Sustainable Hyperautomation in High-Tech Manufacturing Industries: A Case of Linear Electromechanical Actuators

Abstract

Hyperautomation is a promising but sparingly implemented concept in intelligent manufacturing. One of the reasons for the suboptimal adoption of hyperautomation is the large gap between current theoretical frameworks and practical methodologies and tools that can be applied in a real industrial production scenario. This situation has become much more complicated in high-tech enterprises, which face a particular set of issues in terms of innovation, cost-effectiveness, and supply chain management in today's globalized environment. This manuscript provides a new conceptual business framework and technological background for achieving sustainable hyperautomation in the manufacturing of linear electromechanical actuators (LEMA), a key component of several cyberphysical actuators. A set of digital tools and innovative concepts, such as intra-enterprise 3-level factory and definitive designs based on unified solutions, which enable mass customization and offer up to 1000 variants of the LEMAs, are introduced to achieve synergistic interaction between different business functions and provide significant cost and technological advantages. To make manufacturing more customizable, a modular design approach is used, and simultaneously, to facilitate mass production, the focus is given on roller screw transmission modules, representing approximately three-fourths of the added value of LEMA. Furthermore, the concept of synergetic forward integration is proposed and explained using an example of robotic resistance spot welding. This framework involves a closed loop of industrial mature digital tools that enables autonomous product design and manufacturing via Responsive R&D (Research and Development) and feedback-driven dynamic interactions with the market and production system. These steps allow intelligent and automatic decision making throughout the digitally connected systems within the company and out of the company through a digital networked connected intra-enterprise world inside the supply chain with minimal human intervention.