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Development of an intelligent container and supporting cyber–physical system services

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posted on 2023-07-03, 08:20 authored by Aaron D. Neal

Research into the development and implementation of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) for Returnable Transit Items (RTIs) is presented in this thesis. CPSs are becoming a significant research focus emanating from advancements in technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud Manufacturing and Intelligent Products. This advancement in manufacturing is touted to bring about a step change in manufacturing efficiency, flexibility and production yield that it has been discussed as a potential fourth industrial revolution, coined Industry 4.0.

It has been highlighted that there is a lack of documented CPS deployments within industrial setting, including necessary CPS design, development and deployment tools and methodologies. For CPSs to be adopted within industry, it is imperative that robust system architectures and design methodologies are developed to support the requirements of industry.

This research’s presents new knowledge in the form of functional, knowledge, information and data requirements for CPSs in the automotive manufacturing domain and RTI management. To address the needs this research presents two CPS implementations that reflect different levels of product intelligence, (i) a “low intelligence” RTI within a portal infrastructure and (ii) and intelligent RTI that interacts with other intelligent products and monitors the environment in which it exists. As part of these CPS deployments, this research presents a CPS reference architecture for the typology of CPS components (such as service implementations, asset layer devices and business process activities) and an RTI traceability development methodology for the implementation of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. From these implementations it was determined that a “low intelligence” RTI can meet 72.7% of stakeholder requirements with an intelligent container capable of meeting 94.6% of these needs.

The challenges associated with CPS in the automotive domain were identified to include (i) a lack of RFID traceability application methodologies, (ii) difficulties in capturing and maintaining an understanding of business processes, (iii) a lack of knowledge for designing with product intelligence in mind and (iv) determining the relevance of perceived environmental conditions and its context. The research also highlighted a number of generic CPS components that can be re-used within other CPS deployments and domains, these include (i) an RFID analysis methodology and software application for data collection, (ii) an RFID portal hardware implementation built upon a robust industrial controller (Siemens S7), (iii) a novel intelligent container hardware platform known as smaRTI that integrates a UHF RFID interrogator, environmental sensors and wireless communications and (iv) a number of novel RTI context determination services.

Funding

Ford Motor Company. High Speed Sustainable Manufacturing Institute (HSSMI). EPSRC.

History

School

  • Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering

Publisher

Loughborough University

Rights holder

© Aaron Neal

Publication date

2018

Notes

A Doctoral Thesis. Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy of Loughborough University.

Language

  • en

Qualification name

  • PhD

Qualification level

  • Doctoral

This submission includes a signed certificate in addition to the thesis file(s)

  • I have submitted a signed certificate

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