Sharif Digital Repository

While researchers have developed several approaches to attain design variable settings that simultaneously optimize multiple-quality characteristics, the multi-response optimization has become a common practice in complicated manufacturing processes. Most of these research works assume independency of responses where their variances are constant over the experimental space. However, there are many manufacturing processes in practice where the quality characteristics under consideration are correlated. In this study, an efficient approach based on principal component analysis and a conventional desirability function is proposed to optimize correlated multiple responses. This approach not only... 

Due date assignment for customer orders has been studied in various production environments using different modeling approaches. In this paper the researchers consider a production system in which the orders of several customers are produced in a single batch because of the economy of scale. If a batch is completed before receiving customer orders, inventory carrying cost is incurred but if it is completed after receiving customer orders, shortage cost is incurred and finally if the order is delivered after its due date, tardiness cost is charged. The problem is to decide on batch size, due date of batch (imposed on supply process) and lead time (to be quoted to the next coming customers) so... 

Different multivariate process capability indices are developed by researchers to evaluate process capability when vectors of quality characteristics are considered in a study. This paper presents two indices referred to as NCpM,and MCpM, in order to evaluate process capability in multivariate environment. The performance of the proposed indices is investigated numerically. Simulation results indicate that the proposed indices have descended estimation error and improved performance compared to the existing ones. These results can be important to researchers and practitioners who are interested in evaluating process capability in multivariate domain  

Many reservoir and production engineers face asphaltene precipitation as a major problem during miscible carbon dioxide flooding projects. Experimental studies regarding asphaltene precipitation are therefore employed to assist in selecting appropriate facilities and proper operation schemes. During this study, a series of high pressure, high temperature experiments are designed and performed to analyze asphaltene precipitation behavior of an Iranian light reservoir crude at reservoir conditions due to natural production and miscible CO2 gas injection. For both sets of experiments, two different temperature levels (including reservoir temperature) are selected to investigate the role of... 

In this paper, we have developed a production planning and marketing model in unreliable flexible manufacturing systems with inconstant demand rate that its rate depends on the level of advertisement on that product. The proposed model is more realistic and useful from a practical point of view. The flexible manufacturing system is composed of two machines that produce a single product. Markovian models frequently have been used in modeling a wide variety of real-world systems under uncertainties. Therefore, in this paper, the inventory balance equation is represented by a continuous-time model with Markov jump process to take into account machines breakdown. The objective is to minimize the... 

Graphene oxide (GO) and reduced graphene oxide (rGO) sheets have usually been synthesized through Hummers' method by using highly pure graphite (HPG) as the main starting material. However, HPG can be relatively expensive for mass production of high-quality graphene. In this work, a general method for synthesis of high-quality GO and rGO sheets from various natural and industrial carbonaceous wastes such as vegetation wastes (wood, leaf, bagasse, and fruit wastes), animal wastes (bone and cow dung), a semi-industrial waste (newspaper), and an industrial waste (soot powders produced in exhaust of diesel vehicles) was developed. Based on atomic force microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, X-ray... 

We propose a cost estimation model based on a fuzzy rule backpropagation network, configuring the rules to estimate the cost under uncertainty. A multiple linear regression analysis is applied to analyze the rules and identify the effective rules for cost estimation. Then, using a dynamic programming approach, we determine the optimal path of the manufacturing network. Finally, an application of this model is illustrated through a numerical example showing the effectiveness of the proposed model for solving the cost estimation problem under uncertainty  

Production planning is one of the most important issues in manufacturing. The nature of this problem is complex and therefore researchers have studied it under several and different assumptions. In this paper, applied production planning problem is studied in a general manner and it is assumed that there exists an optimal control problem that its production planning strategy is a digital controller and must be optimized. Since this is a random problem because of stochastic values of sales in future, it is modeled as a stochastic dynamic programming and then it is transformed to a linear programming model using successive approximations. Then, it is proved that these two models are... 

Finesmigration is a noticeable problem in petroleum-production engineering. Plugging of throats in porous media occurs because of detachment of fine particles from sand surfaces. Thus, the study of interactions between fines and pore surfaces and the investigation of governing forces are important factors to consider when describing the mechanism of the fines-release process. The main types of these forces are electric double-layer repulsion (DLR) and London-van der Waals attraction (LVA). It may be possible to alter these forces with nanoparticles (NPs) as surface coatings. In comparison with repulsion forces, NPs increase the effect of attraction forces. In this paper, we present new... 

Process capability indices are useful tools for evaluating the ability of a process to produce products that meet certain specifications. The assembly quality is dependent on the distribution of variations of assembly dimensions, which is in turn dependent on mating conditions in the mechanical assembly. Since it is often difficult to measure the assembly dimensions in the production stages, they are not considered as a direct inspection objective. Rather, the inspection and evaluation of quality is carried out by specifying whether the assembly requirements satisfy the specified limits. Therefore, we can basethe process capability indices on the assembly dimensions. In most real life cases,... 

Injection molding is one of the most important manufacturing processes for mass production of complex plastic parts. In this study, mold filling is simulated by using the OpenFOAM software for Non- isothermal Newtonian fluid. The OpenFOAM is an open source software that is used in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tools. The studied mold shape has a rectangular structure with a gate for Newtonian fluid injection. The simulation carried out at non-isothermal conditions and two-dimensional flow is considered. The velocity, shear stress and temperature changes in different parts of the mold are critically studied. We show that vortex formation plays an important role on changes of shear stress... 

In this work, a fundamental kinetic model based upon the Hougen-Watson non-porosity formalism was derived and used to simulate dehydrogenation and oxidation axial flow reactors. In addition, partial pressure profiles of components during styrene production process inside porous catalyst were obtained using Dusty-Gas model. The preservation equations are adopted to calculate temperature and flow profiles in the reactors filled with iron-potassium promoted catalyst pellets. The presented mathematical model for ethylbenzene dehydrogenation consists of nonlinear simultaneous differential equations with multiple dependent variables. Simulation results such as selectivity and operating temperature... 

This work considers scheduling problems minding the setup and removal times of jobs rather than processing times. For some production systems, setup times and removal times are so important to be considered independent of processing times. In general, jobs are performed according to the automatic machine processing in production systems, and the processing times are considered to be constant regardless of the process sequence. As the human factor can influence the setup and removal times, when the setup process is repetitive the setup times decreases. This fact is considered as learning effect in scheduling literature. In this study, a bi-criteria m-identical parallel machines scheduling... 

We are concerned with an open shop scheduling problem having sequence-dependent setup times. A novel bi-objective possibilistic mixed-integer linear programming model is presented. Sequence-dependent setup times, fuzzy processing times and fuzzy due dates with triangular possibility distributions are the main constraints of this model. An open shop scheduling problem with these considerations is close to the real production scheduling conditions. The objective functions are to minimize total weighted tardiness and total weighted completion times. To solve small-sized instances for Pareto-optimal solutions, an interactive fuzzy multi-objective decision making (FMODM) approach, called TH... 

Application of Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) to a Uranium hexafluoride (UF 6) production process is presented in this paper. The process is constituted from three main units: UF 4 conversion to UF 6, condensation of produced UF 6 gas and tail gas treatment. Radioactive gas is present in all parts of the process and occurrence of high pressure or high temperature in the process equipments may lead to radioactive release to workplace and environment. The work is mainly based on PSA experience in nuclear power plants. Accordingly for the process, eight group of Initiating Events (IE) that lead to UF 6 gas release have been identified using HAZOP study. For each IE, based on related... 

The process capability indices are widely used to measure the capability of the process to manufacture objects within the required tolerance. Fit quality is mainly dominated by the distribution of fit dimensions, i.e., a gap dimension. As the fit dimensions are very difficult to be measured in mass production, they are not to be considered as a direct inspection objective. The quality inspection and evaluation relative to fit quality are focused on whether the processes of assembly requirements are conformed with their specification limits respectively. Fit quality specification can be indicated by the process capability indices of mating parts. In this paper, the statistical-based process... 

The earned value management (EVM) is a tool commonly used to monitor both cost and schedule performance, based on the current status of a project. However, EVM does not consider the variation rate of project performance during project execution phase, which may oscillate, causing unexpected time and cost overruns or even project failure at the end. In this research, a methodology for monitoring project time and cost adverse variation rate, by the use of statistical process control (SPC), is introduced. This methodology improves the previous investigations in this field by considering overall required conditions and circumstances. Process capability indices of SPC, as a very powerful tool for... 

Production systems with scrapped and rework items have recently become an interesting subject of research. While most attempts have been focused on finding the optimal production quantity in a simple production system, little work appears on a joint production environment. In this research, two joint production systems in a form of multiproduct single machine with and without rework are studied where shortage is allowed and backordered. For each system, the optimal cycle length, the backordered and production quantities of each product are determined such that the cost function is minimised. Proof of the convexity of the involved objective functions of each model is provided and numerical... 

The process capability indices are widely used to measure the capability of the process to manufacture objects within the required tolerance. Fit quality is mainly dominated by the distribution of fit dimensions, i.e., a gap dimension. As the fit dimensions are very difficult to be measured in mass production, they are not to be considered as a direct inspection objective. The quality inspection and evaluation relative to fit quality are focused on whether the processes of assembly requirements are conformed with their specification limits respectively. Fit quality specification can be indicated by the process capability indices of mating parts. In this paper, the statistical-based process... 

To stay competitive in the new dynamic market having large fluctuations in product demand, manufacturing companies must use systems that not only produce their goods with high productivity but also allow for rapid response to market changes. Reconfigurable manufacturing system (RMS) is a new paradigm that enables manufacturing systems to respond quickly and cost effectively to market demand. In other words, RMS is a system designed from the outset, for rapid changes in both hardware and software components, in order to quickly adjust its production capacity to fluctuations in market demand and adapt its functionality to new products. The effectiveness of an RMS depends on implementing its...