ENGINEERING

A growing interest in promoting high quality food from a local area has to overcome economic obstacles, and maintain high levels of safety and traceability. A network model is studied with the aim to harmonize economic and environmental goals with the social benefits of supporting small enterprises. Possible areas of savings, which can be invested in further marketing of niche products, are analyzed. The case study Filiera dei Piccoli (The Supply Chain of Small Entities) shows the relevance of Supply Chain Management in improving market orientation and in introducing new products. The distribution system of the network is optimized using software and a genetic algorithm. The achieved savings are used to offer typical high quality foods at competitive prices.

In this paper we investigate the performance of different polynomial models for colour calibration. We present the results of a set of experiments on a visual inspection system composed of a dome illuminator and an industrial, entry-level, camera. The system has been calibrated with six different polynomial models using the 24 colour patches of the X-Rite© Color Checker as source colours. The colour measuring performance of the various models has been evaluated on a set of industrial materials by computing the difference (∆Eab) between the results obtained with the visual inspection system with those obtained with a Minolta Chroma Meter CR-200. The results show that the performance of the different calibration models does not vary significantly as the polynomial formulation changes, suggesting that a relation as simple as a linear one may produce as good results as higher degree polynomials.

In the paper the simultaneous scheduling of different types of resources is considered. The scenario is constrained by machines and human resources, and its complexity is increased by the presence of two types of human resources, namely the equipper, that performs only an initial action of each task (the 'setup'), and the normal operator, that loads and unloads each piece from machines. A conceptual model of the shop is build in order to simultaneously handle priority rules for each one of the three types of resources considered (machine, equipper and operator). A simulation model has been implemented and a simulation experiment performed in order to explore the effect on mean flow factor reduction of different combination of priority rules.

A partire da un sistema reale o da un suo progetto, mediante lo sviluppo di modelli di simulazione, è possibile confrontare layout e soluzioni logistiche alternative, verificare i criteri di gestione, valutare performances e costi, eseguire analisi di scenario. In questo lavoro mostreremo un caso applicativo di questi concetti, sviluppato in collaborazione con la ThyssenKrupp Acciai Speciali Terni. Il caso riguarda l’analisi dei flussi logistici interni ed esterni dello stabilimenti situato a Terni, in Umbria. Lo studio concerne in modo specifico la valutazione dell’impatto che un considerevole aumento di produzione avrebbe sulla rete logistica a servizio dell’acciaieria. Invece di eseguire l’aumento di produzione sul campo, ed osservare come reagisce il sistema (col rischio che la rete logistica si riveli insufficiente e l’intero impianto si blocchi), è stato appunto costruito un modello di simulazione ad eventi discreti, sviluppato tramite il software Arena, che permette di osserv...