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| Centre of Excellence in Customised Assembly (CECA) |
02/05/2008 |
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| CECA recently exhibited at MACH 2008, an internationally acclaimed biennial event held in the UK organised by the Manufacturing Technologies Association (MTA). MACH is the UK’s premier manufacturing technologies event, encompassing metal cutting and metal forming machine tools along with all ancillary and related products and industry advice from experts. |
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In excess of 22,000 visitors attended the show, it was the ideal opportunity for CECA to showcase state-of-the art tools and techniques in digital engineering with industrial applications of exemplar technologies. CECA Project Engineers’ exhibited the benefits of:
• Enterprise Modelling (EM), as an approach to capture, formalise, and evaluate current business processes
• Dynamic Simulation Modelling (DSM), to introduce time dependencies and understand causes and effects of change on businesses processes
• Computer Aided Design (CAD), to virtually represent and verify assembly sequencing steps, thus provide robust decision support for Design For Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA)
• Plant layout and design, to enable optimum plant layout and scalability, flexible work cells, and services layout
• Ergonomic analysis, to achieve safer assembly processes, optimised manual workflows and reduce training costs
• Virtual simulation, allowing real time motion and logic testing of robots and work cells
• Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), to allow information to be centralised providing a platform for collaborative working environments avoiding duplication and promoting unification of product and process data throughout the business
Whilst the use of such tools in industry is desirable, it is often the case that organisations do not have the expertise in effective and complementary use of such tools. This is exacerbated in SMEs. Industry exposure to experts in the aforementioned fields of digital engineering and making such technologies accessible to a plethora of organisations, including SMEs who comprise approximately 95% of UK industry, is where CECA are instrumental.
Dr Andy Norwood, CECA Senior Project Engineer said “There is a definite need for the digital technologies, and supporting expertise, that CECA offers and this is exactly the type of exposure that CECA needs. We are delighted with the interest that CECA has received from exactly the end users that we are set up to assist”.
“It was a perfect event allowing academic experts in digital engineering to highlight the opportunities the technology offers and to explore how collaborations between industry and academia can develop to increase industrial competitiveness”
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| http://www.mach2008.com/page.cfm/Link=1/t=m/goSection=7 |
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| Contact: |
| Dr Andy Norwood |
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