9402533 SOLBERG This award supports Purdue University's ERC on the "Collaborative Manufacturing" system. The activities include 1.) integrated product and process development with customer's supplier chain, 2.) flexible manufacturing distributed over networks of cooperating facilities, 3.) teamwork among geographically and organizationally distributed organizational units, which may be highly diverse in size, capabilities, and culture, and 4.) use of high-technology support for collaboration, including high-speed information networks and integration methodology. The central focus of the proposed research is the investigation of fundamental engineering principles that are critical to the success of collaborative manufacturing or test the limits of the concept in case of the most demanding requirements. The ultimate goal is to create the enabling tools and help manufacturing companies and students learn how to make effective use of the new opportunities. There are three major thrusts for the new proposal: 1.) Coherent Product Realization which deals with the issues related to bringing new products into production, supported by the previously- developed technologies in distributed concurrent engineering, performance evaluation design, and product and process simulation; 2.) Coherent Process Integration which relates to analysis and synthesis tools required for integrating all of the activities associated with production; and 3.) Coherent Production System Tools which targets the issues at a system level such as modelling of collaborative production system, decision support structures, and distributed implementation. This award provides support for the ERC for 5 years. In addition, a supplementary award with funds provided by the Army Redstone Missile Command to fund a research project to adapt, extend, and apply research in rapid product manufacturing techniques demonstrated by the Purdue Engineering Research Center (ERC's) Qui ck Turnaround Cell (QTC) system and to support a testbed installation at the Army Redstone Missile Command Production Engineering Division for the purpose of validation and technology transfer. The major thrust for this project is to implement the developed research tools for designing and planning of cylindrical parts. The newly developed design tools will be installed and tested at Army Redstone Missile Command. This system contains new features developed to represent cylindrical and hybrid parts for turning and milling operations. In addition, the interface module will be installed and implemented to validate the simulation results. ***
