraud

President's Message

YaleNET, a variety of services

Think ahead to prevent fraud

MOREnet links 12 campuses

Positions available

Acuta Enews November 1991, Vol. 20, No. 11

ACUTA Newsletters

In This Issue

President's message

Distance learning in Maine

FCC backs phone-line video

Pooling purchasing power

Area code shortage

Positions available

Acuta Enews October 1991, Vol. 20, No. 10

ACUTA Newsletters

In This Issue

President's message

Wireless alternative to cable

AT&T donates computers

ACUTA budget for 1991-92

Voice messaging is "hit"

Publications Editor profiled

Acuta Enews September 1991, Vol. 20, No. 9

ACUTA Newsletters

In This Issue

0+ fraud alive and well

AOS rules don't move north

Call screening not mandated

Workshop in Atlanta

Five Ps paying off

Business Manager profile

Integrated Neural Network And Machine Vision Approach For Intelligent State Identification, Cihan H. Dagli, Timothy Andrew Bauer

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

An interfacing of neural networks (NNs) and machine vision to provide the next state of a system given an image of the present state of the system is presented. This interfacing is applied to a loading operation. First, a NN is trained for part recognition under conditions of rotation, location, object distortion, and background noise given an image of the part. Then, a second NN, given the output of the first NN and an image of a pallet being loaded, is trained for optimal part loading onto the pallet under conditions of noise in the image. The paradigm used is …

Acuta Enews August 1991, Vol. 20, No. 8

ACUTA Newsletters

In This Issue

President's column

Business meeting

Regional meetings

User groups

Director's column

Workshop in Atlanta

Tardiness Heuristic For Scheduling Flexible Manufacturing Systems, Ali S. Kiran, Sema E. Alptekin, A. Celal Kaplan

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

This paper evaluates the tardiness performance of a sampling-based adaptive heuristic in a dynamic manufacturing environment. A test bed, following a real world manufacturing system, has been developed. The proposed algorithm has been implemented in this simulated environment. After fine tuning the algorithm, it has been tested in various shop conditions. The results of these simulation studies are summarized.

Acuta Enews July 1991, Vol. 20, No. 7

ACUTA Newsletters

In This Issue

ACUTA Forum

Unblocking 1-0-XXX

President's farewell

Affordable fiber to the desk

Value of utility bill audits

$60 million math/science network

Acuta Enews June 1991, Vol. 20, No. 6

ACUTA Newsletters

In This Issue

Panel to focus on fraud

Interactive video bandwidth

Aggregator requirements

Telex can still be useful

Penn State still pioneering

Positions availabe

Acuta Enews May 1991, Vol. 20, No. 5

ACUTA Newsletters

In This Issue

Golf outing set for St. Louis

Network ties islands together

Reorganization at Chicago

Recycling phone books

Party Line

Call for nominations

Acuta Enews April 1991, Vol. 20, No. 4

ACUTA Newsletters

In This Issue

ACUTA Forum

Travel cards save money

Reorganization at Chicago

Regional Directors elected

Enchancing campus safety

Drew's Knowledge Initiative

Acuta Enews March 1991, Vol. 20, No. 3

ACUTA Newsletters

In This Issue

Telecom graduate study

Greenville Tech outgrows PBX

World-calling discounts

Call for Presentations

Update on Hawaii

Listing of exhibitors

Acuta Enews February 1991, Vol. 20, No. 2

ACUTA Newsletters

In This Issue

ACUTA gains new tax status

Stopping a runaway dialer

Just what is an engineer?

FCC ruling awaited

Party Line

In-house accounting

The Production Data-Based Similarity Coefficient Versus Jaccard's Similarity Coefficient, Hamid Seifoddini, Manocher Djassemi

Industrial Technology and Packaging

This paper compares the performance of Jaccard's similarity coefficient with the production data-based similarity coefficient. A number of machine-component charts taken from the literature or randomly generated are used to form machine-component groups. Then, the sum of intercellular and intracellular material handling costs for each machine-component group is calculated and used as a basis for performance evaluation of the two similarity coefficients.

Acuta Enews January 1991, Vol. 20, No. 1

ACUTA Newsletters

In This Issue

ECCI founder honored

Pocket phone test at UGA

Giving pays off for Emory

Digitizing X-rays

Illicall lists rates

Party Line

A Technological Development Model For Strategy Formation, Halvard E. Nystrom

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Summary form only given, as follows. The author presents a technological development model for product and company development based on a distinction between explicit and implicit technologies. Implicit technologies are evolving technologies while explicit technologies are established technologies. Based on empirical data from Swedish companies, a number of strategic dimensions are discussed such as network interaction and combining knowledge from various sources. These concepts are then used to present an integrated model of strategy formation and product and company development. It is argued that this view of technological development facilitates the understanding and analysis of innovation and entrepreneurship in highly …

An Empirical Analysis Of Backpropagation Error Surface Initiation For Injection Molding Process Control, Alice E. Smith, Elaine R. Raterman, Cihan H. Dagli

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Backpropagation neural networks are trained by adjusting initially random interconnecting weights according to the steepest local error surface gradient. The authors examine the practical implications of the arbitrary starting point on the error landscape of the ensuing trained network. The effects on network convergence and performance are tested empirically, varying parameters such as network size, training rate, transfer function and data representation. The data used are live process control data from an injection molding plant