title: A MANUFACTURING COST ESTIMATION BY UTILIZING A NOVEL SENSOR BASED COST MODEL IN A KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
Creators: name: Tokucoglu, H
Publisher: name: Liverpool John Moores University
Year: 2021

description: Nowadays, many small or medium size manufacturing companies are struggling to identify the right solution to tackle the problems of long production cycle time, poor quality and expensive cost in their manufacturing processes. In order to facilitate overcoming these struggles for small or medium companies, this thesis presents a research that intends to develop an effective knowledge management system, which includes a flexible sensor based cost model for calculation of unit manufacturing cost of a product, for small or medium size manufacturing companies with the potential of taking the advantages of Industry 4.0 which is an approach of generation of smart facilities with smart cyber-physical systems. (Thames &amp; Schaefer, 2016) In this research, it is identified that the facilitation of suitable sensors to observe and monitor manufacturing processes could assess the efficiency of the manufacturing processes in real time and help the manufacturing process cost calculation to be more accurate. Besides, the cost model is converted from the traditional cost model to a dynamic one through adding flexibility to the model via two ways: Transferring the data of the cost parameters from the sensor on a machine to the knowledge support system directly via the internet and measuring the efficiency of a manufacturing process by calculating the utilization rate of the machine through utilizing the power values of the machine that comes from the sensor. In order to achieve flexibility in the cost model, three case studies were done. In each case study, manufacturing processes are observed via a power meter that can be easily assembled on the machines of interests. Subsequently, the efficiency measurement of the manufacturing process is provided through classifying the power values of the machine via an artificial intelligence method and the value of the utilization rate of the machine is obtained via utilizing these classified power values in Matlab Software. Lastly, the efficiency measurement of the manufacturing process and calculation of the unit manufacturing cost of a product are gathered into a knowledge management system that is created by utilising Microsoft Access Software. In this project, it is aimed to create a knowledge management system that has some benefits to small or medium companies. These benefits are presented below: • The knowledge management system has a capability to collect data via the internet and this capability provides a foundation for establishing or improving Industry 4.0. approach in a facility. • Another key beneficial feature of the database is the calculation of the manufacturing cost taking account of the real utilization rate of the machine and the data that comes 1 from the sensors on the machine. Therefore, the cost model becomes dynamic which means that the user can reflect the changes in a manufacturing process to the cost model and also it can monitor the efficiency of the manufacturing process via the value of the utilization rate of the machine. In this project, how the real utilisation rate is monitored and integrated into the general cost model is presented together with the application cases of two industry companies and Liverpool John Moores University laboratory.