School of Industrial and Manufacturing Sciences (SIMS)

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Browsing School of Industrial and Manufacturing Sciences (SIMS) by Supervisor "Greenough, Richard"

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    Conceptual design of a support documentation system to assist troubleshooting in manufacturing
    (2005-04) Juliao, Jorge; Greenough, Richard
    This research explores the conceptual design of a Support Documentation System (SDS), to assist manufacturing maintenance personnel during troubleshooting. Manufacturing systems maintenance is a crucial element of any organisation’s operating strategy. One of its main goals is to reduce downtime, both by avoiding the occurrence of failures and by effective reaction to breakdowns. Currently, most downtime reduction studies focus on the prevention of failures. Although these studies have made a significant contribution toward downtime reduction, it is impossible to prevent all failures. As such, troubleshooting will always be necessary for maintenance personnel to provide an effective contribution to their organisation. This research proposes a Support Documentation System that will improve maintenance through documentation management. It is argued that troubleshooting time will be reduced since such a system could provide maintenance personnel with enhanced access to support documentation, particularly to failure records. Until this research, little direct empirical evidence had been collected about the feasibility of such a system, and about the performance of current systems regarding troubleshooting support. There had also been no evidence concerning maintenance personnel requirements for improved support documentation. The objectives of this research are to assess the feasibility of the SDS, to determine why current systems do not effectively support troubleshooting, and to identify key features for the development of the SDS. To fulfil the objectives of this research, exploratory investigations were conducted. Questionnaire and interview surveys of maintenance practitioners, equipment vendors, and CMMS developers were performed to determine the status of failure records management and the reasons for the failure of current systems. A case study strategy was employed within three companies to identify requirements for the development of the SDS. The findings of this research are that the development of an SDS is feasible, and that current systems do not effectively support troubleshooting. The research identifies a set of design features for the SDS. It presents the end-user requirements, a ranking of most relevant troubleshooting data to be included in the failure records, and a list of record attributes that are to be used to better identify and classify records. The latter attributes constitute the means to manage failure records in a systematic way.
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    A development methodology for industrial hypermedia task support systems
    (2003-04) Tjahjono, Benny Eko; Greenough, Richard
    Workers in today’s manufacturing environments have to cope with a greater variety of complex and rapidly changing tasks than ever before. To ensure consistent high quality of products and manufacturing processes, workers require constantly available source of information that serves as a task support and an aide-memoire for settings and task procedures. Hypermedia technology has been proven suitable for this purpose. However, developing industrial hypermedia task support systems (TSS) is different to developing conventional, non-industrial hypermedia applications. This research, therefore, aims to formulate the development methodology that can be used as a guidance to develop industrial hypermedia task support systems. The development methodology, incorporating formal design methods and design heuristics, has been used to develop a number of industrial hypermedia TSS. Both the hypermedia TSS and the methodology have been evaluated through a series of case studies. The thesis confirms that the success of the hypermedia task support systems is not only dependent on the usability of the system, but also on the quality of the content. Difficult and time consuming updating processes will cause poor accuracy and currency of the content, resulting in the users not being able to get the benefits from using it. The collaborative authoring environment that exists within the development methodology enables the content of the hypermedia task support system to be easily created and maintained, so as to ensure its usability. Compared to existing methodologies, the proposed methodology is more comprehensive and more suitable for developing industrial hypermedia systems. In addition to the formal approach typically found in ‘off-the-shelf methodologies, the methodology formulated in this research incorporates design heuristics that aim to improve an application’s coherence and to reduce users’ cognitive overhead, two important requirements for designing the user interface of industrial hypermedia systems.
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    ERP system upgrade: an analysis of the costs, benefits and requirements
    (2002-09) Shaw, C.; Greenough, Richard
    This project looks at the feasibility of the high performance vehicle manufacturer, Ray Mallock Limited (RML), upgrading their current version of their Frontstep produced Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system from version 4 to the latest version 6. The project outlines a cost benefit analysis of the upgrade so RML can see the value of the new features of the system and weigh these up with the costs that would be incurred. The project then goes on to look at the risks that RML would face if they chose to upgrade or not to upgrade the ERP system and the timescales of the upgrade process. Finally, some suggestions are made to ensure that RML can take full advantage of their current system while being in a position to upgrade effectively in the future. After considerable analysis, this report suggests that an upgrade at this point in time for RML is not a viable option due to the high cost and high risk of the project. In addition, this project suggests that that an ERP system needs management and development on an ongoing basis to ensure that a company is in a strong position to take advantage of new versions without having to incur high risks and even higher costs. The ongoing costs of an ERP system are significant and often misjudged by many companies during the implementation phase, especially if they want to stay on the support contracts as they become tied to an upgrade path dictated by the supplier. Companies must also ensure that they are in a position to take advantage of the upgrades and do not lose skills within the business to manage a change of this nature and they have the business and IT infrastructure in place to support the upgrade.
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    A practical decision support tool for the design of automated manufacturing systems: incorporating human factors alongside other considerations in the design
    (2005-09) Al-Mannai, Bader Darwish; Greenough, Richard; Kay, John M.
    The way in which a manufacturing system is designed is a crucial determinant of its ability to meet the current competitive challenges. The existing literature and research findings draw attention to the importance of addressing human factors in the design of the manufacturing systems to face these challenges. However, the evidence gathered from the literature clearly illustrates that organisations are not fully incorporating human factors (macro- and micro-ergonomics) in the design of manufacturing systems. In addition, the current system design practices tend to relegate ergonomics evaluation to post-design, leaving ergonomists little opportunity to make significant and important changes. This thesis details a study which investigates the role of human factors in manufacturing systems design and how it can be integrated into automated manufacturing decision-making. Focus is given to the area of manufacturing automation selection within workstation and cell design. The aim of this research is to support manufacturing systems designers to better incorporate human factors in manufacturing systems design. A research programme has been designed to fulfil this aim. It consisted of three phases: industrial survey, decision support tool formulation, and practical evaluation. The first phase involved conducting interviews with leading manufacturing organisations in the United Kingdom to determine the work practice in industry and the need for' improvements. The second phase comprised the design and development of the decision support tool in a workbook and software application. The final phase was the evaluation of the tool in collaboration with industry. Overall the outcome of this research was a novel structured approach that deploys both the Quality Function Deployment and Failure Mode and Effect Analysis methods to incorporate human factors alongside technical, organisational, and economical factors in the decision-making process of manufacturing systems design, thereby allowing the consideration of human factors at the feasibility study stage.