The speci® cation and deployment of enterprise modelling and component-based system concepts to facilitate the distributed engineering of automotive manufacturing machines is reported in this paper. The main areas of research reported in the article cover: (a) the design and prototype development of new forms of component-based engine assembly and transfer machines, (b) life cycle engineering approaches that improve the change capability of component-based automotive machines and (c) the design and implementation of an engineering environment that enables distributed engineering teams to achieve (a) and (b).The concepts, approach and environment have been developed and are being formally assessed with reference to current practice within an ongoing engineering programme. A consortium of leading automotive companies is collaborating on the research project with the aim of producing a new range of engine products that will be used in various makes of vehicle around the globe.

The development and application of a business process modelling approach to comprehend, formalize, simulate and assess a particular domain within the automotive industry are described in this paper. Within an ongoing project carried out by Loughborough University, the design and implementation of a new generation of component-based machine control systems are being investigated. As part of this project, impacts of business and technical aspects of the new control systems on existing practices are also being examined using enterprise modelling methods and tools. The modelling has been applied to the production and assembly of a machine for a new engine project in the automotive industry.The modelling approach has been based on the CIMOSA modelling architecture and complementary simulation and analysis tools, mainly ithink TM and Excel. The lessons learned from the implementation of the modelling approach and the assessment of the component-based machine control systems are also discussed in this paper. The criteria of this assessment were considered primarily as cost and time, although other factors that ultimately impact on the business processes are also discussed.

Increasing the cost of electricity and the global obligations for efficient use of energy have added additional pressure to industrial companies in an already challenging market. Manufacturing companies are adopting methods to have a greater agility to respond quicker to the market dynamics and varying demands by changing production configurations. In recent years, deploying virtual engineering design approaches and extensive simulation methods have facilitated an early insight into how a system may perform, in advance of the physical build. However, the impact of system reconfiguration on the cost of energy consumption is typically unknown. Much research has been carried out on the development of new energy-efficient drives (e.g. motors and actuators) and also the possibility of turning off the drives when idle to save energy. However, in this article, the authors propose a new method of energy saving for engineering production lines by fine tuning the low level device motions to optimise energy consumption. An integration method between virtual engineering design and simulation modelling is proposed, and as a result a simulation method for energy optimisation is developed. In this article the method of interpreting virtual design data for use in simulation modelling of a production assembly line in an automotive industry is discussed. Furthermore, a developed algorithm for optimising energy usage based on adjusting dynamic properties of the system components (e.g. accelerations, torque and mass) is discussed and the result of implementing the concept in an experimental application in the powertrain industry is reported.

A multiperspective modelling method is described that was developed and used to support an international consortium of businesses concerned with realizing automobile engine production on a global scale. The modelling method provides a capability of documenting, communicating and analysing various dependent aspects of multiple threads of engineering activities. Commercially available and specially developed computer modelling tools have been deployed to operationalize the method, and thereby to facilitate the design of dependent activity¯ows, the resourcing of activitȳ ows by suitable human and technical systems and the control and management of work¯ows. The paper outlines requirements of the method, with reference to properties of engineering processes that needed to be modelled. A prime focus of attention was on engineering a new generation of component-based manufacturing lines suitable for the`mass customization' of automotive engine products in production plants around the globe. Key features of the modelling framework are described, as are the stages of modelling and the associated use of proprietary modelling tools. Also provided are examples of models generated when using the method and tools.

Manufacturing systems designers and planners ever tries to adopt the modern technologies and techniques to design and validate different production processes. These modern techniques help to facilitate the better, faster, cheaper and reliable products in market to meet the customer demands. It is very useful if the manufacturing system/assembly line performance to be verified in the early stage of resource planning. Strong collaboration between the machine user and its builder can make it possible. Virtual environments are the new emerging approaches which not only provide the collaboration but also help in the resources design and verification based on the product and processes. The machine builder and its user can reconfigure the machine setups from its components in virtual model in an agile and concurrent mode. To examine the impacts of reconfigured machine components activities at low level on the high level business productivity there must be a link between the virtual environment and discrete event analysis. Therefore to integrate the virtual engineering tools data with the discrete event simulation this paper proposes an approach of virtual driven generic discrete event simulation modelling (named as VDsim as a packaged tool) to facilitate solid decisions prior to production with the help of real times generated by virtual machines. The success of this discrete event simulation analysis depends on the quality of input data its compatibility and integration process. The data link needs to have a seamless interfacing between these independent applications in a generic form to increase models reusability. This integration package not only brings these two applications together but also facilitates the production planners and schedulers to examine the most possible optimum status for the resources on the production line in-term of the cost, energy consumptions and impacts of the machines reliabilities on throughputs.