Industry Projects / Collaboration

Ramstar

Ramstar manufactures and distributes metalworking tools. The company is dedicated to develop specialized Carbide, PCD and CBN inserts, as well as multitask tooling for the aerospace, automotive and mold-die industries. By rising competition in manufacturing and necessity of using Lean Manufacturing concepts Ramstar has eager to implement lean manufacturing and process improvement concepts. Optimizing the material handling cost based on the new facility layout design is one part of the projects currently running. Different layout schemes have been used and hybridized. Mathematical modeling and optimization using rigorous O.R. based and non-traditional methods are used.

Devolder

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) research laboratory at University of Windsor and Devolder Farms Inc. (operating and located in Chatham, Ontario) are cooperating together to come up with an innovative solution for a problem which farming industry is experiencing on a continuous basis with grain storage. Harvested grain needs to be stored in conditions that maintain its quality. It has to be uniformly spread and leveled in a storage bin. Grain spreaders are used for this purpose. Current available devices in the market are not fully satisfying all criteria especially with regards to the required leveling within bins. A research team composed of senior researchers and a visiting scholar from France has been assembled and dedicated to the project. Few design methods have been found fit and hence, are combined together forming a single coherent overall design methodology. The method is followed throughout the project, which will last for six months.

View in-house prototypes developed for the company

Windsor Cardiac Center

The Windsor Cardiac Centre (WCC) is an operation organization that is committed to timely patient care that promotes prevention and cardiovascular risk management. We have been working with WCC, defining scope, performing rough problem and requirements analysis in preparation for a funding applaiction that we are currently working on. Management sciences and processes and workflow optimization are to be applied with the objective of reducing patient wait time and health-care cost, while increasing efficiency. Facility layout will be investigated and optimized using mathematical programming and metaheuristic algorithms.

CS Wind, Canada

CS Wind Corporation is a global wind tower company with expertise, reliability and quality. They have been successful in steel construction buseness over 20 years and has done many large scale projects all over the world. Now they have evolved as one of the global leading wind tower manufacturers because of their superior quality of wind tower and continuous efforts for the best quality. Various production planning related problems are being tackled for this project.

M2M Access, Canada

The overall objective of this project is to develop a low-range low-power remote asset monitoring system for “remote fixed utility” IIoT applications such as potable water leveling for fire-prevention, remote generator monitoring and repair, and climate monitoring in a variety of industrial settings. The suggested system will have the following advantages: 1) cost effectiveness of collecting data via sensory devices from industrial “Things” than the traditional wired approach; 2) performance improvement thanks to the collection and communication of big data wirelessly using IIoT solutions, which immediately interprets and transform it into a corrective and actionable information. The common aspect of all applications to be tackled is the severe environments and remoteness of the sites to be serviced. A solution package of IIoT-based maintenance, Facility Layout and Allocation Problem (FLAP) and Design for Assembly (DFA) will be constructed, taking advantages of the team’s well-established capability in mathematical modelling, analysis and optimization.

Contract Glaziers Inc

Optimal Design of a Reinforced Fixation and Enclosure System for transportation and handling of Skinned Curtain Walls 

A universal enclosure and lifting fixture is being developed to handle large prefabricated curtain walls. Curtain walls are simply sheets of glass surrounded by a metallic frame that are installed on the facade of a building. The curtain walls come in an array of sizes and weights, all of them massive in size and dangerous to the worker handling them. Handling here means to load these single or double skinned panels onto and unload them off trailers, encapsulate them during transportation, from facility to construction site (for protection), raise them using on-site cranes, rotate them from the horizontal to the vertical orientation mid-air, and finally support their installation onto buildings. The challenge put forth is to develop a fixture that can handle, not one, but two
panels at the same time because manufacturers in this industry are constantly required to install more panels in less time. A successfully implemented project would allow our industry partner (Contract Glaziers Inc.) to glaze buildings quicker all the while cutting costs and providing a safer environment for the workers. This technique is unprecedented and will raise the capability of this Canadian company 10 fold; providing faster services for local construction and becoming more competitive abroad.