Abstract
Rapidly developed information technologies (IT) have continuously empowered manufacturing systems and accelerated the evolution of manufacturing system paradigms, and smart manufacturing (SM) has become one of the most promising paradigms. The study of SM has attracted a great deal of attention for researchers in academia and practitioners in industry. However, an obvious fact is that people with different backgrounds have different expectations for SM, and this has led to high diversity, ambiguity, and inconsistency in terms of definitions, reference models, performance matrices, and system design methodologies. It has been found that the state of the art SM research is limited in two aspects: (1) the highly diversified understandings of SM may lead to overlapped, missed, and non-systematic research efforts in advancing the theory and methodologies in the field of SM; (2) few works have been found that focus on the development of generic design methodologies for smart manufacturing systems from the practice perspective. The novelty of this paper consists of two main aspects which are reported in two parts respectively. In the first part, a simplified definition of SM is proposed to unify the existing diversified expectations, and a newly developed concept named digital triad (DT-II) is adopted to define a reference model for SM. The common features of smart manufacturing systems in various applications are identified as functional requirements (FRs) in systems design. To model a system that is capable of reconfiguring itself to adapt to changes, the concept of IoDTT is proposed as a reference model for smart manufacturing systems. In the second part, these two concepts are used to formulate a system design problem, and a generic methodology, based on axiomatic design theory (ADT), is proposed for the design of smart manufacturing systems.
Highlights
We propose to redefine smart manufacturing (SM) and clarify the relevant concept of smartness as follows: “Smart manufacturing (SM) is a type of manufacturing paradigm for the enhanced smartness of systems, in which digital technologies are used to empower the physical things in manufacturing products, access virtual assets over networks for expanded manufacturing capabilities, support data-driven decision making in any domain and at any level of manufacturing operations, and reconfigure systems to adapt to the changes in customer needs when making products”
To promote the application of digital technologies in manufacturing, for small and medium sized companies, and for continuous improvement practice, we aimed to develop a generic methodology for the design of smart manufacturing systems
A concise definition of smart manufacturing (SM) was provided (based on the newly developed concepts of digital triad (DT-II) and Internet of Digital Triad Things (IoDTT), which covers the common requirements and enabling digital technologies of various manufacturing systems that are customized for specific applications
Summary
In the 2020s, traditional manufacturing systems face strong pressure to enhance their capabilities in handling the growing complexity and scale of—and changes to—the manufacturing environment, and the manufacturing industry has entered the digital era, due to the adoption of advanced information technologies and operation technologies [6]. The historical advancement of manufacturing technologies has been widely discussed [7,8], and the following trends have become common sense to researchers in manufacturing: (1) products become increasingly advanced, diversified, and with fragmented demand; (2) global manufacturing capabilities become saturated in comparison to customers’ needs, and manufacturing enterprises face ever-increasing competitions regionally and globally; (3) the scope and complexities of manufacturing businesses are continuously increased, and this forces enterprises to adopt more advanced technologies to automate manufacturing operations and decision making in various domains and levels of business;
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
