Universal manufacturing: enablers, properties, and models

Abstract

Globalisation of the manufacturing and service industry has increased complexity of the flow of materials and goods, magnified dependency on the underlying network, and made the industry more vulnerable to the changing market conditions. As manufacturing and service industry undergo transformation, an opportunity to rethink the design of future enterprises has emerged. Six enablers of miniversal manufacturing are discussed: digitisation, open manufacturing, service orientation, shared manufacturing, sustainability, and resilience. These enablers will form properties of universal manufacturing, with adaptability and affinity that are emerging. A universal manufacturing enterprise will be formed based on the distributed manufacturing facilities. The emerging standards for interoperability of systems needed for universal enterprises are discussed. The data and modelling standards will enable the synthesis of digital models into universal enterprises. Though there is no global standard for the representation of digital manufacturing models in a cloud, the existing process modelling methodologies and languages may offer the solutions needed. The evolution of production systems is illustrated with three snapshots, dedicated manufacturing, distributed manufacturing, and universal manufacturing. The modelling approach followed in this paper is bottom-up rather than top-down followed in the literature on modern manufacturing.