Professional Doctorate in Engineering Programme in Energy & Process Technology at University of Twente

The Professional Doctorate in Engineering (PDEng) programme Energy & Process Technology is very interesting for you. The PDEng programme is a 2-year post-MSc programme with a focus on technological design. This programme at the University of Twente contains an educational part that will be followed at the University, and a design project that will be carried out at Weijland Technologies B.V. The educational part will have an in-depth and broadening character with ample attention for professional development and will be partly tailored to the design project. In collaboration with Weijland Technologies B.V, high level, creative and new designs for complex issues will be aimed at.

PDEng Design Project - Developing the Mass Production System for a PV Tile based Energy System
Background of this project is a PV roof tile that has a wireless connection for power transfer to the underlying roof lath (batten). This tile has been developed by the company and consists of a roof tile with PV cells, and electronics and one half of a transformer. The other half of the transformer is envisaged to be mounted on the roof lath, which should also contain the auxiliary electronics. The purpose of the project is to design the production system for both the tile and the transformer.

The working principles of both the tile and the transformer are known. This project deals with redesigning both components for mass production as well as with determining the (concept) design of a state of the art manufacturing system for producing this product.
The main challenges can described as:

Determine the best suited production strategy for this product. An important aspect to consider is the degree of required flexibility of the production system for adapting to changing demands and new product versions. Another aspect is the definition of the customer decoupling point for enabling offering mass customized products.

Redesign the tile and the components for mass production while leaving design configuration freedom to allow customization of the products. In order to address this point, a Design For Manufacturing (DfM) approach has to be drawn from the production strategy developed previously.
Design of the production system by determining the degree of automation while incorporating SMART Industry productions technologies
The final goal of this project is to have a prototype of the product that serves mass production proposes and a concept description of the production system used for manufacturing it.

The concept design of the manufacturing system should include:
Selection of production technologies to be used arranged in a layout.
Capacity, throughput time and utilization rate calculations for different demands patterns.
Flexibility strategy.

Deadline Application: 01-09-2017

Further details:
Professional Doctorate in Engineering Programme in Energy & Process Technology at University of Twente