PRODUCTION-LIKE ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION LABORATORY RESOURCES FOR A MANUFACTURING ENGINEERING PROGRAM

Instructional resources pose significant challenges when attempting to meet the goal of hands-on experiences in a manufacturing engineering curriculum with realistic plant floor production-like operations. The strategy to accomplish the goal of providing a production-like flexible manufacturing system laboratory resource associated with the courses in a manufacturing engineering curriculum is described in this paper. A hands-on approach to instruction using state-of-the art manufacturing equipment is accomplished with physical resources that can be used in a variety of laboratory sections that augment courses in manufacturing engineering. Many experiments and laboratory exercises in practical aspects of manufacturing can make use of common sets of state-of-the-art, industrial-grade, manufacturing equipment. The equipment for a flexible manufacturing system includes a material handling system integrated with industrial robotics and automation equipment. These hardware resources must also be compatible and integrated with software and computing resources including computer-aided design tools, programmable logic controllers, automation software, manufacturing execution systems software, and additional software resources.