Mukund Nilakantan Janardhanan

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Associate) at University of Warwick

Collaborative robots (cobots) are increasingly utilized in assembly lines to assist the human workers or complete assembly tasks independently to reduce human worker cost. Two mixed-integer programming models are formulated to optimize the cycle time in assembly lines with multi-type cobots, parallel collaboration, and considering limited worker nu...

Background Understanding patient/service-user experience is mission critical for hospices. This is achieved by conducting surveys. However, following the COVID-19 pandemic, the hospice sector witnessed a sectoral drop in feedback rates. This was exacerbated by the fact that existing tools are neither fit-for-purpose nor inclusive. To overcome this...

In human-centred manufacturing, deploying collaborative robots (cobots) is recognized as a promising strategy to enhance the inclusiveness and resilience of production systems. Despite notable progress, current production scheduling methods for human-robot collaboration (HRC) still fail to adequately accommodate workforce heterogeneity, significant...

Successful interdisciplinary research requires proactive efforts by researchers, institutions, funders, and publishers. This article offers practical recommendations at each decision-making level to holistically enhance interdisciplinarity.

Developing manufacturing systems that consider workforce heterogeneity and inclusiveness is a significant emerging trend in human-centred production. In this context, collaborative robots (cobots), designed specifically to assist human operations, provide unparalleled support to assist a diverse range of semi-skilled workers. However, there remains...

Human-robot collaboration (HRC) is putting humans back at the centre of manufacturing via tech-empowered workers. On human-robot assembly line (HRAL), humans and collaborative robots (cobots) can perform tasks collaboratively to improve flexibility and reconfigurability. Most previous work focuses on the production optimization of HRAL yet lacks sy...

The growing number of product variants reduces the utilization of traditional linear assembly systems and increases the cost of customization for manufacturing companies. Matrix-structured Manufacturing Systems (MMS) with freely linked production modules enable efficient use of assembly resources through flexible product routing. However, the high...

As today’s business environment is highly competitive and dynamic, APM is seen as a winning project management methodology to be adopted, especially in the IT business. However, with the popularization of APM, new challenges emerge. This study identifies the barriers in APM implementation and obtains relative rankings for their importance using the...

The semiautomated assembly line balancing problem (SAALBP) is a complex planning problem in which the production process comprises human workers, robots, and human-robot collaboration. With increasing awareness of sustainable practices in the manufacturing environment, this study addresses a sustainable SSALBP, where a mixed integer linear programm...

Industries must be more innovative than ever before to face rising global competition and stay in the market today. These now aim to enhance operational efficiency by using different advanced technology tools and techniques of Industry 4.0, satisfying the varying customer needs with products of the highest quality offered at minimal costs. With dif...

The collaborative robots (cobots) are increasingly being utilized in industries due to the advancement in the field of robotic technology and also due to the increase in labor costs. The cobots on the assembly line can be utilized to complete the tasks independently or assist the workers to complete the tasks. This study considers the U-shaped asse...

In the context of the fourth industrial revolution, machine –learning based applications, such as 3D Printing, computer vision and robotics, are envisaged to digitize construction. This chapter introduces the reader to the basics of AI and focuses on the role of machine learning in the development of technological applications aimed at the improvem...

E‐waste generation is rising apace, and it is estimated that e‐waste production could reach 74.7 Mt by 2030. Hence, it is essential to develop tactics and methodologies for the formal management and treatment of e‐waste. The implementation of the concepts of a circular economy (CE) has been perceived as an efficient methodology for the efficacious...

In this paper, we propose an MIP model for minimisation of cycle time and total assembly line cost simultaneously. Due to NP-hard nature of RALB (Rubinovitz and Bukchin, 1991), and to avoid local minima, a hybrid multi-objective evolutionary (H-MOE) algorithm developed based on the features of NSGA-II and simulated annealing algorithm is used to so...

The tremendous urbanization pace of India calls for higher efficiency in housing development, currently typified by low productivity and poor sustainability performance. Although off-site construction (OSC) is a method of widely acknowledged efficiency, its current uptake in India is very low, and the factors hindering its wider adaptation have not...

This paper fills the gap in the study of the impact of Chinese companies' environmental performance (EP) on greenwashing based on the listed companies in China from 2010 to 2018. The relationship between EP and greenwashing is analyzed based on legitimacy theory and signal theory. From the empirical analysis, it is found that there exists a negativ...

Cement is a fundamental building and construction material for societies around the world. However, its manufacturing process is exceptionally energy intensive and has a substantial contribution to the man-made global warming potential which calls for immediate reduction. In this context, the implementation of green production practices and technol...

Based on the legitimacy theory, A-share-listed companies in the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 2007 to 2018 are taken as the research sample. This paper explores the internal mechanism of how internationalization degree affects the greenwashing behavior of Chinese multinational enterprises, and tests the moderating mechanism of legitima...

New Product Development (NPD) constitutes a vital part of every business’ strategy to stay ahead of competition, hence companies need to develop standard procedures to incorporate Lean in NPD. Though quite a few firms strive to apply Lean in their NPD processes, they fail to understand how to obtain results par excellence. This knowledge gap could...

In this paper, we propose an MIP model for minimisation of cycle time and total assembly line cost simultaneously. Due to NP-hard nature of RALB (Rubinovitz and Bukchin, 1991), and to avoid local minima, a hybrid multi-objective evolutionary (H-MOE) algorithm developed based on the features of NSGA-II and simulated annealing algorithm is used to s...

The sharing economy allows people to have access to resources and better consumption of resources with an aim for sustainability. The significance of sharing economy motivates scholars to study it from many contexts but there is lack of studies done from a manufacturing perspective. This paper attempts to analyze sharing economy from a British auto...

Over the past decades, developments and scientific breakthroughs in the field of robotics have shown the replacement of wheeled robots with legged robots, which are often inspired by the biological characteristics of legged animals. Many industries and urban-based applications promote quadruped robots because of their dexterous ability to efficient...

Industries are increasingly looking for opportunities at utilizing collaborative robots in assembly lines to perform the tasks independently or assist the human workers due to the advancement of industry 4.0 technologies. Purchasing cost is one of the important factors to be considered by production managers, while designing or redesigning assembly...

Multiagent system (MAS) is gaining popular attention in various applications especially with the rapid expansion of internet and computing. In general, MAS considers the collaboration of several agents working in the same environment together to achieve common objectives and also plays a critical role in supporting humans for attaining a comfortabl...

Disassembly lines are utilized frequently to disassemble the end-of-life products completely or partially to retain the valuable components for remanufacturing or recycling. This research introduces and solves the profit-oriented U-shaped partial disassembly line balancing problem (PUPDLBP) for the first time. A 0–1 integer linear programming model...

With the emergence of advanced manufacturing and Industry 4.0 technologies, there is a growing interest in coordinating the production and distribution in supply chain management. This paper addresses the production and distribution problems with sequence dependent setup time for multiple customers in flow shop environments. In this complex decisio...

The collaborative robot (cobot) are increasingly being utilized in industries due to the advancement in the field of robotic technology and also due the increase in labor costs. The cobots on the assembly line can be utilized to complete the tasks independently or assist the workers to complete the tasks. This study considers the U-shaped assembly...

Robots are extensively used during the era of Industry 4.0 to achieve high productivity, better quality and lower cost. While designing a robotic assembly line, production managers are concerned about the cost involved in such a system development. Most of the research reported till date did not consider purchasing cost while optimizing the design...

Two-sided assembly lines are widely utilized to assemble large-sized products such as cars and trucks. Recently, these types of assembly lines have been applied to assemble different types of products due to a large variety of customer demands and strong market competition. This paper presents two simple local search methods, the iterated greedy al...

This research aims to investigate the main operational challenges of sensitive products (e.g., food, drugs) and propose a framework for the enhancement of the quality and efficiency of the respective logistics process. Four semi-structured interviews were conducted with senior executives of a Cypriot company, which specializes in the provision of W...

The permutation flow shop scheduling problem is one of the popular problems in operations research due to its complexity and also its practical applications in industries. With the fourth generation industrial revolution, decisional aspects in make to order flow shop environment needs to be decentralized and autonomous. One of the aspects is to con...

This paper investigates the industry practices regarding the combinative use of Industry 4.0 and lean tools in the manufacturing sector. Following review of the literature, a questionnaire survey was distributed among manufacturing professionals in organizations which have already adopted Industry 4.0 technology and lean manufacturing, with the aim...

Purpose This paper aims to present a concise review on the variant state-of-the-art dynamic task allocation strategies. It presents a thorough discussion about the existing dynamic task allocation strategies mainly with respect to the problem application, constraints, objective functions and uncertainty handling methods. Design/methodology/approac...

Over the last few months, manufacturing industries are experiencing an accelerated disruption and uncertainty in the market marked by trade wars, ongoing COVID-19 pandemic etc. This forces the industries either to shift their gears or thrown into deep uncertain future. Companies like Ford and General Electric have changed their production systems w...

The engineering building of the University Leicester built-in 1963 has been a British icon for decades now. Applications of Robotic technologies are uprising nowadays, which provides a contingency to manipulate the benefits of robotics for executing challenging and precarious facade cleaning processes. This paper surveys the facade cleaning robotic...

The engineering building of the University Leicester built-in 1963 has been a British icon for decades now. Applications of Robotic technologies are uprising nowadays, which provides a contingency to manipulate the benefits of robotics for executing challenging and precarious facade cleaning processes. This paper surveys the facade cleaning robotic...

U-shaped assembly lines have drawn increasing attentions from modern assembly line industry due to their higher flexibility. This work develops an enhanced beam search heuristic algorithm to solve type I and type 2 U shaped assembly line balancing problems (UALBP-1 and UALBP-2). Proposed beam search heuristic is enhanced by utilizing: 1) five lower...

Purpose- Optimizing material handling within the factory is one of the key problems of modern assembly line systems. This paper focuses on simultaneously balancing a robotic assembly line and scheduling of material handling required for the operation of such a system, a topic that has received limited attention in academia. Manufacturing industries...

Modern assembly line systems utilize robotics to replace human resources to achieve higher level of automation and flexibility. This work studies the task assignment and robot allocation in a robotic U-shaped assembly line. Two new mixed-integer programming linear models are developed to minimize the cycle time when the number of workstations is fi...

Worker assignment is a relatively new problem in assembly lines that typically is encountered in situations in which the workforce is heterogeneous. The optimal assignment of a heterogeneous workforce is known as the assembly line worker assignment and balancing problem (ALWABP). This problem is different from the well-known simple assembly line ba...

Within the subject area of maintenance and maintenance management, authors identified a deficiency in studies focussing on the expected value from adopting predictive maintenance (PdM) techniques for machine tools (MTs). Authors identified no studies focussing on presenting a PdM value analysis or cost model specifically for small-medium enterprise...

Application of UAV in indoor environment is emerging nowadays due to the advancements in technology. UAV brings more space-flexibility in an occupied or hardly-accessible indoor environment, e.g., shop floor of manufacturing industry, greenhouse, nuclear powerplant. UAV helps in creating an autonomous manufacturing system by executing tasks with le...

With the emergence of new Industry 4.0 technologies, real-time order acceptance and scheduling is a key problem in a make-to-order (MTO) production system where customers place orders in real-time and the decision maker has to make acceptance or rejection decisions based on the available resources at that point in time. This paper focuses on simult...

Two-sided robotic assembly lines are employed to assemble large-sized high-volume products, where robots are allocated to the workstations to perform the tasks and human workers are replaced for achieving lower cost and greater flexibility in production. In the two-sided robotic assembly lines, setup times are unavoidable and it has been ignored in...

Fixed charge transportation (FCT) problems addressed in literature assumed shipment between a source and a destination is fulfilled in a single lot. However, in reality the lot size may exceed the capacity of the carrier and hence the shipment needs to be executed by conducting more than one trip. This gives an increased fixed charge which is propo...

The permutation flow shop scheduling problem is one of the popular problem in operations research due its complexity and also its practical applications in industries. With emerging trend with fourth generation industrial revolution (I4.0), decision making aspects in make to order flow shop environment needs to be decentralized and autonomous. One...

It is very relevant in today's competitive world for suppliers to ensure that customer-demanded products are made available. Customers expect to obtain a product that has benefits and are available within an acceptable price and time. It is necessary for companies to optimally use their ability to satisfy customers' specified needs. Researchers and...

Purpose Robots are used in assembly lines because of their higher flexibility and lower costs. The purpose of this paper is to develop mathematical models and simulated annealing algorithms to solve the robotic assembly line balancing (RALB-II) to minimize the cycle time. Design/methodology/approach Four mixed-integer linear programming models are...

Industries are incorporating robots into assembly lines due to their greater flexibility and reduced costs. Most of the reported studies did not consider scheduling of tasks or the sequence-dependent setup times in an assembly line, which cannot be neglected in a real-world scenario. This paper presents a study on robotic assembly line balancing, w...

This paper focuses on implementing differential evolution (DE) to optimize the robotic assembly line balancing (RALB) problems with an objective of minimizing energy consumption in a straight robotic assembly line and thereby help to reduce energy costs. Few contributions are reported in literature addressing this problem. Assembly line balancing p...

Worker assignment is a new type of problem in assembly line balancing problems, which typically occurs in sheltered work centers for the disabled. However, only a few contributions consider worker assignment in a two-sided assembly line. This research presents three variants of artificial bee colony algorithm to solve worker assignment and line bal...

Assembly line balancing (ALB) problems mainly deal with proper allocation of tasks to the workstations in a balanced manner without violating the precedence relationship and optimizing a given objective function. This problem mainly occurs in a continuous production line and is classified as one of the hard optimization problems. Since the installa...

Topic of balancing assembly lines is of great interest for researchers and industry practitioners due to the significant impact it has on increasing productivity and efficiency of manufacturing systems. Robots are widely applied in manufacturing industries for assembly processes. Wide literature has been reported on balancing of robotic assembly li...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to focus on the reference model of a grid-like supply network that enables formulation of delivery routing and scheduling problems in the context of the periodic vehicle routing problem. Design/methodology/approach The conditions for seamless (collision-free) synchronization of periodically executed local trans...

This paper focuses on the issues of Resistor-Capacitor-based Electrical Discharge Micro-Machining process and investigates the effects of tool speed and polarity on the performance measures such as Tool Wear Rate, Material Removal Rate, Overcut and Taper Angle by drilling on 316L Stainless Steel. Taguchi’s L54 mixed orthogonal array design is emplo...

This article presents the first method to simultaneously balance and sequence robotic mixed-model assembly lines (RMALB/S), which involves three sub-problems: task assignment, model sequencing and robot allocation. A new mixed-integer programming model is developed to minimize makespan and, using CPLEX solver, small-size problems are solved for opt...

Methods for reducing the carbon footprint is receiving increasing attention from industry as they work to create sustainable products. Assembly line systems are widely utilized to assemble different types of products and in recent years, robots have become extensively utilized, replacing manual labor. This paper focuses on minimizing the carbon foo...

Assembly process is one of the important aspects in manufacturing industries. Industries are extensively using advanced technologies in assembly lines recently such as robots instead of human labor. Cost associated with human labor such as wages, training, safety, and employee management are eliminated with the help of robots. Investments on assemb...

This paper presents a comprehensive review and evaluation of heuristics and meta-heuristics for the two-sided assembly line balancing problem. Though a few reviews have been presented, some latest methods are not included and there is no comparison of the meta-heuristics in terms of their performances. Furthermore, since various kinds of encoding s...

Mixed-model assembly lines are becoming increasingly popular due to flexibility of producing customised products. In a mixed-model assembly line, line balancing and model sequencing problems are tightly interrelated and very important for efficiency. This paper proposes a new assembly line configuration based on paced mixed-model two-sided assembly...

Reducing the time and cost involved in the product development is very important to stay competitive in the market. Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA) is a cost-reduction framework for designers to evaluate manufacturing aspects of a product design. A case study on an in-market food processor, this paper aims to demonstrate the significan...

Industries utilize two-sided assembly lines for producing large-sized volume products such as cars and trucks. By employing robots, industries achieve a high level of automation in the assembly process. Robots help to replace human labor and execute tasks efficiently at each workstation in the assembly line. From the literature, it is concluded tha...

Recently, ubiquitous manufacturing has attracted wide attention in both academia and industry. To create a successful ubiquitous manufacturing system, an efficient material handling system is essential. In accordance with this reason, mobile robots have been used for transporting materials. This paper aims at developing a methodology for scheduling...

In recent years there has been an increased demand in use of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for surveillance and material handling tasks in indoor environments. However, only a limited number of studies have been reported on UAV scheduling in an indoor 3D environment. This paper presents the indoor UAV scheduling problem and models it as...

Application of UAV in indoor environment is emerging nowadays due to the advancements in technology. UAV brings more space-flexibility in an occupied or hardly-accessible indoor environment, e.g., shop floor of manufacturing industry, greenhouse, nuclear powerplant. UAV helps in creating an autonomous manufacturing system by executing tasks with le...

Purpose – Manufacturing industries these days gives importance to reduce the energy consumption due to the increase in energy prices and to create an environmental friendly industry. Robotic assembly lines (RALs) are used in an industry for assembling different types of products in an assembly line due to the flexibility it offers to the production...

A number of studies have been conducted on the distributor’s pallet loading problem. However, the problem has rarely been solved for and applied on a real robot. Therefore, a model for solving such problems is created with focus on the solutions being applicable in real life. The main findings of the presented research is that for large problems it...

This paper focuses on implementing particle swarm optimization (PSO) to optimize the robotic assembly line balancing (RALB) problems with an objective of maximizing line efficiency. By maximizing the line efficiency, industries tend to utilize their resources in an efficient manner. In this paper, two layout configurations of robotic assembly lines...

Numerous studies have been conducted on the distributor’s pallet loading problem (DPLP) in order to find solution methods that are time efficient and produces results that are applicable in the real world. It is well known, that the complexity of the problem increases by the number of boxes to be packed on the pallet, but not much research focuses...

Manufacturing industries these days are more concerned about the energy consumption due to the increasing energy cost. It is observed that industries can achieve significant savings in the energy cost even when a small percentage of energy consumption is reduced. In a manufacturing industry, assembly lines are equipped with robots to perform the as...

In an industrial production line, efficiency is considered to be a crucial factor. Efficient production line results in increased production and efficient utilization of all available resources. This research describes a type of robotic assembly line balancing problem, in which the assembly tasks are to be allocated to workstations, and each workst...

Manufacturing industries give importance to the reduction of energy consumption due to the increase in energy cost and to create an eco-friendly environment. Assembly line is considered to be one of the cost intensive systems. Robots are recently being used to perform the assembly tasks instead of manual labor. There is a requirement of efficiently...

Automation in an assembly line can be achieved using robots. In robotic U-shaped assembly line balancing (RUALB), robots are assigned to workstations to perform the assembly tasks on a U-shaped assembly line. The robots are expected to perform multiple tasks, because of their capabilities. U-shaped assembly line problems are derived from traditiona...

Robots are employed in assembly lines to increase the productivity. The objective of robotic assembly line balancing (rALB) problem is to balance the assembly line, by allocating equal amount of tasks to the workstations on the line while assigning the most efficient robot to perform the assembly task at the workstation. In this paper, bio-inspired...

This article presents an effective hybrid cuckoo search and genetic algorithm (HCSGA) for solving engineering design optimization problems involving problem-specific constraints and mixed variables such as integer, discrete and continuous variables. The proposed algorithm, HCSGA, is first applied to 13 standard benchmark constrained optimization fu...

In today's competitive world, reducing the cost of the manufacturing component of production is on the mind of manufacturers all over the globe. In a manufacturing scenario, assembly is one of the major component. Robots are extensively used in an assembly line instead of manual labor. Robots eliminate the costs associated with manual workers - in...