Humans organise themselves into teams, companies and communities that realise common purposes and share common values. Manufacturing companies are human centred organisations in which people and machines work collectively to realise (1) products for customers and (2) job opportunities and income for investors and employees. Being organic in nature, manufacturing organisations constitute very complex systems that can be configured in many different ways to demonstrate a vast number of behavioural responses to their environment. Present day approaches used to configure manufacturing organisations are based upon using systematic methods and largely historical knowledge (i.e. of what is known to have worked satisfactorily in similar circumstances). Properly applied this can lead to competitive behaviours; but generally very high cost and long lead-time projects are needed to realise a significant change in configuration and behaviours. Also present day approaches to manufacturing organisation design and change are seldom underpinned by quantitative modelling; so as to facilitate decision making and design optimisation by predicting achievable behavioural responses under yet-to-be encountered environmental conditions.With increased pace of life and therefore rates of change, most companies need to significantly improve their organisation design and change practice. Also new complex system modelling techniques have emerged that have potential to address known deficiencies of present systematic methods. Hence this proposal will research the industry need and the potential of various complementary modelling techniques to satisfy that need. In so doing it will build upon, extend and industrially apply model-driven organisation design and change concepts conceived during recent PhD studies. Computer models of candidate configurations (and their emergent characters and behaviours) will be created that represent key aspects of the realities of four case study manufacturing companies. To achieve sufficient realism and enable model reuse through the lifetime of organisations, model creation will (1) be based on state of the art decomposition and integration principles and (2) need to model characters of people at work in particularly innovative ways. Unifying modelling concepts to be researched include: process decompositons into well specified roles; dynamic producer unit configurations and role assignment; and work pattern dynamics, decompositions and (causal and temporal) flows. Case study modelling will benchmark present and new organisation design and change practice. This project is expected to generate and disseminate significant new knowledge which will be relevant and timely to needs of UK industry and academia.

Actuation is the means by which forces can be applied within machine systems to give rise to controlled motion. Applications of actuation include, for example, the extrusion of material for manufacturing purposes, the manipulation of components in test machines, flight control surface adjustment in aircraft, ink jet printing, positioning in robotic systems, and active vibration/noise attenuation. There is a variety of actuator types based on different physical phenomena e.g. piezoelectric, electric, electromagnetic, pneumatic, hydraulic, and screw. The differences in performance relate to the amplitudes and frequencies of the forces that are capable of being applied, together with the motion range (stroke) and the associated precision. For example, piezoelectric actuators can deliver large forces at high frequencies, but the strokes are less than 1 mm. Alternatively, hydraulic actuators can deliver large forces over long strokes (e.g. 3 m in the opening of the Gateshead Millennium Bridge), though the frequency of the forcing is relatively low. An ideal actuator would have high performance over all metrics: force levels; frequency range or bandwidth; stroke range; and precision. At present no such actuator exists. The aim of the proposed research is to investigate the issues relating to physical characteristics, design integration and control that would enable actuation as close to the ideal to be realised. The future benefits would be widespread with the potential generation of new scientific and industrial innovations. The research will be focused on the design and integration of multi-actuation media with optimised control strategies to yield an actuator that has high performance metrics. A number of areas will be investigated. Firstly, piezoelectric actuators will be assessed for the generation of dynamic pressures within hydraulic cylinders, which would allow high frequency actuation. Additionally, piezoelectric devices will be used to deform piston and rod seals such that the friction forces provided by the seals may be used to control large stroke and high frequency motion. High frequency actuation and sub-micron control will also be achieved using a piezo-actuated valve for precise adjustment of hydraulic flows. The basic physical interactions of sliding and actuated parts will require in-depth analysis in order that the detailed design of high performance controllers can be accomplished using accurate system models. Finally, the integrated system will be realised in an experimental facility, which will be used to validate the research methodology.