简介

Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Alberta, Canada.

Prof. Yongsheng Ma is a full professor with the faculty of engineering, University of Alberta. Dr. Ma joined U of A since 2007, and has been teaching capstone design projects, engineering informatics, engineering economics and manufacturing processes. Dr. Ma is a member of ASEE, SME, and an Alberta registered Professional Engineer. His main research area is product and process design engineering informatics, including feature-based design and manufacturing modeling, CADCAM, and product lifecycle management. Dr. Ma received his B.Eng. from Tsinghua University, Beijing (1986), both M.Sc. (1990) and Ph.D. (1994) from UMIST, UK. Dr. Ma had been an associate editor of IEEE Transaction of Automation Science and Engineering (2009-2013). Since 2012, he has served as an editor of Advanced Engineering Informatics.

Dr. Yongsheng Ma was a faculty with Nanyang Technological University, Singapore from 2000 to 2007. Dr. Ma publishes actively in top international journals, books, and conference proceedings. In 2013, with Springer, he has published a new book, Semantic Modeling for Product and Process Engineering. He believes strongly in industrial collaboration and engagement for teaching engineering students. Due to his fruitful collaboration, jointly with a local plastic manufacturer, he won the prestigious ASTech award sponsored by Alberta Science and Technology Leadership Foundation in 2012. Dr. Ma started his career as a polytechnic lecturer in Singapore (1993); and then a senior research fellow and group manager (1996-2000) at Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology. Dr. Ma also served in department selection committee (2012), faculty nominating (2009-2011) and evaluation committees (2011). From 2013 to present, Dr. Ma has been serving as a member of General Faculty Council (GFC) and a university senator.

Prof. Yongsheng Ma’s Fundamental Research - Unified and Associative Feature Theory

Dr. Ma’s research strength falls in the areas of collaborative and concurrent engineering, product life cycle management, and CAD/CAM. His specialty is in feature-based intelligent product and engineering process informatics. He has proposed a fundamental framework of ‘associative feature’ theory. This pioneering work suggests an advanced feature modeling method that supports engineering feature objects consistently across the iterative engineering phases of a mechanical system from cradle to grave. With the support of that advanced informatics theory, a generic feature definition scheme has been developed which accommodates the complexity of engineering semantic entities by mapping their properties into a generic data structure in a flexible manner as well as incorporating intelligent evaluation methods to maintain the associated constraints. Such a conceptual breakthrough was further enhanced with the development of a feature-based, fine-grain, and neutral-format database repository. As a natural evolution of this research, an ambitious research direction to discover a unified and web-based collaborative engineering system to support collaborative engineering has been established. This effort has been recognized by the research community and Dr. Ma has been invited to organize special issues for several international journals relevant to this rapidly expanding research field. He had been invited as a visiting professor by Chung Nam University, Nanjing Aerospace and Astronautic University and Zhejiang University in the recent years. Since 2009, Chinese Scholarship Council has sent 6 PhD candidates and 3 visiting scholars to the applicant’s lab for research training.

Prof. Yongsheng Ma’s - Practical Application Research

Dr. Ma’s application research has led to the advancement of computer aided plastic mould design.  It is still worth mentioning that under his leadership in Singapore (1996-2000), with a S$4 million grant and the continued investment, his team had developed a plastic mould design software tool, named ‘QuickMould’. This tool had been successful commercialized, and soon was purchased by UGS Inc. (now UGS has been reorganized under SIEMENS, and the product is known as “Moldwizard”) in 1999 with S$10 million estimated direct technology transfering benefits to Singapore government. The technical merits of this tool have warranted its market position worldwide which can significantly improve the productivity of complex mould design processes and quality. Significant improvements are demonstrated at the layer of intelligent and extended feature modeling as well as component and assembly pattern modelling. Dr. Ma’s new research effort has been dedicated to build a solid lifecycle informatics management foundation for oil production engineering in Alberta, including oil well drilling and refinery production that is expected to enable enterprises to capture and reuse their existing engineering expertise in the form of a computer knowledge and repository system and to implement smart and reliable engineering lifecycle management. Such a technology can add value to many large scale engineering projects that are critical to the industry economy, such as automobile, aerospace, oil sands, medical, construction and agriculture industries, for engineering system management, process simulation and analysis, equipment design, manufacturing and maintenance, and supply chain information integration.  Prof. Ma’s graduated students have been employed by higher-learning institutions, government, and Alberta companies. So far, industrial collaboration projects granted to Dr. Ma under MITACS and NSERC schemes support his 20 research students. Recently, Dr. Ma has successfully secured CDN$2.4 million industrial investment on oil extraction tooling design and engineering technology under NSERC Industrial Rsearch Chair scheme and more than CDN$5.0 million matching fund is under review by funding agencies.

This workshop will cover the study of Semantic Modeling and Interoperability in Product and Process Engineering in lifecycle modeling, analysis and management of cyber-physical products. It will introduce an advanced engineering informatics technology in supporting product and process modeling, development, implementation, and management. Engineering sustainability for modern products requires unified and generic representation and lifecycle management for complex knowledge, constraints and data structures. Collaboration activities among partners in engineering design, manufacturing and business support make cyber-oriented product lifecycle management necessary. Therefore, the virtual and physical product model evolvement throughout the full engineering lifecycle demands a systematic study on sustainable modeling and application of engineering knowledge in industry even though computer-aided tools have been widely used in engineering. It is clear that most of the existing computer tools are not capable of incorporating engineering semantics into their solutions. Consequently, it is a challenge for the industry to model and apply comprehensive engineering knowledge, constraints, procedures, and concurrent aspects of design and manufacturing in a systematic and sustainable manner. The speaker of this workshop intends to expand the scope of feature technology to a more open approach of engineering semantic modeling, and to provide a framework of technological solutions for system integration and information-sharing for cyber-physical products. This workshop will present a set of researched methods that can consistently represent and uniformly manage engineering semantics in the ever-dynamic evolvement of modern enterprise. With a proposed common infrastructure of product and process modeling, the interoperability among different computer systems is to be addressed based on a fine-grain feature-based informatics approach. This workshop will also feature some insightful case studies that show promising application prospects at different product stages and in different areas of PLM system modeling. Academics, advanced engineering students, and practicing engineers will benefit from the methodology and techniques proposed, which can serve as useful references, guidelines, and helpful tips for their teaching, research, and development, as well as provide real engineering innovation projects which will increase industrial competency in the field of engineering informatics.

 

 

清华大学重点学科高水平国际合作创新团队支持项目

Contact:  Hou Yuemin, Tel: 62773470

email: hym01@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn