Facilities

Manufacturing Systems and Automation Laboratory (MSA) is a state-of-the-art facility for teaching, research, and development in advanced manufacturing and supply chain design, modeling and management, which incorporates effective and efficient integration and synthesis of automation technologies, human resources, and decision-making models for design, planning, scheduling, and control of production of goods and delivery of services from a holistic perspective. MSA provides an excellent foundation with integrated hands-on applications for undergraduate and graduate-level courses and theses in the area of manufacturing, industrial and systems engineering at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA).

The main areas of research are:

• Modeling and optimization of supply chain and logistics problems with applications in bioenergy, sustainability, defense, manufacturing and healthcare.
• Heuristics and metaheuristics for solving large-scale and complex engineering problems.
• Statistical Quality Control and Reliability.

The MSA Laboratory was furnished with simulation, optimization and statistical software.

• Simulation software: Promodel.
• Optimization software: GAMS.
• Statistical software: Minitab.

The following hardware was acquired: Dell Precision T7600N MT 1300W Workstation.

• Operating System FreeDOS™ Operating System.
• Processor Dual Eight Core XEON E5-2687W, 3.1GHz, 20M, 8.0 GT/s, Turbo+.
• Memory 64GB, DDR3 RDIMM Memory, 1600MHz, ECC (8 x 8GB DIMMs).
• Graphics Dual 2.5GB NVIDIA® Quadro® 5000, QUAD MON, 4DP & 2DVI.

The MSA laboratory also includes six cubicles, conference room, production, inspection, assembly, warehouse (RFID), enterprise resource planning, and shop floor control equipment and software.

Contact Information

Co-Director: Dr. Krystel Castillo
E-mail:Krystel.Castillo@utsa.edu
Phone: (210) 458-6702