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=
n
i 1
TC
wms
=
=
n
i 1
q
i
C
wms
(2)
A restriction could be set here: q
min
_ q
i
_ q
max
, where q
min
and q
max
are the minimum and
maximum quantities of an ordered product (e.g., an order is accepted only if q
i
_ q
min
).
This approach has to be interpreted with care. Firstly, this is a simplified cost model (and the
reality is more complex). Secondly, this predictive cost model has been elaborated considering
the received orders refer to a single product. Thirdly, in order to assess the performance of a wise
manufacturing system, the prospective costs have to be analyzed in correlation with the expected
payoffs.
4
C
m
includes costs related to the acquisition of raw materials and components, labor costs, e-communication costs,
and other costs related with the manufacturing process, which have not been detailed here because the aim of this
sub-section is to model specific costs related to the use of a wise manufacturing system.
12
3.D. Challenges and Open Issues
From an engineering system perspective, this approach raises a number of challenging research
problems, concerning Monitoring, Interpretation, Resolution, Self-adaptation, system Wisdom-
enhancement, and Economic performance assessment, as follows:
- Monitoring: Which parameters should be monitored? Is it possible to build a reusable
monitoring mechanism which can be easily incorporated in an existing system? How to
design manufacturing processes, systems, sub-systems and/ or software components that
can be easily monitored?
- Interpretation: How to interpret monitored information? How to determine if and when
the manufacturing system needs to be adapted or improved? How to identify the source
of an abnormality? What system architecture is more suited so that to attain a desired
level for a set of selected parameters? How to set threshold values for selected
parameters? How to determine which is the optimal value for a certain parameter?
- Resolution: How to (self-)repair a manufacturing system once an abnormality has been
identified? How to select the optimal (self-)healing actions from a set of (predefined)
healing actions? Is it guaranteed that the repairs will improve the systems performance?
How to reconcile conflicting (self-)healing actions obtained from different (self-)healing
models? Can and should the manufacturing system be improved even when no specific
errors or abnormalities have been detected?
- Self-adaptation: How to design and implement a manufacturing engineering system
which allows dynamic (self-) adaptation of its elements? What actions should be
performed when abnormalities occur during the process of self-adaptation? Which
parameters to evaluate when taking a self-adaptation decision?
- Wisdom-enhancement: How to design and implement a manufacturing engineering
system supporting wisdom-enhanced decisions? What technologies to use to implement
such a system?
- Economic performance assessment: How to asses the economic performance of a wise
manufacturing engineering system? What metrics/ performance indicators should be
considered?
In addition, several open issues for this approach are identified: When overheads occur to each
element (e.g., Repair Handler, Monitoring Unit, Analyzer), which is the most appropriate action
to be performed? To what extend can costs be minimized when building a wise (e.g., self-
adapting self-healing) manufacturing system? How much is improved the economic
performance when using a wisdom-enhanced manufacturing system compared to other
approaches?
However, the greatest challenge will be the actual implementation of such a wisdom-enhanced
system. Such an approach requires appropriate software and hardware elements. Evolvable
hardware (e.g., [31], [32]), cloud computing, bio-inspired and service oriented computing are
promising directions, which will be explored.
Despite the numerous developments of information and communication technologies, even the
most advanced ones are not yet mature enough to solve complex real-world problems.
Evolutionary algorithms are at their infancy, with many obstacles yet to overcome (e.g., making
them more automated) [22]. Existing developments (e.g., related to the implementation of bio-
13
inspired manufacturing systems, attempts to hybridize engineering systems by combining bio-
inspired computing with formal methods) hold a great promise through the next generation of
engineering systems. Although such approaches have been applied only to simple problems,
there is hope that they may be scalable to large/ complex problems. However, as emphasized by
[26] the field of artificial intelligence has been labeled as failure, since the produced artefacts
cannot actually be confused with a living organism (e.g., models helped modeling biological
engineering systems better, but the produced models never worked as well as biology).
Maybe wise information and communication technologies (wICT) can be regarded as the new
generation of information and communication technologies, encompassing the theories and
applications of artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, learning theory, data warehousing, data
mining, knowledge discovery, swarm intelligence, adaptive management, bio-inspired methods,
cloud computing.
wICT may be regarded as an inter-disciplinary field, involving techniques developed not only in
computers science/ engineering, but in other related communities, e.g., economics, mathematics,
cognitive science, neuroscience, operations research. A promising step towards wICT is the
World Wide Wisdom Web (W4) (e.g., [33], [34]).
4. Conclusions and Future Work
Despite the developments in the area of engineering systems and advancements of information
and communication technologies, current (manufacturing) engineering systems fail to address all
the needs of todays manufacturing enterprises.
Current trends of manufacturing engineering system are towards enhancing machines with bio-
inspired and human abilities (e.g., intelligence, wisdom, cognitive functions), and in hiring
(fewer) highly skilled employees. However, this trend has to be closely accompanied with
(positive and negative) human, social and environmental consequences.
This article reflects results of an on-going inter-disciplinary research and development project
towards a wise manufacturing engineering system. A proposed system architecture has been
described, which support self-adaptability, self-healing, self-improving and wisdom-enhanced
capabilities. Main challenges concerning monitoring, interpretation, resolution, self-adaptation,
system wisdom-enhancement, economic performance assessment, and implementation issues are
discussed. A cost model is also presented.
Wise information and communication technologies (wICT) are envisioned (through the prism of
current technologies and approaches) as supporting technologies for the implementation of a
wise manufacturing system. wICT may represent a paradigm shift, driven from artificial
intelligence techniques, the Wisdom Web (W4), autonomy-oriented computing, service-oriented
computing, cloud computing, swarm intelligence. It will yield the new tools and infrastructures
necessary to support wise manufacturing systems. As technologies evolve, and simulation,
modeling and prototyping techniques mature, the hope is that manufacturing such a wise
engineering system will become relatively straightforward. However, this requires research and
14
development combining different disciplines, e.g., economics, computer science, cognitive
science, neuroscience, systems engineering, biology, mathematics.
Brooks [26] pointed out four possible causes for failure in building systems inspired by various
aspects of life, which should be considered when attempting to bridge the gap between non-
living and living systems: some parameters might be wrong; the build models might be below
some complexity threshold; lack of computing power; missing something fundamental and
currently unimagined when modeling biological systems. Future research work will carefully
consider these remarks.
Future research and development work will focus on modeling the performance of such a wise
manufacturing system and identifying specific metrics for performance assessment, system
modeling, and the selection of technologies which may support actual implementation of such a
wise manufacturing system. Main challenges and open issues identified (which have been
presented in Section 3.C) will also be addressed.
Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge the financial support from the Artificial Intelligence and Computer
Science Laboratory (LIACC), and the Department of Informatics Engineering of the Faculty of
Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP/DEI) and LIACC for the facilities offered to
pursue this research work.
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