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STC A - 2019 Annual Report

The Scientific Technical Committee: Life Cycle Engineering and Assembly (STC-A) had two meetings in 2019: in Paris on February 21 and in Birmingham on August 23.

The February STC LCE/A meeting in Paris was attended by 80 people, and the Birmingham meeting had 69 attendees.

CIRP conferences and sponsored conferences under STC LCE/A:

CIRP Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) conferences

• 26th LCE Conference, 2019, Purdue U., USA (Profs. Sutherland, Zhao, and Skerlos)
• 27th LCE Conference, 2020, Grenoble, France (Prof. Brissaud)
• 28th LCE Conference, 2021, Jaipur, India (Profs. Sangwan and Herrmann)
• 29th LCE Conference, 2022, Leuven, Belgium (Profs. Dewulf and Duflou)
• Proposals for LCE 2023 have been solicited – the location should be “not Europe.”

CIRP Conference on Assembly Technologies and Systems (CATS):

• 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)
• Proposals for 10th CATS 2024 have been solicited

Sponsored conferences:

• 17th Global Conference on Sustainable Manufacturing (GCSM) 2019 (Dr. Ganiyusufoglu / Prof. Seliger)
• 8th Conference on Through-life Engineering 2019 (Prof. Robert Gao)
• 9th Conference on Through-life Engineering 2020 (Dr. Erkoyuncu)
• 7th CIRP Global Web Conference (CIRPe) 2019 (Drs. Dietrich / Krenkel)
• International Precision Assembly Seminar (IPAS) 2020 (Profs. Axinte/Dini)

STC A Keynote Papers

The 2019 STC-A keynote was Wang et al.: Symbiotic Human-Robot Collaborative Assembly

Future keynote papers are:

• 2020 – Hauschild et al.: Absolute Sustainability – challenges to life cycle engineering
• 2021 – Franke et al.: Electronics Module Assembly
• 2022 – Kara et al.: Closed Loop Systems to Circular Economy staying within
• the Planetary Boundaries
• 2023 – Proposals have been solicited

Technical Presentations

Paris meeting (2019):

• Klaus Dröder: Incremental Manufacturing – scalable robot-based production concept for manufacturing integrated assembly
• Peggy Zwolinski: Designing circular industrial systems for repurposing of products
• Livan Fratini: Energy demand characterization of aluminum alloys recycling through friction stir based processes

Moderated Discussion #1: “LCE and Circular Economy.” Moderator: Sami Kara
• Introduction by Sami Kara
• Michael Hauschild: Circular Economy - Where is the environment?
• Tim McAloone: Circularity and the manufacturing industry – insights from a programme of Nordic research projects
• Tomohiko Sakao: Business models enabling Circular Economy – state of the art of practice and theory

Moderated Discussion #2: “Machine Learning in Assembly.” Moderator: Lihui Wang
• Introduction by Lihui Wang
• József Váncza: Machine Learning in Human-Robot Collaborative Assembly
• Jörg Franke: Machine Learning for the Qualification of Operators and Robots for Current Assembly Challenges
• Moneer Helu: Industry Use Cases and Requirements for the Application of Machine Learning in Assembly

GA Meeting – Birmingham (2019):

• Hamed Nezhad: Augmented Reality Equipped Composites Assembly and Bonded Repair
• Jürgen Fleischer: Automated design of modular gripper fingers for Assembly
• Rajkumar Roy: Digital Through-life Engineering Services (TES)
• Vincenzo Lunetto: Unit-process energy consumption models for additive manufacturing
Moderated Discussion: “Sustainability impacts of assembly/disassembly systems.” Moderator: Olga Battaia
• Introduction by Olga Battaia
• Sebastian Thiede: Survey on the (social) sustainability of emerging smart production technologies
• Xi Vincent Wang: Sustainability Considerations for Electronic Product assembly/Disassembly
• Pinar Bilge: Advances in Disassembly and Remanufacturing through Digital Assistance in the Context of Circular Economy

Other business

• The following new CWGs were introduced:
o CWG – Industrial Symbiosis in Discrete Manufacturing (from Aug. 2019)
o CWG – Biological Transformation in Manufacturing (from Feb. 2019)
• STC-A provided input to the CMAG Paris meeting with a presentation “Potentials of Artificial Intelligence for Production” by Jörg Krüger
• STC-A provided input to the CIRP leadership on a “vision for environmental sustainability.”
• STC-A provided input to the CIRP leadership on “guests,” especially at the winter meeting.

Officers

The officers of STC LCE/A through 08/2019 were:
Chair: Prof. John W. Sutherland
Vice-chair: Prof. Jörg Krüger
Secretary: Prof. Yasushi Umeda

At the Birmingham meeting the officers for the next three year period were elected:
Chair: Prof. Jörg Krüger
Vice-chair: Prof. Yasushi Umeda
Secretary: Prof. Lihui Wang

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

Respectfully submitted by
John W. Sutherland / Jörg Krüger