Introduction
The laboratory was first established in September of 1990 with the foremost goal of promoting education and research on state of the art manufacturing engineering. Since manufacturing is the sole means of creating value for the human society, it is extremely crucial to provide good manufacturing engineers to our society. This will ensure that technology heads towards computerized integration and automation for efficient and reliable operations of manufacturing activities. CIM (Computer Intelligent Manufacturing) represents systemized technology which contributes to advanced automatic manufacturing operations coupled with computer interlinks. CIM can simply be regarded as a set of technologies incorporating how to build and implement the software model of a real manufacturing operation in a computer system. With the software model in computer systems, consistent engineering and manufacturing work can be quickly done. “What kind of products should be manufactured by what means in what volume with how much cost by what time …?” These basic but important questions can be quickly answered if the CIM is successfully implemented. In order to realize this, two key technologies: advanced manufacturing software and smart manufacturing machines and processes, are required. Our commitment to manufacturing is developing these key technologies through education and research.
Our goal
To provide society with proficient engineers equipped with manufacturing engineering knowledge and pragmatic skills required for advanced manufacturing; this is accomplished through education, training and research using state-of-the-art hardware (CNC machine tools, robots, computers, and instruments) and software.
To develop valuable manufacturing automation technologies that everyone can easily use for promoting and implementing the “In-market manufacturing concept”.
To efficiently contribute to society and industries by transferring the advanced manufacturing technologies developed through extensive research.
Our focus
We have a flexible attitude in conducting the research such that the research should be done based on the needs of the real industries. When selecting the research topics, the first priority is always given to the requests from the industries. The current emphasized areas of our research are:
- Mechatronics
- Manufacturing Process Design and Control
- Manufacturing Automation
Software Mechatronics (Electronics Application to Mechanical Systems Control) is very useful to both manufacturing process automation (intelligent manufacturing systems) and product development (new competitive products). Mechatronics is especially important for the development of innovative manufacturing equipment and facilities. The range of our research covers is very broad such as needed for the development for autonomous machine control. All research topics currently being conducted are multi-disciplinary which requires knowledge in Mechanical, Electronic and Electrical, Control, and Computer Engineering. Our past and on-going research activities in Mechatronics include design and implementation of Application Specific Integrated VLSI Circuit (ASIC) for industrial controllers.
Manufacturing Process Design and Control research is necessary to enhance the manufacturing quality and productivity. Through our research, we are always trying to answer the following questions:
- How should we apply the emerging technologies to manufacturing processes?
- What kind of new manufacturing processes should be developed as a break-through solution?
- How should we give intelligence to the manufacturing process control?
Manufacturing Automation Software research is mainly for developing the software model of manufacturing engineering operations (design, manufacturing preparation, manufacturing, assembly, and inspection and test) directing towards computer integrated manufacturing. The research in this area includes CIM (Computer Integrated Manufacturing), CAD/CAM (Computer Aided Design/Manufacturing), CAPP (Computer Aided Process Planning), CAE (Computer Aided Evaluation), CAT (Computer Aided Testing) and CAA (Computer Aided Assembly).