436-361 Manufacturing Control and Systems

Students will be expected to be familiar with the material of 431-101 Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering and 436-355 Design/Control 1.

Unit 1, Control: Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to apply a systems approach to the design and specification of data acquisition and control systems; have an appreciation of the characteristics of a range of sensors and actuators; and have gained experience in system identification and control.

Topics covered include structure of computer-controlled systems; characteristics of some common analog and digital sensors and actuators; signal conditioning, amplification and filtering; analog-to-digital conversion, sample rates and aliasing; signal processing, digital filtering, implementation of simple control algorithms; programming for real-time operations, interrupts; and cases studies in system identification and control, including the effects of common nonlinearities.

Unit 2, Work Organisation and Design: Upon completion of this unit, students should understand the theoretical basis of predetermined motion time systems and have learned how to apply several of these systems in estimating time for industrial tasks. Students should understand some of the problems associated with people working in industry, including those of heavy work, inspection processes and shift work.

Topics covered include predetermined motion time systems; workplace design: anthropometry, effects of noise in the work environment, temperature/humidity, lighting; industrial assembly; problems of shift work; manual handling; and task and job analysis and design.

Two examinations not exceeding two hours each, reports on practical work and assignments to a total of no more than 50 pages. All components of assessment must be satisfactorily completed to pass the subject. Students will be notified of the weighting of assessment components at the beginning of semester.