Human-centred integration of a stand-alone manufacturing facility in a networked product development environment

Abstract

Recent advances in Internet technology have led to the concept of networked product development. This includes geographically separated teams, co-located over wide area networks for the design, manufacture and marketing of products. Such a distributed environment consists of humans, software and manufacturing machines. Previous research in networked product development assumed that all manufacturing facilities were already networked and remotely accessible, and excluded the non-networked machines. This paper presents a human-centred methodology for virtual integration of stand-alone facilities into a networked environment. The methodology is based on a modified Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model and has been realised through a hybrid architecture which includes stand-alone machines, humans and software agents. A laboratory-based experiment was carried out to validate the integration methodology for a stand-alone injection moulding machine. The role of humans in the integration process at different stages of the experiment has been analysed. Results suggest that virtual integration of stand-alone facilities into a networked environment is both feasible and practical. However, the effectiveness of the integration methodology to solve real world industry problems will need further investigation. The main implication of this research is that humans will continue to play an indispensable role in the evolution towards a global manufacturing environment in terms of flexibility and reusability of legacy based and modern manufacturing facilities.