A Project within “Sustainable Production” of the strategic vehicle research and innovation initiative (FFI) programme
Short Project Facts
Total project budget: 19 MSEK (funding from VINNOVA 9,5 MSEK)
Project period: September 2009 - December 2012
Project leader: Amos Ng (deputy Mats Jägstam)
Project partners: Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Scania CV AB, SWEREA Swecast, Volvo AB and Volvo Car Corporation.
Project Summary
Overall motivation for the project
Sustainability, in terms of “Energy Efficiency” , “Lean”, “Lead Time Efficiency” and other forms of reuse/conservation of resources has become a paramount factor that needs to be considered not only during the operational stage but from the very first day a production system is designed. At the same time, there is an urgent need for the Swedish manufacturing industry to explore strategies and methods to accelerate the industrial efficiency progress and support decision making in order to regain profitability.
Approach and relevance to the program call
By developing a robust multi-objective simulation optimisation (MOSO) and knowledge elicitation methodology for decision-making support within the production systems lifecycle, the project addresses explicitly the program call regarding the development of “integrated virtual toolset for the rapid and accurate consequence studies and manufacturing optimisations”.
Executors and their roles
The research will be led by the Virtual Systems Research Group at the University of Skövde (HiS), responsible for the overall project management, information dissemination, scientific research and software development as well as collaboration with other international research groups. With their information modelling and management expertise, Royal Institution of Technology (KTH) will be the contributor to the data integration and management task. Energy efficiency analysis will be performed by Swerea SWECAST, which has extensive experience in this area. Industrial partners including Volvo Cars, Volvo AB and Scania AB will define industrial requirements, providing business cases for the verification of the research outcomes and validation of gains, in terms of sustainability and profitability.
Beneficiaries
Apart from offering the possibilities in generating multiple optimal alternatives as well as identifying and optimising the most important parameters to support decision making in both system design/re-configuration and continuous improvement processes that take into account productivity, cost and sustainability. The HSO methodology will in a clear way visualise how economic outcomes as well as environmental aspects are affected when altering production strategies/settings. Swedish automotive companies using the HSO methodology will also be able to create a common view of the production systems and share knowledge among them.