Emmanuel Francalanza

Emmanuel Francalanza was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy under the auspices of the Faculty of Engineering, University of Malta last month. His research involved the investigation of complex issues relating to supporting factory planners during the design of factories and their underlying manufacturing systems. The particular research problem tackled by this research concerned factories that have to deal with product ranges which evolve over time due to continuously changing customer demands.

Through his doctoral thesis, titled ‘Digital factory planning for a range of products: A changeability knowledge-based integrated product development approach’, Dr Ing. Francalanza contributed a knowledge-based approach for designing changeable manufacturing systems.

This approach was based on the principles of integrated product development, and concurrently considers business, product design and manufacturing issues. He was supervised by Prof. Dr Ing. Jonathan Borg from the University of Malta and Prof. Dr Ing. Carmen Constantinescu from the Fraunhofer IAO in Germany. During his research studies he conducted a number of visits and research discussions at the University of Stuttgart and Fraunhofer IAO in Germany.

He will be continuing his research in the field of manufacturing engineering as a lecturer at the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, University of Malta. His PhD was sponsored by a scholarship grant by the University of Malta.