MERA and the DLP-E project MERA (Manufacturing Engineering Research Area) is a package of more than 40 three year R&D projects with a budget on approximately 600 million Swedish kroner. Of these are 305 million Skr founded by VINNOVA, Nutek[Nutek] and Västra Götalandsregionen[VG]. The rest of the funds are provided by the companies. There are approximately 60 companies and 40 research groups engaged in the MERA program. During the development of the MERA program an inventory of the industrial need where performed, both for long term and short term. After a prioritizing and synthesis of the general needs the overall direction of the program is described by three main areas;
- Manufacturing processes
- Production systems
- Virtual and digital support
Figure 2, the MERA program research areas.
Four domains where defined in relation to at least two of the three main areas identified above. These domains are;
- Specific manufacturing processes and integrated production development
- Development and operation of manufacturing processes with virtual and digital support
- Control, verification, optimization of equipment and liner with virtual and digital support
- Strategies, principles and methods for manufacturing; concept development.
DLP-E, Digitalt Länkad Processtyrning med Erfarenhetsåterföring. Swedish definition for; “Digitally Linked Process control with Experience reuse”. DLP-E is a MERA project in the third domain, Control, verification optimization of equipment and liner with virtual and digital support. The project is considered contributing to the MERA programs aim to increase the knowledge based production in Sweden, partly by the efforts in research and that the project is based on knowledge fusion. The project is expected to deliver generic models for how data of experience from ongoing production can be integrated in the development of new or improved products. The project is also expected to verify the efficiency of these methods through verification in practice of three different products with a different level of complexity. The project is also assumed to affect the systems and methods captured into commercial software. This is accomplished by the active participation of software vendors.
Reused data from manufacturing is to be processed statistical and be visualized on a 3D CAD model for easy communication. Improvements are verified by both function and performance as well as in comparison to other manufacturing processes in knowledge based system solutions for future product development with the aim to provide cost efficient production processes. A production based PDM system is to be used as base for the experience reuse.
It is concluded that the project will deliver methods and tools for:
- Manufacturing preparation and product design based on process capability
- Manufacturing preparation based on experience
