Distributed Information & Automation Laboratory

Information systems and Auto-ID technologies, combined with advanced production and asset management systems for manufacturing and services.

Background

Companies today can access unprecedented amounts of information about their assets, products and orders anywhere in their supply chains. Objects can be tracked around the world providing data that is transforming supply chain management. Combined with highly flexible and responsive decision support systems, these radical new capabilities are opening up opportunities to provide dynamic services and smart products.

Centre overview

The Distributed Information and Automation Laboratory (DIAL) studies ways in which advanced information systems and automatic identification technologies, such as radio-frequency identification (RFID), can be combined with advanced production and asset management systems to create and deploy smart products, flexible, reconfigurable manufacturing operations and innovative services. DIAL's vision is to develop a distinctive expertise at the interface between technical and managerial control of complex industrial systems, and to deploy this expertise at different points in the life-cycle of a product.

Key research areas

• exploitation of the key enabling technology of RFID
• integration of automatic identification and information management and data capture technologies into existing business systems
• development of improved decision support systems
• development of distributed automated solutions for manufacturing
• assessment and improvement of industrial responsiveness and performance
• quantification of the value of improved information for better decision making
• reconfigurability of industrial systems to future-proof their operations manufacturing cells to business wide enterprise resource planning and asset management systems.

Current research projects

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