Factory Templates for Digital Factories Framework

Abstract

The global industry is currently facing a growing increase in the competitiveness that forces companies to adopt and develop new strategies and methods of production. Therefore, one of the most relevant challenges in manufacturing engineering is innovatively integrating Product, Process and Factory dimensions and life cycles, in a holistic approach, from design to recycling/disposal and reuse. The challenge faced here is the synchronization and simultaneous generation of all three-domain models by integrating manufacturing engineering knowledge into the early stage of the modelling and planning processes. The next generation of factories has to be modular, scalable, flexible, open, agile and knowledgebased in order to be able to adapt, in real time, to the continuously changing market demands, technology options and regulations. Therefore, integration, flexibility and efficiency requirements and the ability to simulate the production life cycle of a factory play a crucial role in decreasing ramp-up and design times. Furthermore they play a crucial role in improving the performance in the evaluation and reconfiguration of new or existing facilities, in supporting management decisions and providing tools that can guarantee real-time performance monitoring. Therefore, it is necessary to research and implement the underlying models and ideas during the foundation stage of a new conceptual framework, which is designed to be implemented in the next generation of factories. This will be supported by suitable Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and digital infrastructures and should lay down the foundations for future applications in this research area-the industrial paradigm of ''Factory as a Product''. In line with the context presented here, we propose the development of factory templates to address the design and operation practices throughout the entire life cycle of the factory. Different dimensions of the factory templates are presented in this paper; they cover the design and creation of the factory, its remodelling and even the disassembly and recycling stages. This entire study takes into account relevant factors such as costs, quality, time, flexibility, environmental and social issues and energy efficiency. Throughout the article, different kinds of models are presented, which describe and adjust the structure of the analysis, design and development of a factory integration project that helps provide a formal analysis of the system. Furthermore, templates integrating the factory's response to internal and external disturbances will also be developed.

G-Cloud Monitor: A Cloud Monitoring System for Factory Automation for Sustainable Green Computing

“…In terms of manufacturing systems, it is becoming progressively clearer that the future generation of factories needs to be modular, scalable, flexible, open, agile and knowledge-based to allow for real-time adaption to continuously changing market trends and demands, technology options and regulations. In addition, this future generation of factories should be able to integrate each model and strategies capable of adapting their production system to the market's needs, of accelerating system design and of optimizing production [15].…”

Framework for Improving the Design and Configuration Process of Global Operations

“…Moreover, different researchers [14][15] state the need to build models or frameworks of international manufacturing systems that help managers to design and manage their networks, which should take into account the requirements for the next generation of factories such as agility, flexibility, modularity, adaptability, etc. [16]. Hence, the examination of the literature revealed that there is a lack of methods and techniques to accomplish the design and configuration process of a global production and logistic network.…”

“…The framework intends to fill the gap left by the other ones which are really useful in a stable environment but they are not suitable in a market dynamic environment [28] where new facilities implementation [13,16,29] supplier network development [10,30,31] and multi-site network [14,32] are needed.…”

Using Key Alignment Indicators for Performance Evaluation in Collaborative Networks

“…This approach is based on the leading and lagging factors that can influence the system's behavior. In order to fulfill these requirements, the so-called Performance Value Estimator (PVE) tool was used as a predictive control to monitor, learn and imitate the behavior of complex nonlinear systems that do not require profound knowledge of mathematics [19]. This tool, however, does require a thorough knowledge of the system that it will monitor and emulate.…”

“…In a higher mathematical layer of abstraction, the Kalman Filter can be seen as a tool that is used to estimate the instantaneous "state" of a dynamic system perturbed by white noise (random factors). Consequently, by incorporating these two significant approaches it was possible to develop a tool that is able to predict the evolution of the behavior of complex systems, minimizing the different errors and noises that can disturb the normal assessment of the performance of the system as presented by Azevedo and Almeida [19].…”