A novel process in which turbine blade moulds are manufactured by rapid prototyping has been developed. Fine control over the raw materials and their processing is required. The non- Newtonian rheological behaviour of the ceramic slurries can be modified through changes in the dispersant levels. A link between dispersant concentration, particle-particle interactions and firing performance has been suggested. Alumina agglomerates that remain through mixing were identified and shown to affect the viscosity of the resin by as much as 30% leading to poor process robustness. X-ray tomography was used to identify and visualise highly orientated defect structure in the ceramic linked to the layered build and the residual stress distribution developed by the Gaussian profile of the laser. It was shown that changes to the laser settings would affect the structure of defects but did not allow for defect removal. The flexural strength of the ceramic produced was found to be by highly dependent on sample orientation and varied between 14 and 52 MPa. Methods to improve the defect structure were explored, including changes in UV cure technology, changes in process settings, removal of agglomerates from the alumina and improved firing schedules. Both a reduction in defects and improved surface finish were identified. It is apparent that moulds suitable for casting applications can be processed using this novel technique.

The research carried out in this thesis focusses on the development of novel functional and degradable materials for use in Microstereolithography (μSL), a type of additive manufacturing (AM) technology. Chapter 1 provides a background into the μSL technology with regards to key developments and the current state-of -the-art for the μSL apparatus itself in addition to providing an overview of the various types of commercially or non-commercially available materials currently developed for μSL. Chapter 2 describes the current state-of-the-art in terms of four-dimensional (4D) printing materials used within the μSL technology and subsequently focusses on expanding the limited scope of materials currently developed. The previously described poly(ethylene glycol) di-ortho-nitrobenzyl (PEG-oNB) ester molecule is successfully synthesised. Upon optimisation of a PEG-oNB containing resin, the material was found to be capable of solidifying to a defined two dimensional (2D) shape utilising one wavelength of light in the μSL apparatus and subsequently able to undergo photodegradation upon controlled exposure by a secondary wavelength of light thereby exemplifying a fourth dimension. In chapter 3, a library of previously described and novel malate based monomers with various functionality are synthesised and subsequently polymerised by step-growth polymerisation either in bulk or in solution to form short chain homopolymers. Copolymerisations carried out in bulk are shown to form polymers with the desired alkene bearing functionality required for cross-linking via radical thiol-ene coupling and the Poly(EtMa-co-BuMa) copolymer is successfully functionalised using dodecanethiol demonstrating its potential for use as a material within μSL. Chapter 4 describes the successful application of Poly(EtMa-co-BuMa), as synthesised in chapter 3, within a novel resin composition, containing dibutenyl succinate (DBS) as reactive diluent, that is capable of printing complex 3D architectures within the μSL process. The materials produced demonstrate exemplar degradation via the surface erosion mechanism and consequently exhibit near-zero order release kinetics upon encapsulation of a model small molecule. Furthermore, small alterations of the resin composition allowed for the rate of degradation and release to be tuned whilst applying multiple materials within the same device allows for controlled, temporal release. Chapter 5 concludes the most significant findings of Chapters 2-4 whilst Chapter 6 lists all the experimental protocols and methods used in this thesis.

The concept of sustainable manufacturing is increasingly becoming a new trend in the today’s industry, induced by the environmental issues such as global warming and scarcity of natural resources, and subsequently customer and government interactions. This leads to introduce the impacts of the industrial activities to the environment as crucial requirements, side by side to traditional ones such as production cost, product quality and quick response to market demands. Comparing to other sectors among the industry field, the manufacturing sector is a key player in this eco-friendly transformation because of its massive impacts contribution. Energy optimisation is one of the most important features of the developing sustainable manufacturing system; since it has very strong influence on limiting these bad impacts, which often cause increase in the operational cost. This research describes a framework, and its software, which proactively predicts and then optimises the energy consumption of an assembly machine throughout its lifecycle, in particular at the design phase where alternative machine designs and configurations can be examined and evaluated based on their potential energy consumption. The proposed framework benefits from the component-based approach as the modular component is the basic entity to be (re)used and (re)configured throughout machine development process, and virtual engineering technology which facilitates investigating component and machine behaviours virtually with high degree of reliability and robustness throughout its lifecycle. The aim of this research is to link assembly machine process parameters to energy prediction and optimisation requirements in a virtual environment to enable different alternatives to be examined and investigated before the physical build of the machine. For proof of concept demonstration, a case study of a pick-and-place automatic workstation is presented. The energy consumption optimisation is achieved by optimising components motion control and station sequence of operation. In the case study, a number of experiments has been conducted to compare alternative designs and configurations against the original design. The results showed energy saving up to 27%, in spite of number of limitations, comparing to the original design by redefining 1) the component motion profile, 2) mode of operations, 3) start time, and 4) machine trajectory.

The scheduling area is well known to generate large combinatorial problems and several modelling techniques have been used to tackle them. One of the most important techniques is Discrete Event Simulation (DES). However, as any other technique DES has its advantages and disadvantages. The main advantage of DES as a scheduling tool is the computational efficiency with which an accurate model of a manufacturing system can be developed. The disadvantage of DES as a scheduling tool is that a schedule is developed through incremental decisions over time, but without appreciation of the effect of each decision on the rest of the schedule. This thesis presents a two-pass finite scheduling method to alleviate the inherent disadvantage of DES as a scheduling tool. The two-pass method is based on two programs which employ a two-phase simulation model. The first pass produces schedules by simple heuristic dispatching rules (first in first out, earliest due date and slack time divided by the number of operations remaining). The second pass of the method tries to improve the schedule based on information from the first pass and a heuristic algorithm designed to improve the production flow. Results from the experiments carried out to test the effectiveness of the method are also presented.

Small manufacturing based businesses compete in an increasingly competitive global market, a "market which is under pressure to deliver more complex and advanced engineering solutions and more complete services to their customers. In the automotive sector for example, a trend is the change from the purchase of individual components and products to the outsourcing and supply of complete engineered systems. In order to compete and grow their capability SMEs (Small to Medium sized Enterprises) need to find and collaborate closely with complementary partners in order to acquire new skills, technology, resources, tacit knowledge and know-how. To address these difficulties the author developed, implemented and tested a Low Cost Virtual Teaming (LC VT) Collaborative Toolset and more importantly a Collaborative Architecture or business model specially for enabling e-business within manufacturing based SMEs. Both the Toolset and the Architecture are supported by a Collaborative Process methodology, containing rules and protocols. The research methodology followed close interaction with many organisations working within the field, and the" use of a number of research methods to gain balance and rigour. Additionally, feedback from the field resulted in improvements where required and kept the model up to date and relevant. A mixed methodology approach was taken to give a broader and complementary view of the issues to ensure balance within the research leading to a more comprehensive understanding of the issues. The research presents an architecture that provides an industry independent e-marketplace to facilitate the communication and collaboration between the OEM and SME supplier groups to enable the pooling of information and knowledge. The Collaborative Architecture considers the whole cycle of the work processes from identifying and finding new suppliers and winning new orders, through to collaborative product development and to providing production order information. Initial research projects, undertaken by the author, provide key research results, which helped secure secondary funding for a second phase project which was over £3.6m. The West Midlands Collaborative Commerce Marketplace (WMCCM) is an integrated e-business infrastructure project for enabling the West Midlands manufacturing SMEs (1,800 SME members) and facilitates finding new business, finding complementary partners, and also creating and supporting collaborative activities. WMCCM brings together the outputs of the research from the AutoLean III and Autocle@r projects through an integrated collaborative business model. SMEs that can find new sources of work, form partnerships to pool their expertise to help undertake it, who have the know-how to form effective Virtual Teams and can access tools to support collaborative working, are more likely to succeed in the continuing competitive times which lie ahead. The Collaborative Architecture aids SMEs to meet this paradigm.

Manufacturability analysis systems (MASs) have been developed to enable the evaluation of manufacturability aspects during the design stage. MASs have been shown to be useful for macro-manufacturing processes but less attention or effort has been put for their development in the scope of micro-manufacturing. This thesis describes the development of a MAS for a micro-machining domain (MicroMAS) with a custom-made 4-axis Miniature Machine Tool (MMT) being the scope of implementation. There are three important components in this study which are; MAS, Uncertainty Evaluation Model (UEM) and micro-milling experiments. The integration between the results from the UEM analysis and micro-machining experiments were being incorporated into the MicroMAS to provide the system with the real condition of the MMT. In MicroMAS, Primitive Feature Analysis (PFA) is introduced as a new technique in gathering information from a CAD model and analysing its manufacturability. The results from the manufacturability assessment in MicroMAS are successfully achieved through the manufacturability index which indicates the relative ease of machining the CAD model and list of related suggestions. UEM is developed to analyse the influence of the errors stemmed from the MMT construction on the geometrical accuracy of the machined micro-parts. The model has allowed a methodology for the errors in a custom-made machine tool to be predicted and to further understand the origin of the errors on the machined micro-part (either from the machine or the process itself). The abilities of the MMT are evaluated through various types of experiments where the surface quality and geometrical accuracy can be concluded to be at an acceptable range. From the experience gained from the research, the development of MicroMAS for micro-milling has been found to be practical in assisting a user to generate micro-parts using the MMT.

Amid claims that we live in a service economy, the distinction between manufacturing and services is blurred. Many manufacturers have made a product-service transition, whereby services are integrated with products, to meet demand for access to the benefits, but not the risks of ownership of products. Many aspects of this transition and the product-service offerings which result require investigation, principally the relationship with design. Design itself is a concept open to many interpretations and studies of it have been hampered by the lack of an accepted theoretical framework. This research makes three main contributions, firstly it develops a theoretical framework for studying design and comparing organisations based on a proposed classification of design activities. Next it investigates the implications of a product-service transition, to add a three stage model of product-service development to the theoretical framework. Finally it uses the theoretical framework to explore the role of design in a large, product-service organisation and compares the findings to literature to position the theoretical contributions. The research follows an abductive strategy, moving back and forth between the theoretical and empirical domains. The overall research topic is reduced to three sub-topics, allowing three sets of research questions to be investigated. Studies of design, product-service implications and the role of design in product-service organisations are presented, utilising literature reviews and qualitative case studies. The research argues that design capabilities enable a product-service transition but a reconfiguration of design capabilities may be required as products are designed for multiple customers. Meanwhile, the customer-facing units described in the literature were found to act as a buffer, shielding designers from customer pressures and integrating customer requirements. For managers, this research highlights the considerations and implications of a product-service transition, while it has contributed articles to the academic literature and raises further research topics.

Plain fatigue and fretting fatigue studies have been carried out on an Al - 4% Cu - 1% Mg alloy in various heat treated conditions. It has been determined that shot peening the surface results in substantial improvements in plain fatigue and fretting fatigue strengths. The major cause of the improvement of these properties is the presence of compressive stresses that are induced in the surface by the shot peening process. Surface roughening and work hardening of the surface are also caused by the shot peening process but these have little or no effect on the fretting fatigue properties. The magnitude of the compressive stresses at the peened surface are around 200 - 250MPa and these result in the nucleation of subsurface cracks that run parallel to the surface during the fretting process . Debris with a characteristic spherical shape is produced on the faces of the subsurface cracks. Subsequent delamination allows the spherical debris to reach the specimen surface causing a reduction in the friction between the fretting members.

Among many issues involved within the field of manufacturing systems, the design of facilities layout is an ongoing and interesting research field, where new solutions and approaches are sought to determine the appropriate location and physical organisation of the resources in manufacturing systems. Issues such as space, material handling, machine placement and orientation, utilities location, and environmental factors are important features that may be considered when establishing the requirements of a facility layout design. The facility layout design can be thought of in terms of interconnecting work centres that can be represented by a set of interrelated vertices in a graph. Directed graphs can be used to characterise each product operation sequence, which combined into a single directed graph, be used to represent appropriately a layout design. Doing this together with the material handling system requirements, will allow better facilities planning and may improve process sequences that should be reflected in better designs. The Strong Component Based Methodology proposed here, obtains a graphical structure from the integration of various products and using their operation sequences to produce a relationship diagram. The attributes of the resultant structure are used to create this diagram. The objective is to obtain layouts that minimise material handling, that is, as close as possible to that which can be obtained with dedicated facilities for each product family but without the capital costs involved in the case of the latter. Encouraging results have been obtained by considering strong components, a feature of directed graphs, because less computational resources than in the case of many previous methods, which use Quadratic Assignment Problem approaches, are required to formulate and produce a relationship diagram. Moreover, this approach produces faster designs than other graph theoretic approaches because it avoids using planar and dual graphs. These characteristics allow the Strong Components approach to address more complex situations and obtain comparable or better solutions than previous approaches. The proposed Strong Component approach is a robust and versatile tool to support layout designs. It is a robust methodology because it provides efficient relationship diagrams even in cases when the resultant structure has relatively few strong component relationships. It is a versatile approach, because it can address various situations and can use different criteria to create layouts. Thus, the proposed approach offers effective-economical relationship diagrams to produce the same set of products as when producing them in dedicated facilities.

Assembly plays a vital role in the quality of a final product and has a great impact on the manufacturing cost. The mechanical assemblies consist of parts that inevitably have variations from their ideal dimensions. These variations propagate and accumulate as parts are assembled together. Excessive amount of variations in an assembly may cause improper functionality of the product being assembled. Improving assembly quality and reducing the assembly time and cost are the main objectives of this thesis. The quality of an assembly is determined in terms of variations in critical assembly dimensions, also known as Key Characteristics (KCs). Key Characteristics are designated to indicate where excess variation will affect product quality and what product features and tolerances require special attention. In order to improve assembly quality and reduce assembly time and cost, it is necessary to: (1) model non-ideal parts based on tolerances defined in design standards or current industrial practice of component inspection, (2) model assemblies and their associated assembly processes to analyse tolerance stack-up in the assembly, (3) develop probabilistic model to predict assembly variation after product assembly, and (4) implement control strategies for minimising assembly variation propagations to find optimum configuration of the assembly. Two assembly models have been developed, a linear model and a fully non-linear model for calculating assembly variation propagations. The assembly models presented in this thesis also allows for inclusion of geometric feature variation of each assembly component. Methods of incorporating geometric feature variations into an assembly variation model are described and analysis techniques are explained. The assembly variation model and the geometric variation models have been developed for 20 and 3D assemblies. Modelling techniques for incorporating process and measurement noise are also developed and described for the nonlinear assembly model and results are given to demonstrate the calculation of assembly variations while considering part, process and measurement errors. Two assembly case studies originating in sub-assemblies of aero-engines have been studied: Case Study 1, representing the rotating part (rotor) of an aero-engine, and Case Study 2, representing non-rotating part (stator) of an aero-engine. A probabilistic method based on the linear model is presented as a general analytical method for analysis of 3D mechanical assemblies. Probability density functions are derived for assembly position errors to analyse a general mechanical assembly, and separate probability functions are derived for the Key Characteristics (KCs) for assembly in Case Studies 1 and 2. The derived probability functions are validated by using the Monte Carlo simulation method based on the exact (full non-linear) model. Results showed that the proposed probabilistic method of estimating tolerance accumulation in mechanical assemblies is very efficient and accurate when compared to the Monte Carlo simulation method, particularly if large variations at the tails of the distributions are considered. Separate control strategies have been implemented for each case study. Four methods are proposed to minimise assembly variations for Case Study 1, and one error minimisation method is suggested for assemblies of Case Study 2. Based on the developed methods to optimise assembly quality, the two case studies were investigated, and it was found that the proposed optimisation methods can significantly improve assembly quality. The developed optimisation methods do not require any special tooling (such as fixtures) and can easily be implemented in practice.