As a result of the progressive implantation of the Industry 4.0 paradigm, many industries are experimenting a revolution that shipyards cannot ignore. Therefore, the application of the principles of Industry 4.0 to shipyards are leading to the creation of Shipyards 4.0. Due to this, Navantia, one of the 10 largest shipbuilders in the world, is updating its whole inner workings to keep up with the near-future challenges that a Shipyard 4.0 will have to face. Such challenges can be divided into three groups: the vertical integration of production systems, the horizontal integration of a new generation of value creation networks, and the re-engineering of the entire production chain, making changes that affect the entire life cycle of each piece of a ship. Pipes, which exist in a huge number and varied typology on a ship, are one of the key pieces, and its monitoring constitutes a prospective cyber-physical system. Their improved identification, traceability, and indoor location, from production and through their life, can enhance shipyard productivity and safety. In order to perform such tasks, this article first conducts a thorough analysis of the shipyard environment. From this analysis, the essential hardware and software technical requirements are determined. Next, the concept of smart pipe is presented and defined as an object able to transmit signals periodically that allows for providing enhanced services in a shipyard. In order to build a smart pipe system, different technologies are selected and evaluated, concluding that passive and active RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) are currently the most appropriate technologies to create it. Furthermore, some promising indoor positioning results obtained in a pipe workshop are presented, showing that multi-antenna algorithms and Kalman filtering can help to stabilize Received Signal Strength (RSS) and improve the overall accuracy of the system.

The pipes of a ship, which exist in heterogeneous typology and massive number, are one of the key elements in a shipyard, and their real-time monitoring constitutes a prospective Cyber-Physical System (CPS). Their improved location, from production and through their lifetime, can enhance shipyard productivity and safety. Navantia, one of the ten largest shipbuilders in the world, has improved its pipe workshop thanks to the concept of smart pipe, which is defined as an object able to transmit signals periodically that allows for providing added-value services in a shipyard. In this paper it is evaluated the use of passive UHF RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) for implementing the concept of smart pipe. Promising indoor positioning results obtained in a pipe workshop are presented, showing that multi-antenna algorithms and Kalman filtering can help to stabilize Received Signal Strength (RSS) and improve the overall accuracy of the pipe monitoring system in a real-world scenario.

In the era of Industry 4.0, Navantia is creating a Cyber-Physical System (CPS) for enabling automatic event detection in their pipe workshops. The enhanced identification of the numerous pipes of a shipyard and their traceability, from their origin and through their life-cycle, increase productive capacity and efficiency in the processes. The CPS proposed is able to transmit signals periodically, providing a pipe monitoring platform to leverage safety and strategic benefits, and giving support for emerging and innovative applications in process planning. This paper presents the design and implementation of an active UHF Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) real-time monitoring pipe system that makes use of fingerprinting and Received Signal Strength (RSS) stabilization techniques (Kalman filtering and Single-input Multiple-output (SIMO) techniques). Furthermore, it shows a first glimpse of the designed display module and how significant events in the pipe workshop are automatically detected and presented to the operators.

This paper deals with new methods capable of solving the optimization problem concerning the allocation of DNA samples in plates in order to carry out the DNA sequencing with the Sanger technique. These methods make it possible to work with independent subproblems of lower complexity, obtaining solutions of good quality while maintaining a competitive time cost. They are compared with the ones introduced in the literature, obtaining interesting results. All the comparisons among the methods in the literature and the laboratory results have been made with real data.

This work aims to solve the optimization problem associated with the allocation of laboratory samples in plates. The processing of each of these plates is costly both in time and money, therefore the main objective is to minimize the number of plates used. The characteristics of the problem are reminiscent of the well-known bin packing problem, an NP-Hard problem that, although it is feasible to model as a linear programming problem, it cannot be solved at a reasonable cost. This work, proposes the implementation of a heuristic algorithm that provides good results at a low computational cost.