Although the idea of using Augmented Reality and simulation within manufacturing is not a new one, the improvement of hardware enhances the emergence of new areas. For manufacturing organizations, simulation is an important tool used to analyze and understand their manufacturing systems; however, simulation models can be complex. Nonetheless, using Augmented Reality to display the simulation results and analysis can increase the understanding of the model and the modeled system. This paper introduces a decision support system, IDSS-AR, which uses simulation and Augmented Reality to show a simulation model in 3D. The decision support system uses Microsoft HoloLens, which is a head-worn hardware for Augmented Reality. A prototype of IDSS-AR has been evaluated with a simulation model depicting a real manufacturing system on which a bottleneck detection method has been applied. The bottleneck information is shown on the simulation model, increasing the possibility of realizing interactions between the bottlenecks. © 2017 IEEE.

Radial basis functions are augmented with a posteriori bias in order to perform robustly when used as metamodels. Recently, it has been proposed that the bias can simply be set a priori by using the normal equation, i.e., the bias becomes the corresponding regression model. In this study, we demonstrate the performance of the suggested approach (RBFpri) with four other well-known metamodeling methods; Kriging, support vector regression, neural network and multivariate adaptive regression. The performance of the five methods is investigated by a comparative study, using 19 mathematical test functions, with five different degrees of dimensionality and sampling size for each function. The performance is evaluated by root mean squared error representing the accuracy, rank error representing the suitability of metamodels when coupled with evolutionary optimization algorithms, training time representing the efficiency and variation of root mean squared error representing the robustness. Furthermore, a rigorous statistical analysis of performance metrics is performed. The results show that the proposed radial basis function with a priori bias achieved the best performance in most of the experiments in terms of all three metrics. When considering the statistical analysis results, the proposed approach again behaved the best, while Kriging was relatively as accurate and support vector regression was almost as fast as RBFpri. The proposed RBF is proven to be the most suitable method in predicting the ranking among pairs of solutions utilized in evolutionary algorithms. Finally, the comparison study is carried out on a real-world engineering optimization problem. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd

Managing maintenance within an economical short-termism framework, without considering the consequential long-term cost effect, is very common in industry. This research presents a novel conceptual system dynamics model for the study of the dynamic behaviors of maintenance performance and costs, which aims to illuminate insights for the support of the long-term, strategic development of manufacturing maintenance. By novel, we claim the model promotes a system's view of maintenance costs that include its dynamic consequential costs as the combined result of several interacting maintenance levels throughout the constituent feedback structures. These range from the applied combination of maintenance methodologies to the resulting proactiveness in production, which is based on the rate of continuous improvements arising from the root cause analyses of breakdowns. The purpose of using system dynamics is to support the investigations of the causal relationships between strategic initiatives and performance results, and to enable analyses that take into consideration the time delays between different actions, in order to support the sound formulation of policies to develop maintenance and production performances. The model construction and validation process has been supported by two large maintenance organizations operating in the Swedish automotive industry. Experimental results show that intended changes can have both short and long-term consequences, and that obvious and hidden dynamic behavioral effects, which have not been reported in the literature previously, may be in the system. We believe the model can help to illuminate the holistic value of maintenance on the one hand and support its strategic development as well as the organizational transformation into proactiveness on the other.

In Simulation-based Evolutionary Multi-objective Optimization, the number of simulation runs is very limited, since the complex simulation models require long execution times. With the help of preference information, the optimization result can be improved by guiding the optimization towards relevant areas in the objective space with, for example, the Reference Point-based NSGA-II algorithm (R-NSGA-II). Since the Pareto-relation is the primary fitness function in R-NSGA-II, the algorithm focuses on exploring the objective space with high diversity. Only after the population has converged closeto the Pareto-front does the influence of the reference point distance as secondary fitness criterion increase and the algorithm converges towards the preferred area on the Pareto-front.In this paper, we propose a set of extensions of R-NSGA-II which adaptively control the algorithm behavior, in order to converge faster towards the reference point. The adaption can be based on criteria such as elapsed optimization time or the reference point distance, or a combination thereof. In order to evaluate the performance of the adaptive extensions of R-NSGA-II, a performance metric for reference point-based EMO algorithms is used, which is based on the Hypervolume measure called the Focused Hypervolume metric. It measures convergence and diversity of the population in the preferred area around the reference point. The results are evaluated on two benchmark problems ofdifferent complexity and a simplistic production line model.

Real-world optimization problems typically involve multiple objectives to be optimized simultaneously under multiple constraints and with respect to several variables. While multi-objective optimization itself can be a challenging task, equally difficult is the ability to make sense of the obtained solutions. In this two-part paper, we deal with data mining methods that can be applied to extract knowledge about multi-objective optimization problems from the solutions generated during optimization. This knowledge is expected to provide deeper insights about the problem to the decision maker, in addition to assisting the optimization process in future design iterations through an expert system. The current paper surveys several existing data mining methods and classifies them by methodology and type of knowledge discovered. Most of these methods come from the domain of exploratory data analysis and can be applied to any multivariate data. We specifically look at methods that can generate explicit knowledge in a machine-usable form. A framework for knowledge-driven optimization is proposed, which involves both online and offline elements of knowledge discovery. One of the conclusions of this survey is that while there are a number of data mining methods that can deal with data involving continuous variables, only a few ad hoc methods exist that can provide explicit knowledge when the variables involved are of a discrete nature. Part B of this paper proposes new techniques that can be used with such datasets and applies them to discrete variable multi-objective problems related to production systems. 

The first part of this paper served as a comprehensive survey of data mining methods that have been used to extract knowledge from solutions generated during multi-objective optimization. The current paper addresses three major shortcomings of existing methods, namely, lack of interactiveness in the objective space, inability to handle discrete variables and inability to generate explicit knowledge. Four data mining methods are developed that can discover knowledge in the decision space and visualize it in the objective space. These methods are (i) sequential pattern mining, (ii) clustering-based classification trees, (iii) hybrid learning, and (iv) flexible pattern mining. Each method uses a unique learning strategy to generate explicit knowledge in the form of patterns, decision rules and unsupervised rules. The methods are also capable of taking the decision maker's preferences into account to generate knowledge unique to preferred regions of the objective space. Three realistic production systems involving different types of discrete variables are chosen as application studies. A multi-objective optimization problem is formulated for each system and solved using NSGA-II to generate the optimization datasets. Next, all four methods are applied to each dataset. In each application, the methods discover similar knowledge for specified regions of the objective space. Overall, the unsupervised rules generated by flexible pattern mining are found to be the most consistent, whereas the supervised rules from classification trees are the most sensitive to user-preferences. 

The improvement of emergency department processes involves the need to take into considerationmultiple variables and objectives in a highly dynamic and unpredictable environment, which makes thedecision-making task extremely challenging. The use of different methodologies and tools to support thedecision-making process is therefore a key issue. This article presents a novel approach in healthcarein which Discrete Event Simulation, Simulation-Based Multi-Objective Optimization and Data Miningtechniques are used in combination. This methodology has been applied for a system improvementanalysis in a Swedish emergency department. As a result of the project, the decision makers were providedwith a range of nearly optimal solutions and design rules which reduce considerably the length of stayand waiting times for emergency department patients. These solutions include the optimal number ofresources and the required level of improvement in key processes. The article presents and discussesthe benefits achieved by applying this methodology, which has proven to be remarkably valuable fordecision-making support, with regard to complex healthcare system design and improvement.