The Scientific Technical Committee: Life Cycle Engineering and Assembly had two meetings in 2018: in Paris on February 22 and in Tokyo on August 24.

The February STC LCE/A meeting in Paris was attended by 95 people, and the Tokyo meeting had 51 attendees.

Conferences and sponsored seminars under STC LCE/A are:

Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) conferences

• 25th LCE Conference 2018 Copenhagen, Denmark (Prof. Hauschild)
• 26th LCE Conference 2019 Purdue U. and U. Michigan, USA (Prof. Sutherland, Prof. Zhao, and Prof. Skerlos)
• 27th LCE Conference 2020 Grenoble, France (Prof. Brissaud)
• 28th LCE Conference 2021 Jaipur, India (Prof. Sangwan and Prof. Herrmann)
• 29th LCE Conference 2022 Leuven, Belgium (Prof. Dewulf and Prof. Duflou)
• Proposals for LCE 2023 were requested, of which location should be “not Europe.”

Assembly (CATS) conferences:

• 7th Conference on Assembly Technology and Systems, Intelligent Assembly Systems, 2018, Tianjin, China (Prof. Wang and Prof. Hu)
• 8th Conference on Assembly Technology and Systems, Digitalizing smart factories, 2020, Athens, Greece (Dr. Makris, Prof. Mourtzis and Prof. Chryssolouris)
• 9th Conference on Assembly Technology and Systems, Flexible Assembly & Disassembly Systems, 2022, Leuven (Profs. Kellens and Demeester)

Sponsored conferences:

• 6th Conference on Through-life Engineering 2017 (Prof. Roy)
• 7th Conference on Through-life Engineering 2018 (Prof. Roy)
• GCSM 2018 – Global Conference on Sustainable Manufacturing (Prof. Seliger/ Prof. Jawahir)
• GCSM 2019 – Global Conference on Sustainable Manufacturing (Dr. Ganiyusufoglu / Prof. Seliger)
• 8th Conference on Through-life Engineering 2019 (Prof. Robert Gao)
• 9th Conference on Through-life Engineering 2020 (Prof. Roy)
• CIRPe 2019 (Drs Dietrich / Krenkel)

STC A Keynote Papers

Future keynote papers will be:

• 2018 – Hermann et al.: Life Cycle Engineering of Light Weight Structures
• 2019 – Wang et al.: Symbiotic Human-Robot Collaborative Assembly
• 2020 – Hauschild et al.: Absolute Sustainability – challenges to life cycle engineering
• 2021 – Franke et al.: State of the Art in Electronics Assembly
• 2022 – Kara et al.: LCE for Circular Economy: From Closed Loop Systems to Target-based Engineering
• 2023 – Proposals are requested

Technical Presentations (and other items)

Paris meeting (2018):

• Michela Dalle Mura: “Balancing assembly lines with human operators and cooperative robots: a genetic approach”
• Stefania Pellegrinelli: “Human-Robot collaboration via hindsight optimization with task precedence constraints”
• Minna Lanz: “A dynamic 3D description of the workspace in a collaborative assembly task”
• Michele Lanzetta: “Visual inspection for flexible assembly of half shafts”
• Sotiris Makris: “Visual recognition of complex parts for robotic manipulation enabling circular economy”
• Masayoshi Okamoto: “Robotic sealing for manufacturing aircraft bodies”
• Franz Dietrich: “Automated assembly of thin-walled deformable components”
• Shozo Takata: “JST Mirai-Program: Realization of a sustainable society with innovation in manufacturing for resource circulation”
• Paul Mativenga: “What should be recycled: An integrated model for product recycling desirability”
• Nicolas Perry: “Design of recycling process based on technical, economical end environmental criteria and in perspective of the EU Environmental Technology Verification Standard: case study at MTB Recycling”

GA Meeting – Tokyo (2018):

• Tomohiko Sakao: Business models and design for remanufacturing in Europe – A report from European Remanufacturing Network (ERN) project
• Li Shu: Generating reuse concepts for retired wind-turbine blades
• Wim Dewulf: Development of repairability assessment criteria for consumer products
• Rainer Müller: Cognitive worker assistance for dynamically created repairing jobs in the rework area
• Christoph Herrmann: Visual Analytics in Life Cycle Engineering for Future Mobility Systems
• Giovanni Lucchetta: Estimation of material intensity reduction potential for plastic parts injection molded with advanced insulative and low-friction mold coatings
• Dimitris Mourtzis: Manufacturing Systems Complexity modeling in the concept of Industry 4.0
• Franz Dietrich: The accuracy dilemma in cell assembly: more accurate for higher battery quality or less accurate for lower price?
• Sebastian Thiede: Data driven concepts towards eco-efficient battery cell value chains
• Gábor Erdős: Flexible parts feeding system for irregular shaped objects using 2D imaging and stable pose calculation
• Sotiris Makris: Robotic Mobile Dual-Arm Workers for Assembly Lines

Other business

• The Chair reported the results of Additive Manufacturing CWG. The ambassador from STC-A to this CWG is J. Franke.
• Joost Duflou introduced a new CWG proposal on industrial symbiosis. The STC-A attendees supported this CWG proposal.
• Günther Seliger provided a report on the “National Platform Circular Economy” from Acatech and emphasized the importance to make CIRP visible in the Circular Economy movement
• Rainer Stark proposed to strengthen relations between STC-A and other STCs.
• The Chair introduced the following new CWGs:
• CWG – Industrial Symbiosis in Discrete Manufacturing (from Aug. 2019)
• CWG – Biological Transformation in Manufacturing (from Feb. 2019)

Officers

The officers of STC LCE/A in 2018 were:
Chair: Prof. John W. Sutherland
Vice-chair: Prof. Jörg Krüger
Secretary: Prof. Yasushi Umeda

For further details on the activities of STC LCE/A please consult the minutes from the meetings in Paris and Tokyo.

Submitted by
John W. Sutherland