Guodong Shao

• Ph.D in Information Technology
• Researcher at National Institute of Standards and Technology

Digital twins are poised to improve the engineering, operation, and management of manufacturing facilities. However, implementing digital twins has been a challenge primarily due to a lack of resources and the absence of standardized digital twin frameworks and methods. This paper describes creating a digital twin of a robot workcell using availabl...

A digital twin of a manufacturing system can positively impact its performance with respect to productivity, energy consumption, product quality, and cost. However, leveraging available methods and tools to build a digital twin is a challenge for many manufacturers, especially small and medium-sized manufacturers. The result is that the uptake of d...

Digital twin has the potential to be an important concept for achieving smart manufacturing. However, there remains a lot of confusion about the concept and how it can be implemented in real manufacturing systems, especially among small-to-medium-sized enterprises. This paper synthesizes the different perspectives that have been reported on the dig...

This paper presents a systematic methodology to enable environmental sustainability and productivity performance assessment for integrated process and operation plans at the machine cell level of a manufacturing system. This approach determines optimal process and operation plans from a range of possible alternatives that satisfy the objectives and...

Smart Manufacturing (SM) is the future of the manufacturing industry. Seamless, accurate, and fast connection and communications among devices are critical for SM. By leveraging information technologies, devices can dynamically communicate with each other to increase factory production, while decreasing engineering costs. MTConnect and Open Platfor...

Insufficient interoperability has long been an issue on the factory floor, however, new technologies and standards are enabling production systems to become more agile and interoperable. A communication standard can, for example, make interoperation among different vendor-specific software and hardware tools in production systems easier and more re...

Integration of process control with optimization is critical to Smart Manufacturing (SM). Oftentimes, however, the process control solutions from one vendor do not interoperate with the optimization solutions of another. Incompatibilities among the representation and format used by the vendors can impede interoperability. Without this interoperabil...

This paper concerns the development of a design methodology and its demonstration through a prototype system for performance modeling and optimization of manufacturing processes. The design methodology uses a Modelica simulation tool serving as the graphical user interface for manufacturing domain users such as process engineers to formulate their...

The Tennessee Eastman process is a typical industrial process that consists of five main process units: a two-phase reactor where an exothermic reaction occurs, a separator, a stripper, a compressor, and a mixer. This is a nonlinear open-loop unstable process that has been used in many studies as a case study for plant-wide control, statistical pro...

The Winter Simulation Conference celebrates its 50th anniversary in December 2017. Over these years, it became one of the leading simulation conferences worldwide, with more than 600 annual participants and thousands of publications shaping the international simulation research. This chapter describes the history of the conference, presents some hi...

Large manufacturers have been using simulation to support decision-making for design and production. However, with the advancement of technologies and the emergence of big data, simulation can be utilised to perform and support data analytics for associated performance gains. This requires not only significant model development expertise, but also...

Manufacturers are facing an ever-increasing demand for customized products on the one hand and environmentally friendly products on the other. This situation affects both the product and the process life cycles. To guide decision-making across these life cycles, the performance of today’s manufacturing systems is monitored by collecting and analyzi...

In this paper, we propose an architectural design and software framework for fast development of descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive analytics solutions for dynamic production processes. The proposed architecture and framework will support the storage of modular, extensible, and reusable knowledge base (KB) of process performance...

This broad-ranging text/reference presents a fascinating review of the state of the art of modeling and simulation, highlighting both the seminal work of preeminent authorities and exciting developments from promising young researchers in the field. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Winter Simulation Conference (WSC), the premier internationa...

Production planning is a complex problem that is typically decomposed into decisions carried out at different control levels. The various methods used for production planning often assume a static environment, therefore, the plans developed may not be feasible when shop floor events change dynamically. In such an operating environment, a system sim...

Developing optimal production plans for smart manufacturing systems is challenging because shop floor events change dynamically. A virtual factory incorporating engineering tools, simulation, and optimization generates and communicates performance data to guide wise decision making for different control levels. This paper describes such a platform...

This paper proposes an approach to integrating advanced process control solutions with optimization (APC-O) solutions, within any factory, to enable more efficient production processes. Currently, vendors who provide the software applications that implement control solutions are isolated and relatively independent. Each such solution is designed to...

Modern manufacturing systems are installed with smart devices such as sensors that monitor system performance and collect data to manage uncertainties in their operations. However, multiple parameters and variables affect system performance, making it impossible for a human to make informed decisions without systematic methodologies and tools. Furt...

With the increasing attention directed to sustainable manufacturing, systematic methodologies are needed for not only incorporating the traditional performance indicators such as cost and quality, but also environmental impacts during the production stage. This requires the selection of processes and process settings for the production of the desig...

In this paper, we propose an architectural design and software framework for fast development of descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive analytics solutions for dynamic production processes. The proposed architecture and framework will support the storage of modular, extensible, and reusable Knowledge Base (KB) of process performance...

It is difficult to formulate and solve optimization problems for sustainability performance in manufacturing. The main reasons for this are: (1) optimization problems are typically complex and involve manufacturing and sustainability aspects, (2) these problems require diversity of manufacturing data, (3) optimization modeling and solving tasks req...

Development of an effective data analytics application for manufacturing requires testing with large sets of data. It is usually difficult for application developers to find access to real manufacturing data streams for testing new data analytics applications. Virtual factories can be developed to generate the data for selected measures in formats...

Life cycle assessment (LCA) frameworks are widely used to assess the sustainability of manufacturing processes. Although they have several advantages such as systematic estimation and efficiency, they have significant limitations due to a lack of functionality to perform sustainability analysis. Specifically, they do not fully support dynamic and d...

Manufacturing organizations are able to accumulate large amounts of plant floor production and environmental data due to advances in data collection, communications technology, and use of standards. The challenge has shifted from collecting a sufficient amount of data to analyzing and making decisions based on the huge amount of data available. Dat...

Sustainable manufacturing has significant impact on a company's business performance and competitiveness in today's world. A growing number of manufacturing indus-tries are initiating efforts to address sustainability issues; however, to achieve a higher level of sustainability, manufac-turers need methodologies for formally describing, analyz-ing,...

This paper is focused on decision analytics for smart manufacturing. We consider temporal manufacturing processes with stochastic throughput and inventories. We demonstrate the use of the recently proposed concept of the decision guidance analytics language to perform monitoring, analysis, planning, and execution tasks. To support these tasks we de...

This paper introduces National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)’s Sustainable Process Analytics Formalism (SPAF) to facilitate the use of simulation and optimization technologies for decision support in sustainable manufacturing. SPAF allows formal modeling of modular, extensible, and reusable process components and enables sustainabili...

Energy is considered as one of the important factors for manufacturers to achieve the sustainability objective. To improve energy efficiency in manufacturing, optimization techniques are essential to provide decision support. However, formulating and solving energy optimization in manufacturing is still time-consuming and difficult due to its compl...

This paper proposes a model based continuous improvement methodology to support efforts to achieve sustainable manufacturing, i.e., to increase efficiency and reduce environmental impact of manufacturing systems. Past efforts have provided guidance at a high level or with a focus on products. This paper focuses on supporting efforts for manufacturi...

Sustainable manufacturing (SM) continues to grow in importance. However, analysis tools to assess the sustainability performance of SM processes are difficult to verify and validate. Additionally, the ability to share and reuse SM information is hampered by a lack of (1) standards to represent that information, (2) interoperability among the engine...

This paper discusses data synthesis of production and facility knowledge for sustainability analysis by applying the ISA–95 “Activity Models of Manufacturing Operations Management” (MOM) model. Presently, production and facility management basically function independently of each other. This paper presents the addition of facility activities to the...

A growing number of manufacturing industries are initiating efforts to address sustainability issues. A study by the National Association of Manufacturers indicated that the manufacturing sector currently accounts for over a third of all energy consumed in the United States. There are many areas and opportunities to reduce energy costs and pollutio...

Sustainability has become a very significant research topic as it impacts many different manufacturing industries. Therefore, the technologies for monitoring, analysing, evaluating and optimising the sustainability performance of manufacturing processes and systems are very critical for decision makers on the shop floor. This paper introduces a dec...

Modelling and simulation (M&S) is a useful technique for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) applications because of its non-destructive and non-invasive method of observing a system. Results of simulations are expected to provide reliable information for decision-makers, but potential errors may be introduced during M&S development. This pap...

The future success of the Smart Grid (SG) depends on many technological developments and innovations being created. The SG will be characterized by decentralized generation, improved network communications, demand response, greater reliability and robustness to failures. The future power grid will also have many interacting components needing great...

The desire to be environmentally sustainable gives manufacturers the necessary impetus to implement "green" technology that previously may have been regarded as less important. Traditionally, Energy Management Systems (EMS), which handle energy-related activities within building services, and Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), which handle prod...

The production capacity of corn ethanol as a transportation fuel is experiencing rapid growth in the United States. The demand is driven by increased prices of gasoline, government mandates, incentives, desire for cleaner fuels, and the need to be more self-reliant in energy sources. Continued strong growth of the corn ethanol industry will depend...

A growing number of manufacturing industries are initiating efforts to address sustainability issues. According to the National Association of Manufacturers, the manufacturing sector currently accounts for about one third of all energy consumed in the United States [1]. Reducing energy costs and pollution emissions involves many areas within an ind...

Sustainable manufacturing could be promoted by the effective use of Modeling and Simulation (M&S) applications. These applications can evaluate manufacturing operations in light of increasing legislation and awareness for environmental protection. They can help determine the operational policy and strategy, and evaluate day-to-day manufacturing dec...

Evaluating overall energy performance of a manufacturing system requires accurate information on how, when, and where energy is being used. Collecting and tracking energy data is necessary for determining performance benchmarks and reducing energy consumption. Optimizing energy efficiency in manufacturing systems is difficult to achieve since energ...

Sustainability has become a very significant research topic since it impacts many different manufacturing industries. The adoption of sustainable manufacturing practices and technologies offers industry a cost effective route to improve economic, environmental, and social performance. As a major manufacturing process, the machining system plays an...

Sustainability has become a very significant research topic, it impacts many different manufacturing industries. To achieve sustainable manufacturing, designing manufacturing systems that have less negative impact on the environment is critical. Modeling and Simulation (M&S) is an essential ingredient for success of sustainable manufacturing throug...

The production capacity of corn ethanol as a transportation fuel is experiencing rapid growth in the United States. The demand is driven by increased prices of gasoline, government mandates, incentives, desire for cleaner fuels, and the need to achieve energy independence. Continued strong growth of the corn ethanol industry will depend on profitab...

Recently there has been an increased focus on the environmental aspects of the manufacturing industry across the world. Boeing and NIST have studied the incorporation of Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) parameters into Discrete Event Simulation (DES) as a means to analyze sustainable performance in the manufacturing area. Accurate analysis of manufactu...

Input Data Management (IDM) is a time consuming and costly process for Discrete Event Simulation (DES) projects. In this paper, a methodology for IDM in DES projects is described. The approach is to use a methodology to identify and collect data, then use an IDM software to extract and process the data. The IDM software will structure and present t...

Software applications for manufacturing systems developed using software from different vendors typically cannot work together. Develop¬ment of custom integrations of manufacturing software incurs costs and delays that hurt industry productivity and competitiveness. Software applications need to be tested in live operational systems. It is impracti...

Software applications for manufacturing systems developed using software from different vendors typically cannot work together. Development of custom integrations of manufacturing software incurs costs and delays that hurt industry productivity and competitiveness. Software applications need to be tested in live operational systems. It is impractic...

Modeling and simulation (M&S) techniques are increasingly being used to solve problems and aid decision making in many different fields. Results of simulations are expected to provide reliable information for decision makers. But potential errors may be introduced during the M&S development lifecycle. It is critical to ensure to build the right mod...

This presentation will describe how Boeing implements the Core Manufacturing Simulation Data (CMSD) information model. The presentation will include visualization of manufacturing data for parts and tooling visibility in manufacturing industry. Simulation analyses are prepared by extracting and formatting data from real world production databases....

This paper proposes an effective, reusable solution for modeling and simulation. The approach is to develop a Software Product Line (SPL) architecture that explicitly captures the commonality and variability in a family of similar simulation systems. First responders and incident management personnel need better training resources to prepare for po...

The development of a simulation model has always been a challenging task; it is timeconsuming and requires expertise. Furthermore, most customized simulation models need to be developed from scratch. This paper proposes a more effective, reusable solution. The approach is to develop a Software Product Line (SPL) architecture that explicitly capture...

Simulation technology is underutilized in the shipbuilding industry. The development of neutral data interfaces between simulation and other software applications, could make information sharing within a shipyard more effective and efficient, and hence promote the utilization of simulation in the shipbuilding industry. A generic shipbuilding simula...

Small machine shops typically do not have the resources to develop custom simulations of their operations or data translators to import their data from other manufacturing software applications. We present an overview of an information model currently under development at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to address this pro...

Small machine shops typically do not have the resources to develop custom simulations of their operations or data translators to import their data from other manufacturing software applications. This paper presents an overview of an information model currently under development at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to address...

Perhaps the most significant discriminating factor to be considered in developing a classification system for manufacturing simulation is industry market sector. The sector identifies the end-products that are to be manufactured. The hierarchy of organizations, systems, and processes are often unique to individual manufacturing sectors. Thus, the m...

Small machine shops typically do not have the resources to develop custom simulations of their operations or data translators to import their data from other manufacturing software applications. This paper presents an overview of an information model currently under development at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to address...

Manufacturing managers typically commission simulation case studies to support their decision-making processes. These studies are used to evaluate alternative solutions to manufacturing problems in areas such as plant layout, scheduling, capacity planning, capital equipment acquisition, inventory management, and supply chain planning. Procedures fo...

In order to ensure that the process plan and numerical control (NC) programs are complete and correct before jobs are released to the shop floor, manufacturing industry needs a validation system that has visualization and analysis capabilities. A prototype manufacturing data validation system has been developed by the Manufacturing Simulation and M...

This paper discusses the objectives and requirements for a shipbuilding simulation. It presents an overview of a generic simulation of shipbuilding operations. The shipbuilding simulation model can be used as a tool to analyze the schedule impact of new workload, evaluate production scenarios, and identify resource problems. The simulation helps id...

A major aerospace company operates large factories that involve thousands of component parts, subassemblies, major sub- systems, tools, fixtures, and material handling equipments to assemble commercial airplanes every day. They are considered mobile assets on the plant floor. These mobile assets are handled, moved and delivered in a coordinated, ch...

First responders and incident management personnel need better training resources to prepare for future disasters. Live training exercises while valuable are often very expensive to organize and conduct. Training using modeling, simulation, and gaming technologies could help to prepare for a more diverse range of scenarios than live exercises, as w...

Interoperability between manufacturing software applications and simulation is currently extremely limited. A machine shop information model has been developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as a part of system interoperability efforts. The primary objective is to develop a standard-data-interface structure for exchang...