Smart Factory Reference Model for Training on Industry 4.0

Abstract

Technological disruption and rising labour costs are impacting the future of manufacturing in Malaysia and its competitive position. Nevertheless, the understanding on smart manufacturing in the context of Industry 4.0 is still lacking in the academia and industry. Thus, this work describes the development of a smart factory reference model as a guide to upgrading an existing production system towards the vision of Industry 4.0 using readily available components. The reference model consists of (i) a principle solution describing the concept of a smart factory and (ii) a working prototype demonstrating the functionality of a smart factory. The smart factory prototype is a modular production system connected to a server accessible locally or through the internet and able to produce up to eight variants of a product. The SCADA software was used to interface various systems together and create the user interface. The prototype was evaluated using VDMA Industry 4.0 Toolbox. This work provides a way to integrate theory and practical Industry 4.0 applications into tertiary education curricula. It showcases the potential applications, benefits and proof of concept of new technologies for industry adoption.

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“…The levels of maturity in the implementation of the various dimensions in the production management area were presented as a proposed research tool. Its design is based on the VDMA Industry 4.0 Toolbox solution (Anderl, 2016;Rauen et al, 2016;Chong et al, 2018;Wang et al, 2018;Mohammad et al, 2019). Its main advantage is to visualize the steps -the levels of advancement of the organization in the implementation of a dimension in a specific area.…”

“…Considering the possibilities within production management systems, we have a whole set of tools: from ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems -enabling the management of production information at a strategic and financial level, through MES (Manufacturing Execution System) systems -systems for managing and monitoring production processes in real time, PPC (Production Planning and Control) systems -a tool that enables production planning and monitoring to ensure productivity and efficiency, up to the full compatibility of these systems and common communication and all this to ensure cost minimization and increase efficiency (Chong et al, 2018;Kryukov et al, 2022;Mohammad et al, 2019;Rauch et al, 2020).…”

“…contains a set of elements related to M2M (Machine to Machine) machine-tomachine and man-to-machine (Man2M) communication. Such components as infrastructure, machine integration, PLCs (Programmable Logic Controller), user interfaces, data processing capability, visualization and use of augmented reality, networking, Internet, industrial Ethernet interfaces that is, data communication standards in industrial automation that allow various devices to be connected over an Ethernet network(Stawiarska et al, 2021), field bus interfaces or data communication standards used to connect devices on a single bus(Mittal et al, 2018;Mohammad et al, 2019), interaction and cooperation between different systems within a single open ecosystem (open system interconnections) are aspects that need to be considered in the M2M or a Man2M communication dimension(Grufman, Lyons, 2020).…”