Exploring Second Life Applications for Electric Vehicle Batteries

The purpose of the study is to explore an economically viable second life applications for electric vehicles (EV) batteries. There is a common consensus in the automotive industry that the reuse of retired EV batteries—often referred as a second life of a battery—can provide greater economic and sustainability benefits. Although literature acknowledged potential business opportunities with batteries’ second life, there are still a lot of uncertainties, making success difficult to realize. In particular, identification of a profitable second life application with a right business model in the battery value chain has become a key success factor. Therefore, a case study, with a mixed research approach, considering both qualitative and quantitative methods, has been conducted in a company that is one of the leading manufacturers in the heavy-duty industrial vehicle industry, which currently is developing their electric vehicle machines with a li-ion battery pack. The study generated and analyzed several different second life concepts to find the most economically viable second life applications. The analysis concluded three second life business concepts in the initial phase. In the later phases, individual business model canvases and different reverse logistics processes were created, mapped, compared, and validated through quantitative analysis. The analysis show that out of three concepts remanufacturing application proved to be the most applicable one for the case company, within a range of 15 years’ time. The paper contributes to the theory of circular business models in the context of EV batteries.

An Exploratory Study on Integrating Sustainability Aspects During the Acquisition of Production Equipment

Production equipment such as machines have crucial impact on the overall performance of production operations in manufacturing industries, since there is a strong correlation between the machines and working conditions and performance on the shop floor. Well designed production equipment has the potential to achieve economic gain by reducing the disturbances during the operational phase, to fulfill environmental commitment by reducing emissions and resources consumption and utility, and to increase employee satisfaction ensuring safety and good ergonomics. Therefore, when acquiring production equipment it is important to consider different sustainability aspects relevant to its usage during the operational phase. This study aims at exploring the critical features of production equipment to facilitate different practices in the context of sustainable production operational system, and how manufacturing companies are considering sustainability aspects when acquiring production equipment. The data has been collected based on a literature study, interviews conducted in different manufacturing companies located in Sweden, attending group discussion sessions, and reviewing machines’ technical regulation guidelines. Some of the critical features identified are error proofing, setup time, one-piece flow, automatic generation of required data, reduction of energy and resource consumption, together with worker’s health and safety, etc. The data indicates that companies specify different features of machines based on the requirements of operational performance and these features are aligned with different lean techniques, green practice, and safety issues. However, during acquisition process of production equipment the environmental issues are still not prioritized yet compared to lean and safety aspects. Budget constraint, insufficient information of the whole life cycle costing and lack of innovation from the equipment suppliersÂť side are exampled of major barriers for acquiring more environment-friendly production equipment.

Reduction of Product Portfolio Complexity Based on Process Analysis

The increased demand for product variety has implied that many manufacturing companies are struggling with managing product complexity. This article suggests a framework for combined modeling of product variants and the process flow in production and assembly for customized products. The aim of the framework is to create a visual model that illustrates the product variety relative to the process flow and provides transparency of product variety in the different process steps. Literature has suggested various methods and techniques. These provide means for reducing complexity based on analysis of the end product, but do not pay much attention to understanding where in the production and assembly processes, this variance occurs. The suggested models form a basis for analyzing and reducing product complexity based on a visual model of the product variety in each process step. The models gave rise to a reduction of the SKUs with 33% without losing product variety offered to the end customer. The initial test of the framework and models in the case company showed that the models can provide new insight into the product variety, which forms a solid basis for making decisions on reducing product portfolio variety and adjusting the order decoupling point.

Guide for Automation of Low Volume Production

There is a remaining need from both academia and practitioners, to gain further knowledge about the decision making process for automation of low volume production. This paper includes insights of drivers for automation, the development of a guide for low volume production and the outcome of using the guide. The research in this study is based on both empirical data and theoretical considerations. The empirical data was collected in five case studies and a questionnaire. This paper is part of a research project with the main objective to develop knowledge about how flexible automation may contribute to improvements in efficiency, ergonomics, quality and production economics in different industries with low volume production. One of the results in the project was a comprehensive guide, developed, refined and improved in an iterative collaborative process, where tools and parts of the guide were tested and verified by five manufacturing case companies. The paper describes briefly the development process of the guide and content. The requirements of the guide derived from literature, case companies, questionnaire as well as industrial experts. The resulting guide can be used in several ways, depending on the requirements of the application. The guide includes guiding principles, a decision model for the analysis of the company, choice of automation and facts about automation. In the end of the project, four companies had invested or decided to invest in different types of automation.

Reconfigurable Manufacturing: How Shop Floor Digitalisation Supports Operators in Enhancing Diagnosability

Manufacturing companies are currently struggling with the need to deal with ever changing marker requirements and technological advances. They can develop the reconfigurability capability in their factories in order to deal with such context. Moreover, companies can implement shop floor digitalisation to enhance their reconfigurability. This paper sustains two arguments: (i) the possibility to enhance diagnosability as a critical reconfigurability characteristic through shop floor digitalisation; and (ii) the relevance of the human role in reaching diagnosability in a digitalised shop floor. The paper first presents a literature review and based on this, aspects of shop floor digitalisation supporting operators in enhancing the diagnosability are identified and synthesized in a 3-e model (error reduction, ergonomics, and easiness). Secondly, insights from a case study are interpreted through the literature-based model in order to both consolidate the theoretical results and emphasize the implications for practitioners. The findings of this paper indicate that the proposed model can support practitioners in taking specific actions in regard to shop floor digitalisation in order to improve operator-dependent diagnosability and, in turn, the reconfigurability capability.

Manufacturing of High Pressure Die Casting Die Inserts Using SLM

Dies for high pressure die casting are normally manufactured by machining of slabs of tool steel to the required dimensions. This manufacturing requires several steps such as rough machining, heat-treatment, EDM (electro discharge machining) and polishing. With the AM (additive manufacturing) method SLM (Selective Laser Melting) it has become possible to print the dies fully or in part. Several advantages are expected, such as a better thermal distribution in the die in service and thereby extended die life and better component quality. This is due to the possibility of making the cooling channels conformal. There are also expectations of reduced time and cost in the manufacturing process due to fewer manufacturing steps and better material utilisation. Hopes are to print a net shape or near net shape that can be used directly as a die component. In this paper it is investigated to what extent this can be fulfilled by printing two die inserts to be used for casting fatigue test samples of aluminium. They were printed on a 3D Systems ProX DMP 300 in maraging steel powder. The result is that it is possible to obtain a sufficiently smooth surface die surface. However, the current design with an SLM insert fitted in a machined die makes extensive post printing manufacturing necessary.

Back-Shoring vs. Near-Shoring: A Comparative Study

After decades of manufacturing offshoring strategies, generally addressed to low cost countries, in the last few years companies have been increasingly revising their location strategies. In so doing, they often implement either back-shoring (relocation to the home country) or near-shoring (relocation to the home region) alternatives. While the former strategy has gained increasing attention among scholars in recent years, studies on near-shoring are still scarce. Moreover, the academic literature rarely compares the two phenomena in order to understand why companies prefer to implement one instead of the other. This paper aims to shed new light on similarities and differences among back- and near-shoring strategies. In order to reach such an objective, we assume a contingency approach by focusing on a specific industry, the footwear sector, which has been significantly characterized by offshoring strategies. In order to reach the research aim, the comparison between back- and near-shoring strategies will be conducted focusing on three main issues: a) characteristics of the companies implementing the relocation strategy (firm’s size); b) motivations inducing companies to relocate; c) barriers to the implementation of the relocation decision. Given the explorative nature of the paper, the features of 41 back- and near-shoring decisions implemented by 25 Italian and Spanish companies operating in the footwear industry will be analysed. Preliminary findings show smaller companies are more likely to back-shore instead of near-shore, probably because of the lower competences and resources they own. At the same time, availability of skilled contractors and/or availability of government aid in the home country induce them to back-shore instead of near-shore. Finally, the lack of skilled suppliers mainly characterizes the back-shoring alternative.

Studies on Surface Roughness in Stable and Unstable End-Milling

Surface roughness is an important aspect of a machined piece and greatly influences its performance. This paper presents the surface roughness of end-milled aluminium plates in stable and unstable machining conditions at various spindle speed and depth of cuts machined with cylindrical end-mills. The surface roughness is measured using high-resolution surface replicas with a white light interferometry (WLI) microscope. The measurements of the end-milled floors show that the surface roughness as long as the cutting is performed in stable conditions is insensitive to the depth of cut or spindle speed. In contrast, within chattering conditions, which appear according to stability lobes, surface roughness values increase almost 100%. While at the valleys of the stability lobe diagram, there is a gradual increase in roughness, at the peaks of the stability lobe, the transition from the stable to unstable condition occurs with a sudden increase of the roughness values. In the study of down-milled walls, while the roughness increases with the depth of cut within both the stable and the chattering regions, the transition from the stable to chattering condition can lead to a much larger increase in the surface roughness. These results could be used for strategic selection of operation considering the needs of robustness and possible variation of dynamic parameters that can affect the position of the cutting conditions within the stability lobe diagrams.

Indoor Localization of Quadcopters in Industrial Environment

The research work in this paper was carried out to reach advanced positioning capabilities of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for indoor applications. The paper includes the design of a quadcopter and the implementation of a control system with the capability to position the quadcopter indoor using onboard visual pose estimation system, without the help of GPS. The project also covered the design and implementation of quadcopter hardware and the control software. The developed hardware enables the quadcopter to raise at least 0.5kg additional payload. The system was developed on a Raspberry single-board computer in combination with a PixHawk flight controller. OpenCV library was used to implement the necessary computer vision. The Open-source software-based solution was developed in the Robotic Operating System (ROS) environment, which performs sensor reading and communication with the flight controller while recording data about its operation and transmits those to the user interface. For the vision-based position estimation, pre-positioned printed markers were used. The markers were generated by ArUco coding, which exactly defines the current position and orientation of the quadcopter, with the help of computer vision. The resulting data was processed in the ROS environment. LiDAR with Hector SLAM algorithm was used to map the objects around the quadcopter. The project also deals with the necessary camera calibration. The fusion of signals from the camera and from the IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) was achieved by using Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). The evaluation of the completed positioning system was performed with an OptiTrack optical-based external multi-camera measurement system. The introduced evaluation method has enough precision to be used to investigate the enhancement of positioning performance of quadcopters, as well as fine-tuning the parameters of the used controller and filtering approach. The payload capacity allows autonomous material handling indoors. Based on the experiments, the system has an accurate positioning system to be suitable for industrial application.

Product Platforms in Industrialized House Building – Information Modeling Method

There is a demand on the current markets of industrialized house building for higher product design flexibility and customization. One of the success factors in addressing this challenge efficiently is the formalization and use of product platforms through information technology applications. However, there is a lack of knowledge on how product platforms and their use should be modeled to support the development of information technology applications. The aim of this paper is therefore, to increase the knowledge on information modeling of product platforms and their use in the industrialized house building design process. The available information modeling methods were identified and analyzed using literature review while considering the contextual criteria of industrialized house building. An information modelling method for product platforms and their use in the industrialized house building design process is proposed. The information modeling rationale is synthesized using the design platform modeling and the information delivery manual modeling. The former is a PLM-oriented while the latter is a BIM-oriented information modeling method. The proposed information modeling method is composed of three parts: product platform information model, process maps and exchange requirement specification. Future work should aim for the validation of the proposed information modeling method by application on empirical data in a case study.