ud-din Shami (2017): Enterprise systems' life cycle in pursuit of resilient smart factory for emerging aircraft industry: a synthesis of Critical Success Factors'(CSFs), theory, knowledge gaps, and implications, Enterprise Information Systems,

This paper discusses the significance of the Enterprise Systems and simulation integration in improving the shop floor's short-term production planning capability. The ultimate objectives are to identify the integration protocols, optimization parameters and critical design artifacts, thereby identifying key 'ingredients' that help in setting out a future research agenda in pursuit of optimum decision making at the shop floor level. While the integration of Enterprise Systems and simulation gains a widespread agreement within the existing work, the optimality, scalability and flexibility of the schedules remained unanswered. Furthermore, there seems to be no commonality or pattern as to how many core modules are required to enable such a flexible and scalable integration. Nevertheless, the objective of such integration remains clear, i.e. to achieve an optimum total production time, lead time, cycle time, production release rates and cost. The issues presently faced by existing Enterprise Systems, if properly addressed, can contribute to the achievement of manufacturing excellence and can help identify the building blocks for the software architectural platform enabling the integration.

The objective of this study is to investigate the feasibility of machining micro-holes on the non-conductive Aluminum Nitride (AlN) ceramics using micro-electro-discharge machining (EDM) process by exploiting various coating techniques. Although ceramics possess excellent mechanical properties under compressive load condition and superior thermal properties, machining of microscale features on ceramics remains challenging due to the extreme brittleness associated with ceramics. Due to the involvement of higher cutting force and tool wear issue, conventional machining process appears to be unsuitable for machining ceramics. On the other hand, non-contact and negligible process force associated with EDM process makes it one of the competitive processes for machining of ceramics. A series of experiments were carried out on AlN ceramics using “Assistive Electrode” micro-EDM process with a goal of machining blind micro-holes into the ceramics with the aid of on-machine fabricated copper tungsten tools. It was found that multi-layer coatings of silver and copper with copper tungsten electrode resulted in successful machining with high-aspect-ratio holes during powder mixed micro-EDM of AlN ceramics, while micro-holes with less than one aspect ratio are machined without powder addition to the dielectric. It was also observed that comparatively lower level of discharge energies, i.e., lower value of voltages and capacitances were favorable for successful machining of micro-holes in ceramics, even though it results in significantly higher machining time. Despite of relatively low discharge energy usage in micro-EDM, machined surfaces appear to be very rough. The machined surfaces indicate that melting and evaporation, as well as thermal spalling, are the dominating material removal mechanisms. The machined surfaces contained many thermal cracks and porosity on the surface. The elemental composition analysis confirms the presence of aluminum and nitrogen elements on the machined surface. Finally, by careful selection of machining conditions and assistive electrode, successful machining of micro-holes is possible on the non-conductive ceramic surfaces using the micro-EDM process.

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