THE INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY FOR PRODUCTION ENGINEERING

The Scientific Technical Committee: Life Cycle Engineering and Assembly (STC A) had a meeting held on February 22 in Paris and a meeting hosted in Thessaloniki on August 23.

The February STC LCE/A meeting was attended by 103 people and the Thessaloniki meeting had 81 attendees.

CIRP conferences and sponsored conferences under STC LCE/A:

CIRP Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) conferences

•    31st LCE Conference, 2024, Torino (Profs. Settineri and Priarone)
•    32nd LCE Conference, 2025, Manchester (Prof. Mativenga)
•    33rd LCE Conference, 2026, Kamakura, Japan (Prof. Umeda)
•    34th LCE Conference, 2027, Braunschweig, Germany (Prof. Herrmann)
•    35th LCE Conference, 2028, Linköping, Sweden (Prof. Sakao)

CIRP Conference on Assembly Technologies and Systems (CATS): 

•    10th Conference on Assembly Technology and Systems, AI in Assembly, Modular Configurable Assembly Technology & Disassembly and Remanufacturing, 2024, Karlsruhe (Profs. Fleischer & Krüger)
•    11th Conference on Assembly Technology and Systems, 2026, Hong Kong (Profs. Zheng & Wang)

Sponsored conferences: 

•    1st International Conference on Production Technologies and Systems for E-Mobility E|PTS 2024 (Prof. Franke)
•    12th Conference on Through-life Engineering Services 2024 (Prof. Erkoyuncu)
•    19th Global Conference on Sustainable Manufacturing (GCSM) 2024 (Profs. Kohl, Dietrich, Seliger & Mur)

STC A Keynote Papers

The 2024 STC-A keynote was Sakao et al.: Implementing Circular Economy Activities in Manufacturing for Environmental Sustainability

Future keynote papers are: 

•    2025 – Wang et al.: Human-Centric Assembly in Smart Factories
•    2026 – Thiede et al.: Decarbonisation of Manufacturing towards Net Zero
•    2027 – Makris et al.: Humans, AI and robots for resilient assembly operations

Technical Presentations

Winter meeting (2024):

•    Svenja Ehmsen: Environmental impact of high-speed laser directed energy deposition 
•    Angioletta Catalano: A model for process selection in hybrid manufacturing for minimizing environmental impact 
•    Barbara Linke: Life cycle energy and manufacturing leveraging with examples of friction and wear
•    Christoph Herrmann: Towards life cycle engineering of factories
•    Vidosav Majstorovic: Contribution to assessment of the engineering activities environmental impact in digital era 
•    Yingguang Li and Changqing Liu: Modelling and predicting residual stress fields of large structural components in different stages of life cycle based on deformation forces 
•    Jörg Krüger: Passive structured compliance in high-speed robotic assembly tasks utilizing the finray-effect and environmental compliance
•    Sotiris Makris: Flexible workpiece handling for resilient assembly systems

The first five technical presentations were part of a moderated discussion on "Life cycle implications of manufacturing" (Moderator: Sebastian Thiede).

GA Meeting – Thessaloniki (2024)

•    Robert Schmitt/Benjamin Montavon: Closing the lifecycle loop – assessment methods for industrial disassembly
•    Shun Yang: Second life assessment based disassembly for battery modules
•    Ippei Kono: Life Cycle Design and Product Regeneration Technology for Circular Economy
•    Sebastian Schlund: Turning in Circles: Exploiting the Potential of Circular Economy in Wind Turbine Operations
•    Matthias Weigold: Process transparency and optimization for parts drying processes

The first three technical presentations were part of a moderated discussion on " Assembly and Disassembly in context of sustainability”" (Moderator: Lihui Wang).

Other business

Essays for CIRP Novel Topics in Production Engineering:

  Vol. 1
•    Urgo et al.: AI-based Pose Estimation of Human Operators in Manufacturing Environments
•    Makris et al.: Seamless Human-Robot Collaboration in Industry
  Vol. 2
•    Ansari et al.: Technical Language Processing in Manufacturing Applications
Proposal for a CIRP Novel Topic in Production Engineering:
•    Bukkapatnam et al.: Safety and Production Quality Assurance in Human-Centric Collaborative Manufacturing and Assembly Systems
•    Liu et al.: Generative AI for human-centric assembly

Officers

The officers of STC LCE/A until 08/2024 were:
Chair: Prof. Yasushi Umeda
Vice-chair: Prof. Lihui Wang
Secretary: Prof. Sebastian Thiede

For further details on the activities of STC LCE/A please consult the minutes from the winter meeting in Paris and the GA meeting in Dublin.

Respectfully submitted by
Yasushi Umeda / Lihui Wang / Sebastian Thiede