TY - JOUR A1 - Luft, Angela A1 - Bremen, Sebastian A1 - Luft, Nils T1 - A cost/benefit and flexibility evaluation framework for additive technologies in strategic factory planning JF - Processes N2 - There is a growing demand for more flexibility in manufacturing to counter the volatility and unpredictability of the markets and provide more individualization for customers. However, the design and implementation of flexibility within manufacturing systems are costly and only economically viable if applicable to actual demand fluctuations. To this end, companies are considering additive manufacturing (AM) to make production more flexible. This paper develops a conceptual model for the impact quantification of AM on volume and mix flexibility within production systems in the early stages of the factory-planning process. Together with the model, an application guideline is presented to help planners with the flexibility quantification and the factory design process. Following the development of the model and guideline, a case study is presented to indicate the potential impact additive technologies can have on manufacturing flexibility Within the case study, various scenarios with different production system configurations and production programs are analyzed, and the impact of the additive technologies on volume and mix flexibility is calculated. This work will allow factory planners to determine the potential impacts of AM on manufacturing flexibility in an early planning stage and design their production systems accordingly. KW - additive manufacturing KW - factory planning KW - manufacturing flexibility KW - volume flexibility KW - mix flexibility Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/pr11071968 SN - 2227-9717 VL - 11 IS - 7 PB - MDPI CY - Basel ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Sildatke, Michael A1 - Karwanni, Hendrik A1 - Kraft, Bodo A1 - Zündorf, Albert T1 - A distributed microservice architecture pattern for the automated generation of information extraction pipelines JF - SN Computer Science N2 - Companies often build their businesses based on product information and therefore try to automate the process of information extraction (IE). Since the information source is usually heterogeneous and non-standardized, classic extract, transform, load techniques reach their limits. Hence, companies must implement the newest findings from research to tackle the challenges of process automation. They require a flexible and robust system that is extendable and ensures the optimal processing of the different document types. This paper provides a distributed microservice architecture pattern that enables the automated generation of IE pipelines. Since their optimal design is individual for each input document, the system ensures the ad-hoc generation of pipelines depending on specific document characteristics at runtime. Furthermore, it introduces the automated quality determination of each available pipeline and controls the integration of new microservices based on their impact on the business value. The introduced system enables fast prototyping of the newest approaches from research and supports companies in automating their IE processes. Based on the automated quality determination, it ensures that the generated pipelines always meet defined business requirements when they come into productive use. KW - Architectural design KW - Model-driven software engineering KW - Software and systems modeling KW - Enterprise information systems KW - Information extraction Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s42979-023-02256-4 SN - 2661-8907 N1 - Corresponding authors: Michael Sildatke, Hendrik Karwanni IS - 4, Article number: 833 PB - Springer Singapore CY - Singapore ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Pfaff, Raphael A1 - Enning, Manfred A1 - Sutter, Stefan T1 - A risk‑based approach to automatic brake tests for rail freight service: incident analysis and realisation concept JF - SN Applied Sciences N2 - This study reviews the practice of brake tests in freight railways, which is time consuming and not suitable to detect certain failure types. Public incident reports are analysed to derive a reasonable brake test hardware and communication architecture, which aims to provide automatic brake tests at lower cost than current solutions. The proposed solutions relies exclusively on brake pipe and brake cylinder pressure sensors, a brake release position switch as well as radio communication via standard protocols. The approach is embedded in the Wagon 4.0 concept, which is a holistic approach to a smart freight wagon. The reduction of manual processes yields a strong incentive due to high savings in manual labour and increased productivity. KW - Freight rail KW - Brake test KW - Incident analysis KW - Train composition KW - Brake set-up Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s42452-022-05007-x SN - 2523-3971 N1 - Corresponding author: Raphael Pfaff VL - 4 IS - 4 SP - 1 EP - 14 PB - Springer CY - Cham ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Engemann, Heiko A1 - Cönen, Patrick A1 - Dawar, Harshal A1 - Du, Shengzhi A1 - Kallweit, Stephan T1 - A robot-assisted large-scale inspection of wind turbine blades in manufacturing using an autonomous mobile manipulator JF - Applied Sciences N2 - Wind energy represents the dominant share of renewable energies. The rotor blades of a wind turbine are typically made from composite material, which withstands high forces during rotation. The huge dimensions of the rotor blades complicate the inspection processes in manufacturing. The automation of inspection processes has a great potential to increase the overall productivity and to create a consistent reliable database for each individual rotor blade. The focus of this paper is set on the process of rotor blade inspection automation by utilizing an autonomous mobile manipulator. The main innovations include a novel path planning strategy for zone-based navigation, which enables an intuitive right-hand or left-hand driving behavior in a shared human–robot workspace. In addition, we introduce a new method for surface orthogonal motion planning in connection with large-scale structures. An overall execution strategy controls the navigation and manipulation processes of the long-running inspection task. The implemented concepts are evaluated in simulation and applied in a real-use case including the tip of a rotor blade form. KW - mobile manipulation KW - large-scale inspection KW - wind turbine production KW - autonomous navigation KW - surface-orthogonal path planning Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/app11199271 SN - 2076-3417 N1 - Belongs to the Special Issue "Advances in Industrial Robotics and Intelligent Systems" VL - 11 IS - 19 SP - 1 EP - 22 PB - MDPI CY - Basel ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Monakhova, Yulia A1 - Diehl, Bernd W. K. T1 - A step towards optimization of the qNMR workflow: proficiency testing exercise at an GxP-accredited laboratory JF - Applied Magnetic Resonance N2 - Quantitative nuclear magnetic resonance (qNMR) is considered as a powerful tool for multicomponent mixture analysis as well as for the purity determination of single compounds. Special attention is currently paid to the training of operators and study directors involved in qNMR testing. To assure that only qualified personnel are used for sample preparation at our GxP-accredited laboratory, weighing test was proposed. Sixteen participants performed six-fold weighing of the binary mixture of dibutylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) and 1,2,4,5-tetrachloro-3-nitrobenzene (TCNB). To evaluate the quality of data analysis, all spectra were evaluated manually by a qNMR expert and using in-house developed automated routine. The results revealed that mean values are comparable and both evaluation approaches are free of systematic error. However, automated evaluation resulted in an approximately 20% increase in precision. The same findings were revealed for qNMR analysis of 32 compounds used in pharmaceutical industry. Weighing test by six-fold determination in binary mixtures and automated qNMR methodology can be recommended as efficient tools for evaluating staff proficiency. The automated qNMR method significantly increases throughput and precision of qNMR for routine measurements and extends application scope of qNMR. Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00723-021-01324-3 SN - 1613-7507 N1 - Corresponding author: Yulia Monakhova VL - 52 SP - 581 EP - 593 PB - Springer Nature CY - Wien ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kühn, Raoul-Roman A1 - Haugner, Werner A1 - Staat, Manfred A1 - Sponagel, Stefan T1 - A Two Phase Mixture Model based on Bone Observation N2 - An optimization method is developed to describe the mechanical behaviour of the human cancellous bone. The method is based on a mixture theory. A careful observation of the behaviour of the bone material leads to the hypothesis that the bone density is controlled by the principal stress trajectories (Wolff’s law). The basic idea of the developed method is the coupling of a scalar value via an eigenvalue problem to the principal stress trajectories. On the one hand this theory will permit a prediction of the reaction of the biological bone structure after the implantation of a prosthesis, on the other hand it may be useful in engineering optimization problems. An analytical example shows its efficiency. KW - Knochen KW - Knochenbildung KW - Knochenchirugie KW - Strukturanalyse KW - Schwammknochen KW - Knochendichte KW - Wolffsches Gesetz KW - bone structure KW - bone density KW - Wolff's Law KW - cancellous bone Y1 - 2004 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zhubanova, Azhar A. A1 - Aknazarov, S. K. A1 - Mansurov, Zulkhair A1 - Digel, Ilya A1 - Kozhalakova, A. A. A1 - Akimbekov, Nuraly Shardarbekovich A1 - O'Heras, Carlos A1 - Tazhibayeva, S. A1 - Artmann, Gerhard A1 - Temiz Artmann, Aysegül T1 - Adsorption of bacterial Lipopolysaccharides and blood plasma proteins on modified carbonized materials N2 - Bacterial lipopolysaccharides (endotoxins) show strong biological effects at very low concentrations in human beings and many animals when entering the blood stream. These include affecting structure and function of organs and cells, changing metabolic functions, raising body temperature, triggering the coagulation cascade, modifying hemodynamics and causing septic shock. Because of this toxicity, the removal of even minute amounts is essential for safe parenteral administration of drugs and also for septic shock patients' care. The absence of a general method for endotoxin removal from liquid interfaces urgently requires finding new methods and materials to overcome this gap. Nanostructured carbonized plant parts is a promising material that showed good adsorption properties due to its vast pore network and high surface area. The aim of this study was comparative measurement of endotoxin- and blood proteins-related adsorption rate and adsorption capacity for different carboneous materials produced at different temperatures and under different surface modifications. As a main surface modificator, positively cbarged polymer, polyethileneimine (PEl) was used. Activated carbon materials showed good adsorption properties for LPS and some proteins used in the experiments. During the batch experiments, several techniques (dust removal, autoclaving) were used and optimized for improving the material's adsorption behavior. Also, with the results obtained it was possible to differentiate the materials according to their adsorption capacity and kinetic characteristics. Modification of the surface apparently has not affected hemoglobin binding to the adsorbent's surface. Obtained adsorption isotherms can be used as a powerful tool for designing of future column-based setups for blood purification from LPS, which is especially important for septic shock treatment. KW - Kohlenstofffaser KW - Lipopolysaccharide KW - nanostrukturierte carbonisierte Pflanzenteile KW - lipopolysaccharides KW - nanostructured carbonized plant parts Y1 - 2010 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kaulen, Lars A1 - Schwabedal, Justus T. C. A1 - Schneider, Jules A1 - Ritter, Philipp A1 - Bialonski, Stephan T1 - Advanced sleep spindle identification with neural networks JF - Scientific Reports N2 - Sleep spindles are neurophysiological phenomena that appear to be linked to memory formation and other functions of the central nervous system, and that can be observed in electroencephalographic recordings (EEG) during sleep. Manually identified spindle annotations in EEG recordings suffer from substantial intra- and inter-rater variability, even if raters have been highly trained, which reduces the reliability of spindle measures as a research and diagnostic tool. The Massive Online Data Annotation (MODA) project has recently addressed this problem by forming a consensus from multiple such rating experts, thus providing a corpus of spindle annotations of enhanced quality. Based on this dataset, we present a U-Net-type deep neural network model to automatically detect sleep spindles. Our model’s performance exceeds that of the state-of-the-art detector and of most experts in the MODA dataset. We observed improved detection accuracy in subjects of all ages, including older individuals whose spindles are particularly challenging to detect reliably. Our results underline the potential of automated methods to do repetitive cumbersome tasks with super-human performance. Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-11210-y SN - 2045-2322 N1 - Corresponding author: Stephan Bialonski VL - 12 IS - Article number: 7686 SP - 1 EP - 10 PB - Springer Nature CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Weßling, Matthias T1 - Aktives Nachfolger-Coaching für den Mittelstand setzt früh an : innovative Idee für Studierende der FH Aachen N2 - Es gibt oft Schwierigkeiten in der Unternehmernachfolge wegen fehlender Beratung. Die FH Aachen bietet ihren Studierenden seit 2007 ein Coaching an. KW - Unternehmernachfolge KW - Coaching Y1 - 2008 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bassam, Rasha A1 - Artmann, Gerhard A1 - Hescheler, Jürgen A1 - Graef, T. A1 - Temiz Artmann, Aysegül A1 - Porst, Dariusz A1 - Linder, Peter A1 - Kayser, Peter A1 - Arinkin, Vladimir A1 - Gossmann, Matthias A1 - Digel, Ilya T1 - Alterations in human hemoglobin structure related to red blood cell storage N2 - The importance of the availability of stored blood or blood cells, respectively, for urgent transfusion cannot be overestimated. Nowadays, blood storage becomes even more important since blood products are used for epidemiological studies, bio-technical research or banked for transfusion purposes. Thus blood samples must not only be processed, stored, and shipped to preserve their efficacy and safety, but also all parameters of storage must be recorded and reported for Quality Assurance. Therefore, blood banks and clinical research facilities are seeking more accurate, automated means for blood storage and blood processing. KW - Hämoglobin KW - Hämoglobinstruktur KW - Blutzellenlagerung KW - Hemoglobin structure KW - Red blood cell storage Y1 - 2011 ER -