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Engineers of today are required to fulfil the growing demand of interdisciplinary skills required by society and industry. They are expected to possess not only profound disciplinary knowledge and skills, but also a range of methodical, social and personal competencies. A number of teaching modules have been delivered that aim to enhance those competencies in engineering students To evaluate quality of engineering modules an instrument is developed. This instrument measures acquired competencies, quality of the teaching process and settings. This paper presents the evaluation instrument and reports on its validity and reliability.
Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are increasingly used in manufacturing, transportation, health, and other industries. To develop these complex interdisciplinary systems, highly qualified CPS engineers are required who possess sound engineering knowledge and excellent transferable skills. Academic institutions offer a range of modules and curricula to teach CPS engineering. However, the literature reports a gap between expectations of industry and competencies of CPS graduates. To close this gap, this paper introduces and describes a holistic educational framework (T-CHAT) for teaching CPS engineering at the module level. To evaluate this framework, two use cases were analysed by conducting self-perception surveys and semi-structured interviews with students. Descriptive statistics and t-tests were calculated for the survey data. Interviews were coded and analysed using a General Inductive Approach. The analysis results were discussed by the comparison of the T-CHAT implementations in these two use cases.
Cyber physical systems (CPS) consist of physical and cyber components seamlessly integrated with each other. Being a core and an essential component within the digitalization process, CPS are becoming pervasive in all spheres of modern society. Understanding CPS structures and associated functionalities requires a multidisciplinary body of knowledge and engineering capabilities. Moreover, they are laying on the edge of a broad spectrum of methodologies and technologies, from mechatronics, communication, control and automation to information technologies, which are penetrating each corner of the society. It is obvious from the lifecycle of CPS, i.e., life cycle of the physical-part and the digital thread of the cyber-part, that developers, operators and managers of CPS have to acquire an essential interdisciplinary engineering qualification and a combination of skills and competencies from many different disciplines, including social and psychological aspects, among others. In order to develop and implement an adequate educational programme, two major aspects have been analysed in this paper: (i) identification and understanding of the minimal set of multidisciplinary competencies and qualifications needed and (ii) identification and classification of the critical gaps in the existing engineering curricula. The analysis is based on the findings of a survey conducted in two IEEE conferences closely related to the engineering disciplines associated with CPS.
An approach for resource Function Block generation: Towards RAMI4.0-compliant PLC Programming
(2020)
Digital modelling and simulation of manufacturing processes find increasing use in the manufacturing industry. This provides an opportunity to use model information and carry them over into the software development phase to realise automatic PLC code generation. This paper extends the work presented in [1] to enable generation of function blocks for resource components rather than manually coding FBs. The approach is based on mapping table based that allow users to select required functionality, such as auto and manual control, diagnostic, return to initial position for machine components. This mapping table is filled by a programmer and links the information together. The approach provides a structured code that is generated in the IEC 61131-3 Structured Text. Additionally, the paper presents a use case as a proof of concept implementation. The approach is formalized and justified from the viewpoint of the RAM14.0 specification and resulted in between 62 - 81 per cent time saving compared to manual coding of the FBs.
Autonomous Guided Vehicles (AGVs) are considered as one of the key enablers of smart factories which make possible smart and flexible transportation of pallets and material on shopfloor. However, existing AGV fleet management solutions often suffer from poor integration with real-time manufacturing operations information systems, which negatively affects scheduling of AGVs. To exploit the full potential of AGVs in achieving just-intime (JIT) transportation, there is a need for intelligent AGV fleet management system which not only integrate with manufacturing information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) but also provide prediction for the shop-floor logistic based on real-time manufacturing operations information to optimize scheduling of AGVs. This paper presents an approach for a Smart AGV Management System (SAMS), which combines the real-time data analysis and digital twin models that can be deployed within complex manufacturing environments for optimized scheduling. For a proof of concept, a case study of a line side supply of components to a manual assembly station is presented.
A System of Cyber-Physical Systems (SoCPS) is a sensible combination of individual cyber-physical systems (CPS) to realise new functions digitalised and exposed as services in the internet. The Industry 4.0 concept also pursues this approach and thus realises flexible and individual production by implementing new functions on the shop floor and intelligently linking production lines. Due to this increased flexibility, environmental influences during the production process are becoming increasingly important. This work proposes an approach to integrate the influence of environmental parameters in relation to the behaviour of SoCPS. For this, the general use of environmental parameters with SoCPS is shown with their significance for Industry 4.0-compliant solutions. Furthermore, it will present how the environmental parameters can be measured and used by means of a cyber-physical sensor system developed and implemented conforming to RAMI4.0 specifications.
The academia-industry gap in computer science persists since last two decades at least. Industry expects that computer science graduates possess not only profound technical knowledge and skills but also transferable skills such as communication and collaboration in team, problem-solving ability. Students need to learn those skills during their university studies to be competitive in the market after their graduation. This paper first examines the skill gap between graduates and industry expectations, and the existing didactic approaches in computer science education. The authors then present how the Java programming course has been taught using the task-centric holistic agile teaching approach T-CHAT to enhance both technical skills and transferable skills in students. The learning process is described with learning activities and assessments that are constructively aligned with the intended learning outcomes of the course. This is work in progress, so evaluation of the course is planned for future work.