Marco Garetti

Bio: Marco Garetti is an academic researcher from Polytechnic University of Milan. The author has contributed to research in topics: Ontology (information science) & Product lifecycle. The author has an hindex of 20, co-authored 37 publications receiving 1981 citations. Previous affiliations of Marco Garetti include ALFA.

Sustainable manufacturing: trends and research challenges

Abstract: Sustainability is and will be a crucial issue for the present and future generations. The current assumption that natural resources are infinite and that the regenerative capacity of the environment is able to compensate for all human action is no longer acceptable. Hence, sustainability issues will influence all organisational aspects of the human life, from the economical, political, social and environmental points of view. The reason is simple: until now, all human activities have been based on the paradigm of unlimited resources and unlimited world's capacity for regeneration; from now on, the awareness of the termination of this assumption means that all related behavioural models must be changed. This is a very impressive objective embracing all fields of culture, economy, technology and much more. A continuing effort, together with a reasonable time span, will be required to pursue this goal. Fortunately, nature and the environment are capable of self-regulation and will give man a chance to recove...

Product lifecycle management – from its history to its new role

Abstract: This paper is a result of comprehensive consultation among the authors, with the scientists and leading actors in the area of PLM, which is a reference term for a list of phenomena currently ongoing in the industrial community. This paper discusses the pervasive concept of product lifecycle management (PLM), starting from its history to its constituent elements and its role in the current industry. The authors propose and elaborate their vision for the future steps of the PLM in terms of emerging issues and topics that industrial practitioners and researchers need to address.

A decision-making framework for managing maintenance spare parts

Abstract: Despite the huge body of academic literature on inventory management of maintenance spare parts, few companies seem to deliberately use the proper approaches and tools for a factual and quantitative assessment. Detaining or not stocks of a spare item, deciding upon the right level of inventory, forecasting its sporadic consumption are just some of the evidences of the complexity and criticality underlying the daily decisions the management of a company has to undertake. The objective of the paper is to provide a stepwise decision-making path in order to orienteer an industrial manager on how to pragmatically handle the management of maintenance spare parts in a company. The framework is structured into five sequential steps: part coding, part classification, part demand forecasting, stock management policy and policy test and validation. Its applicability is demonstrated by making use of a real business case where it has been successfully adopted.

Organisational change and knowledge management in PLM implementation

Abstract: PLM, Product Lifecycle Management is a new organisational, technology based, business model to run Company activities for accomplishing current product innovation requirements. The PLM business model may be applied both in the manufacturing sector, in the engineering & contracting and in the service sector. PLM is being considered as one of the major technological and organisational challenges of this decade to face the shortening of product lifecycles, the trend toward collaboration in product design and product manufacturing and, in general, to deal with the large amount of product related data amongst business actors in interenterprise contexts. The implementation of the PLM approach can foster a company's product innovation ability, supposing that organisational change and knowledge management are jointly conducted.

A survey of dynamic scheduling in manufacturing systems

Abstract: In most real-world environments, scheduling is an ongoing reactive process where the presence of a variety of unexpected disruptions is usually inevitable, and continually forces reconsideration and revision of pre-established schedules. Many of the approaches developed to solve the problem of static scheduling are often impractical in real-world environments, and the near-optimal schedules with respect to the estimated data may become obsolete when they are released to the shop floor. This paper outlines the limitations of the static approaches to scheduling in the presence of real-time information and presents a number of issues that have come up in recent years on dynamic scheduling. The paper defines the problem of dynamic scheduling and provides a review of the state-of-the-art of currently developing research on dynamic scheduling. The principles of several dynamic scheduling techniques, namely, heuristics, meta-heuristics, multi-agent systems, and other artificial intelligence techniques are described in detail, followed by a discussion and comparison of their potential.