Advanced Manufacturing > Intelligent Automation
Intelligent operation and adaptability are seen as key features of advanced industrial automation solutions, which are essential to keep the UK economy competitive as the drive for manufacturing in low wage cost economies continues.
Our research will fundamentally change the way manufacturing machinery is designed, operated, supported, upgraded, re-used and retired.
Professor Mike Jackson
From left to Right: Prof. Mike Jackson; Dr Rob Harrison; Prof. Rob Parkin
Background
Current automation systems fail to adequately support all required business objectives. While they generally offer sufficient operational performance, they are typically difficult and complex to service, reconfigure, integrate, and optimise, particularly in the face of rapid and often unforeseen business change.
To date, high value manufacturing industries have applied limited automation because of the highly skilled nature of the finishing, inspection and assembly work inherent in manufacturing processes.
These processes are difficult to automate because of minor variations in components that influence interaction between the processing equipment and the component being processed.
In addition, parts are often made from expensive materials with many components/parts requiring careful handling (e.g. fan blades). These high value industries need an advanced type of automation that delivers the precision of computer controlled machinery with the adaptability of a human operator, a 24/7 capability, and 100% quality performance. This has to be delivered at a reasonable cost and operational speed. This then is the challenge.
The Group
The Intelligent Automation Group is led by Professor Mike Jackson.
Research collaborators include:
- ABB
- AEC
- AIRBUS
- Bosch Rexroth Limited
- COMAU
- Ford Motor Company
- GE Aviation
- Invotec Circuits Tamworth Ltd
- Jaguar Land Rover
- Rolls-Royce
- Schneider Electric GmbH
- Siemens Automation
- Siemens PLM
- SODA
- Surface Technology International (STI) Ltd
- ThyssenKrupp Krause GmbH
- UGS
- Emergent Systems
- UK Sport
Impact
New engineering tools have been demonstrated to the engineering teams at Ford Motor Company in their Virtual-Build Events, where the stages of engine build are evaluated digitally prior to construction of the actual production system. The potential value of the proposed approach, if widely adopted, has been estimated by Ford to be in excess of £20 million per engine programme.
The ‘Intelligent User Centric Components for Harsh Distributed Environments’ project has produced a step-change in athletic performance monitoring capability in harsh environments. This includes the development of communication protocols to support the collection and transmission of performance analysis.
Future Research Directions
Future automation research will address:
Tasks and processes that include a high level of variability in the workplace and/ or processes that require a degree of adaptability. Currently such tasks are typically undertaken by skilled human operatives. However, human operatives often introduce variation in production quality and component processing times leading to overly cautious operations, excessive re-work and many stages of checking to maintain the required high levels of quality.- Intelligent Automation will enable such tasks to be undertaken more consistently with greater traceability. One area of application is the high-value manufacturing aerospace sector, where manual processing of complex components is still widely applied.
- The Manufacturing Technology Centre brings together Loughborough University, Nottingham University, the University of Birmingham and TWI as research partners tasked with taking industrial member needs from initial research to prototype. Founding member companies include Rolls-Royce, Airbus and Aero Engine Controls.
Want to know more? Contact us
Research Group Leader: Professor Mike Jackson
Email: m.r.jackson@lboro.ac.uk
Tel: +44(0) 01509 227570
School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering
Wolfson Building
Loughborough University
Loughborough
LE11 3TU
United Kingdom
