• 054199 - MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS ENGINEERING I

Manufacturing companies must be able to design and modify their production systems which are continuously evolving together with the products they produce. The course provides a framework, quantitative methods and relevant competences to design manufacturing systems and to manage their lifecycle in coordination with the lifecycle of products and processes in order to enhance the industrial competitiveness and sustainability.

The goals of the course are:

• Understand context, functions, processes in a business and industrial environment and the impact of those factors on sustainability and business performance;
• Identify trends, technologies and key methodologies in industrial domain;
• Design solutions applying a scientific and engineering approach (Analysis, Learning, Reasoning, and Modelling capability deriving from a solid and rigorous multidisciplinary background) to face problems and opportunities in a business and industrial environment.

The methodologies studied in the course will be applied within the Project lab to a real case study. The Project lab is part of the innovative didactics program of Politecnico di Milano. 

After passing the exam, the student will be able to:

• Understand the current manufacturing and societal context;
• Appraise the key strategic and technological trends in the manufacturing industry;
• Give examples of the co-evolution of products, processes and production systems;
• Analyze production problems and devise the requirements for manufacturing systems;
• Identify, compare and choose production system architectures:
• Plan the acquisition of production capacity;
• Design the configuration of manufacturing systems.

After completing the Project lab, the student will be able to:

• Write a technical project report;
• Present the results achieved during the analysis, modelling and testing activities.

The course is based on lectures, classworks, project lab and optional activities. Guest international speakers will be invited to give special lectures. The Project lab is part of the innovative didactics program of Politecnico di Milano. 

Manufacturing Strategy and business models related to the coevolution of product, process and system. Manufacturing systems lifecycle and sustainability. Strategic and technical aspects of flexibility and reconfigurability. Examples of flexible and reconfigurable manufacturing/de-manufacturing systems. New business models. Production systems architectures.

Strategic design of Manufacturing systems. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) for decision support in multi-criteria and multi-objective contexts. Stochastic programming techniques for the design of evolving manufacturing systems considering uncertainty and multiple objectives; modelling of future scenarios.

Design of Manufacturing systems. Introduction to methods for performance evaluation of complex manufacturing systems. Optimization of the configuration of manufacturing systems based on the quantitative results of performance evaluation. Methods for the optimization of manufacturing systems.

None.

The assessment will be based on a final exam and the evaluation of the Project lab reports. Project lab reports are required during the semester and are aimed at assessing the capability of applying the knowledge to a real case. The final exam consist of a written test including practical and theoretical exercises.  Practical exercises assess the ability to understand and analyse realistic industrial problems and then create appropriate models based on the learnt methodologies to design manufacturing systems and evaluate the impact of possible reconfigurations. Theoretical exercises request to describe and elaborate on concepts, models, techniques and methodologies presented during the course. 

In addition to the mandatory evaluation, students will be given the possibility to improve the final grade through:

• an optional oral exam on theoretical and practical questions related to the topics included in the program (max 3 points);

• optional project work (max 3 points). The work will focus either on the application of a learnt methodology to a real industrial case or the further development of a learnt methodology.

In total, a maximum of 4 points can be added to the grade of the written test.