Patent ID: 11861739
Assignee: THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
Field: IT methods for management (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G  Y | IPC G

Claim 0:
1. A manufacturing system comprising:
multiple machines each configured to perform at least one of a plurality of operations of a manufacturing process to manufacture at least one component of a product;
multiple buffers each configured to perform at least one of the plurality of operations of the manufacturing process;
multiple sensors each configured to measure operation parameters of at least one of the multiple machines and buffers in real-time;
at least one controller configured to turn on and turn off the multiple machines and the multiple buffers to operate the manufacturing process;
a programmable manufacturing advisor, implemented at least in part on a processor circuit and a memory circuit, which automatically calculates and presents to an operations manager recommended actions for achieving a desired productivity improvement for the manufacturing process, the programmable manufacturing advisor comprising:
an information unit that electronically receives measurements of a plurality of parameters from the multiple sensors, the plurality of parameters indicating a productivity of each operation of the plurality of operations in the manufacturing process;
an analytics unit that, based on the measurements of the plurality of parameters, calculates a baseline value of a performance metric indicating the productivity of the manufacturing process; and
an optimization unit that:
determines a recommended improvement action using one or more artificial intelligence (AI) optimization algorithms by:
(a) identifying a bottleneck in the plurality of operations;
(b) for one operation of the plurality of operations corresponding to the bottleneck, identifying a parameter from the plurality of parameters that improves the performance metric;
(c) adjusting a value of the identified parameter by a first step size;
(d) predicting the value of the performance metric using the adjusted value of the identified parameter;
(e) repeating steps (a)-(d) until the predicted value of the performance metric or a difference between the predicted and baseline values of the performance metric reaches a predetermined performance metric threshold; and
(f) determining the recommended improvement action based on the adjusted value of the identified parameter that causes the predicted value of the performance metric or the difference between the predicted and baseline values of the performance metric to reach the predetermined performance metric threshold;

electronically controls a display to continuously and automatically present the recommended improvement action to the operations manager based on receiving real-time sensed changes to operation of the manufacturing process; and
facilitates reconfiguring operation of at least one of the multiple machines and buffers according to the recommended improvement action,

wherein, according to the recommended improvement action, the at least one controller is configured to perform at least one of reducing a cycle time of at least one of the multiple machines to increase a jobs per hour throughput of the machine, increasing a raw materials release rate of at least one of the multiple machines, or increasing a buffer capacity of at least one of the multiple buffers.