Manufacturing logistics and procurement – March 2022

Autonomously driven transport vehicles in production halls and warehouses
Still has published an article on the future vision regarding autonomously driven transport vehicles in production halls and warehouses. These are coming within reach thanks to, in particular, the European research project IMOCO (Intelligent Motion Control).

Coding and supply chain data
GS1 has released the new Scan4Transport Pilot Report (2.02 MB) about the findings and recommendations of the standards developed and piloted for a “global language” for encoding the minimum data required by parties into a 2D barcode to support the supply chain and enable the freight transport process. The pilots aimed to validate the new standards and demonstrate how they support improvements in efficiency, interoperability, connectivity and visibility across the freight & logistics industry.
ASTM International’s 3D imaging systems committee (E57) is developing a standard proposal that will provide guidance for robotic bin-picking systems used for sorting, assembling, and packaging items in industrial environments. As these systems are applied to more complicated tasks, the burden on the machine vision systems, which act as the eyes for robots, becomes more and more significant

Trends in pharmaceutical manufacturing
PMMI has published a report about the trends in pharmaceutical manufacturing. The pharmaceutical industry has entered a phase of evolution as the focus of therapeutic treatment delivery methods shifts in medicine. Specifically, the pharmaceutical industry has seen an expansion of injectable medications, packed both in vials and pre-filled syringes. These new realities in production have spurred manufacturers to re-evaluate their priorities when it comes to machinery for filling, packaging, labelling and coding. You can download the report after filling in your details.

Determining optimal manufacturing parameters
A paper (3.94 MB) by Poznan University of Life Sciences entitled ‘Non-local sensitivity analysis and numerical homogenization in optimal design of single-wall corrugated board packaging’ is published in the journal Materials.
Seoul National University of Science and Technology has published a paper (3.59 MB) entitled ‘Determination of manufacturing parameters for maintaining form accuracy of packaging
support block made with polyurethane foam’.

Using deep imaging for higher resolution
Akasha Imaging, an MIT spinout, provides efficient and cost-effective imaging with higher-resolution feature detection, tracking, and pose orientation. They achieve this with passive imaging, varied modalities and spectra, combined with deep learning, to provide higher resolution feature detection, tracking, and pose orientation in a more efficient and cost-effective way. Robots are the main application and current focus. In the future, it could be for packaging and navigation systems.
 

NVC members receive this information with all the relevant links in the monthly NVC Members-only Update. If you have any questions, please contact us: info@nvc.nl, +31-(0)182-512411