Virtual Factory Research Articles

Virtual factory as a useful tool for improving production processes

Virtual production in the virtual factory is a modern approach to support the production process and offers a possibility to achieve continuous progress at the logistical level of the organization of the production process.The first part of the paper presents an innovative approach of a virtual factory for use in SMEs with one off production. In the following, a virtual factory created on this basis and on real example of a tool shop is explained. With simple settings, the simulation of the defined production plans can be carried out quickly and the simulation results can be used to identify potential bottlenecks and thus to create an optimal production plan. In the third part, the built-in indicators are explained, which clearly characterized the state of the production process in the virtual factory. It is possible to identify the progress of each operation on a time axis. It is also possible to identify the expected utilization of production capacities depending on the various set of production parameters and the utilization of production processes by production capacity. And as the next option it is easy to determine the free production capacities for the selected period.

Study on interoperation and its’ implementation of MES to support virtual factory

The data interoperation between VF (virtual factory) platform and MES (Manufacturing Execution System) plays an important role in intelligent factory construction. The study focuses on the integration strategy between the VF and the MES by incorporating VF manufacturing assets in two ways, i.e., vertical integration (used for production line performance evaluation) and the horizontal integration (cloud manufacturing based on manufacturing assets services discovery and their composition). The VF platform which integrates the manufacturing assets in two manners is designed as the bottom layer in the entire integration framework. It has been applied to build a four tiers integration model in an intelligent production system construction of a domestic ship manufacturer and verified its feasibility and availability.

Complementary industrial cyber-production

A significant aspect of advanced industrial cyber-production (ICP) in the proposed understanding of the Industry 4.0 concept is complementarity. Complementary ICP is a business-system (BS) of mutually beneficial commercial companies interacting with each other. Companies resort to ensuring the complementary of ICP to improve their business processes with the resources of the BS. The problematic issues and methods of organizing a stably functioning complementary ICP are considered. A promising way to improve complementary ICP is the introduction of adaptive management mechanisms for the supply chains of components in the overall BS. Adaptive supply chain management tools optimize inventory and supply logistics. A scheme of interaction between business entities forming complementary ICP is proposed. Adaptive management and complementary ICP bring to life the ideal business approaches of a virtual factory.

An improved A* algorithm for searching the minimum dose path in nuclear facilities

Nuclear power plant workers are inevitably exposed to radiation during routine maintenance work. Therefore, optimization of the walking-path is necessary to reduce the exposure radiation. However, the complex environment of nuclear power plants makes it hard to find the path with the minimum cumulative radiation dose. An improved A* algorithm is proposed in this paper, and it is more advantageous than the traditional A* algorithm. It can not only be suitable for more complicated environments but also obtain a more optimized path. Through the Unity 3D platform, which is an efficient game engine, the simulation experiments are performed based on the environment of a virtual factory. The simulation results show that the improved A* algorithm for searching the minimum dose path is more reliable and more effective. It provides a route with a lower cumulative dose, and the path length is appropriate. In the complex environment, the cumulative dose calculated by the improved algorithm is much smaller than that calculated by the traditional algorithm. Improved A* algorithm has a strong anti-interference ability and performs well in complex environments. It can provide path-planning for nuclear facility staff to reduce radiation exposure.

VREDI: virtual representation for a digital twin application in a work-center-level asset administration shell

The asset administration shell (AAS) has a virtual representation as an asset description and technical functionality as a smart manufacturing service. A digital twin (DT) is an advanced virtual factory technology that has simulation as its core technical functionality, which it performs in the type and instance stages of the physical asset. For providing an efficient information object to the DT application, this paper proposes Virtual REpresentation for a DIgital twin application (VREDI): an asset description for the operation procedures of a work-center-level DT application. For the successful application of DT as a smart factory technology, VREDI is designed to meet four core technical requirements—DT definition, AAS property inheritance, improving the existing asset description, and supporting DT-based technical functionalities. Based on the analysis of the technical requirements, the elements of VREDI are derived and the reference relationships between them are designed. It is then possible to provide the required technical functionality using the VREDI header, and a detailed P4R structure and elements of the body are defined. VREDI is applied to the concept to support the main properties of the DT. It is designed to inherit the AAS properties for efficient information management and interoperability. The application of advanced concepts such as “type and instance” and supporting vertical integration and horizontal coordination overcomes the limitations of the existing asset descriptions. Additionally, VREDI designates elements for supporting six DT-based technical functionalities in the type and instance stages of the physical work center.

Discussion on the Course of Cultural Creative Catering Space design in Higher Vocational Colleges Based on VR technology

The existing teaching resources in higher vocational schools can no longer meet the needs of students. Several opinions of the Ministry of Education on comprehensively improving the quality of higher vocational education point out that it is necessary to make full use of modern information technology to develop virtual factories, virtual experiments, and combine VR technology with vocational education to meet the needs of education and the times. Higher vocational colleges use the emerging and mature VR virtual technology for the classroom teaching of “Interior Design of Catering Space”.

Knowledge-Based Virtual Modeling and Simulation of Manufacturing Processes for Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0 aims at providing a digital representation of a production landscape, but the challenges in building, maintaining, optimizing, and evolving digital models in inter-organizational production chains have not been identified yet in a systematic manner. In this paper, various Industry 4.0 research and technical challenges are addressed, and their present scenario is discussed. Moreover, in this article, the novel concept of developing experience-based virtual models of engineering entities, process, and the factory is presented. These models of production units, processes, and procedures are accomplished by virtual engineering object (VEO), virtual engineering process (VEP), and virtual engineering factory (VEF), using the knowledge representation technique of Decisional DNA. This blend of the virtual and physical domains permits monitoring of systems and analysis of data to foresee problems before they occur, develop new opportunities, prevent downtime, and even plan for the future by using simulations. Furthermore, the proposed virtual model concept not only has the capability of Query Processing and Data Integration for Industrial Data but also real-time visualization of data stream processing.

Simulation-based analysis of shared manufacturing systems

Abstract Advancements in information and communication technologies are encouraging researches in shared manufacturing systems, especially on current high-competitiveness and low-resources scenarios. This paper aims to compare productive resources sharing with traditional manufacturing systems by using a simulation-based optimization model. The model is based on the One Product Integrated Manufacturing paradigm in which the efficiency optimization is pursued by designing ad-hoc virtual factories allocating the best resources available on an existing network. The proposed simulation-based optimization model is capable of identifying the best production path and plan for different distances between network members. Along with a better overall efficiency, it is also possible to argue that dedicated virtual factories ease the identification of problems and allow for improvements without negatively affecting other resources.

Interoperability of the future factory: an overview of concepts and research challenges

Interoperability is a key factor in implementing a future factory. In European Union context interoperability is the ability of organisations to interact towards mutually beneficial goals, involving the sharing of information and knowledge between these organisations, through the business processes they support, by means of the exchange of data between their Information and Communications Technology (ICT) systems. Interoperability of future factory synthesizes software components, application solutions, business processes and business context throughout the diversified, heterogeneous, autonomous procedure, assembled from multiple independent factories or smart/digital factory networks. As a part of research results of EU H2020 vF Interoperation suppoRting buSiness innovaTion (FIRST) project, we present a comprehensive review on basic concepts of factories of the future. The relationships among smart factory, digital factory and virtual factory are studied. In this paper, we define future factory interoperability and outline the research challenges related to interoperability.

Virtual Factory: Digital Twin Based Integrated Factory Simulations

The co-evolution problem, which is known as the concurrent evolution of products, processes and production systems, along with increased complexity and shorter manufacturing operation lifecycles, makes modelling, simulation and evaluation of such operations challenging activities for industry players. This paper presents the concept of a digital twin-based virtual factory (VF) and its architecture to support modelling, simulation and evaluation of manufacturing systems while employing multi-user (collaborative and coordinated) virtual reality (VR) learning/training scenarios. This paper also addresses how digital twin-based virtual factory can support factory lifecycle processes by demonstrating the concept in a wind turbine manufacturing plant, including preliminary evaluation by industry experts.

Products of the Industry 4.0 competence centers

Branch competence centers are organization and jurisdiction forms of company activity to unite digital, smart and virtual factories of the Industry 4.0 according to its specialty. Branch competence centers are for huge infrastructure projects solution where the result is not only the item itself (high-tech product) but also professional cadres, new types of technologies, new forms of the production data representation and other. There is the Industry 4.0 products classification and also specializations of the branch competence centers which are meant to be implemented into the industry by the first hand. Actual for the Industry 4.0 competence centers in digital projection are digital production competence centers, item exploitation accompanying competence centers and standardizing and certification competence centers of products and technologies. There are schemes of the digital companies interaction and the most probable branch competence centers in the item designing industry results are defined.

Low-Code as Enabler of Digital Transformation in Manufacturing Industry

Currently, enterprises have to make quick and resilient responses to changing market requirements. In light of this, low-code development platforms provide the technology mechanisms to facilitate and automate the development of software applications to support current enterprise needs and promote digital transformation. Based on a theory-building research methodology through the literature and other information sources review, the main contribution of this paper is the current characterisation of the emerging low-code domain following the foundations of the computer-aided software engineering field. A context analysis, focused on the current status of research related to the low-code development platforms, is performed. Moreover, benchmarking among the existing low-code development platforms addressed to manufacturing industry is analysed to identify the current lacking features. As an illustrative example of the emerging low-code paradigm and respond to the identified uncovered features, the virtual factory open operating system (vf-OS) platform is described as an open multi-sided low-code framework able to manage the overall network of a collaborative manufacturing and logistics environment that enables humans, applications, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices to seamlessly communicate and interoperate in the interconnected environment, promoting resilient digital transformation.

Prediction and Communication Co-Design for Ultra-Reliable and Low-Latency Communications

Ultra-reliable and low-latency communications (URLLC) are considered as one of three new application scenarios in the fifth generation cellular networks. In this work, we aim to reduce the user experienced delay through prediction and communication co-design, where each mobile device predicts its future states and sends them to a data center in advance. Since predictions are not error-free, we consider prediction errors and packet losses in communications when evaluating the reliability of the system. Then, we formulate an optimization problem that maximizes the number of URLLC services supported by the system by optimizing time and frequency resources and the prediction horizon. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, and show that the tradeoff between user experienced delay and reliability can be improved significantly via prediction and communication co-design. Furthermore, we carried out an experiment on the remote control in a virtual factory, and validated our concept on prediction and communication co-design with the practical mobility data generated by a real tactile device.

Semantic Data Management for a Virtual Factory Collaborative Environment

Recent developments in the area of cyber-physical systems (CPSs) and Internet of Things (IoT) are among the drivers for the emergence of the Industry 4.0 concept, setting new requirements for the architecture, technology, and design approaches of modern industrial systems. Industry 4.0 assumes a higher level of intelligence, and thus autonomy of the systems and subsystems, and a larger focus on the analysis of gathered data for further utilization. The Virtual Factory Open Operating System (vf-OS) project is intended to respond to some of these key challenges, in particular for the smart factory application domain. Complementarily, data and knowledge storage and processing are also in the scope of vf-OS. This article introduces the semantic management component of vf-OS, which aims to analyze the interrelations among stored entities, as well as to define the closeness among them to generate meaningful suggestions, which can be later used by other subsystems or operators in a user-friendly way. The semantic managing system makes use of non relational approaches, namely a graph database, which enables data to be represented as graphs for further semantic querying. The developed prototype and an illustrative application case are also presented.

A nonequilibrium thermodynamics perspective on nature-inspired chemical engineering processes

Nature-inspired chemical engineering (NICE) is promising many benefits in terms of energy consumption, resilience and efficiency etc. But it struggles to emerge as a leading discipline, chiefly because of the misconception that mimicking Nature is sufficient. It is not, since goals and constrained context are different. Hence, revealing context and understanding the mechanisms of nature-inspiration should be encouraged. In this contribution we revisit the classification of three published mechanisms underlying nature-inspired engineering, namely hierarchical transport network, force balancing and dynamic self-organization, by setting them in a broader framework supported by nonequilibrium thermodynamics, the constructal law and nonlinear control concepts. While the three mechanisms mapping is not complete, the NET and CL joint framework opens also new perspectives. This novel perspective goes over classical chemical engineering where equilibrium based assumptions or linear transport phenomena and control are the ruling mechanisms in process unit design and operation. At small-scale level, NICE processes should sometimes consider advanced thermodynamic concepts to account for fluctuations and boundary effects on local properties. At the process unit level, one should exploit out-of-equilibrium situations with thermodynamic coupling under various dynamical states, be it a stationary state or a self-organized state. Then, nonlinear phenomena, possibly provoked by operating larger driving force to achieve greater dissipative flows, might occur, controllable by using nonlinear control theory. At the plant level, the virtual factory approach relying on servitization and modular equipment proposes a framework for knowledge and information management that could lead to resilient and agile chemical plants, especially biorefineries.

Infrastructure as a service for a digital factory, smart factory and virtual factory of the Industry 4.0

The task is to create an infrastructure cloud service to support informatively the completion of project and production tasks in the Industry 4.0 companies. Infrastructure digital factory service has some program components which are necessary to create digital twins of items and cyber and physical systems. Infrastructure smart factory service has some components which are necessary for completion manufacturing of technological operations of the item in automatic mode with cyber and physical equipment. Infrastructure virtual factory service has some components which are necessary to control the item during its remote exploitation by personnel. There is a scheme how to organize cloud infrastructure which is the same for smart and digital factories which are the parts of the Industry 4.0 virtual factory.

Top-level scenario planning and overall framework of smart manufacturing implementation system (SMIS) for enterprise

In the current trend of smart manufacturing, the architecture of smart manufacturing is gradually proposed by many countries in the world. Main components, elements, functions, and relationships of these smart manufacturing architectures have been clarified. However, the specific details of cross matching of different dimensions in these smart manufacturing architectures have not been thoroughly developed. Therefore, a certain part of a plane intersected of system hierarchy dimension and smart characteristics dimension in the model for smart manufacturing (SMS) from a perspective of implementation was selected for detailed study, which is defined as smart manufacturing implementation system (SMIS). Firstly, a top-level scenario planning of SMIS was proposed from perspectives of lean factory, interconnection factory, information factory, transparent factory, virtual factory, and smart factory. Then, an overall framework of SMIS was deduced through a top-level scenario planning of SMIS. Finally, through a case study, the specific implementation process of SMIS is obtained. Through the proposed overall framework and implementation path of SMIS, enterprises can implement intelligent manufacturing step by step. In addition, the top-level scenario planning and overall framework of SMIS are complementary to the SMS proposed by China.

Structure of digital and smart factories of the Industry 4.0

The current task of creating digital factories of the Industry 4.0 through the example of digital factories and smart factories engaged in the item designing is considered. The scheme of competences for the Industry 4.0 company is presented, based on the experience and the performance of the existing companies of the Industry 3.0. The digital factory scheme with project components and its informative support is presented. The smart factory scheme with production components is also given. Based on the results of the analysis of the digital design and manufacturing processes, the set of unique components providing information support to the project and production activity of enterprises is proposed. Implementing general components in the form of ready-to-use services deployed in the community cloud is proposed. Unification of the cloud services components is efficient for the Industry 4.0 companies which are parts of one virtual factory.

Modernization stages of the Industry 3.0 company and projection route for the Industry 4.0 virtual factory

The task is to create the Industry 4.0 company functioning on humanless and paperless principles of production. There are two ways how to complete this task. The option number one is to modernize the existing companies of the Industry 3.0 which means a smooth implementation into informative and production infrastructure of the company the components and technologies which guarantee a slow evolution of research and development institute and item designing companies. The option number two, the example given, is based on solution on some project tasks to choose the components and technologies in their iterative form. There is a scheme how to modernize an Industry 3.0 company and the expected results which allow to project with existing companies new digital factories and smart factories of the Industry 4.0. There is a route how to project systematically a virtual factory of the Industry 4.0 as the main company to support all stages of the item life cycle for different industries. Modernization quality criteria for project and production companies and creation of virtual factories define the economic criterion of company activity.

Development of virtual reality support to factory layout planning

Virtual reality (VR) technology has become ever mature today with affordable and yet powerful hardware. In the manufacturing industry, there is a growing interest of adopting VR to improve existing work procedures. Factory layout planning (FLP) is a long standing area in production engineering that sees great potentials of VR integration. Virtual reality supported layout planning (VLP) is gaining wider attention in research and practice as the virtual environment allows designers to test out “what if” scenarios in relative ease. However, previous research of VLP mostly focus on general layout planning but not the detailed level planning. Also, it is reported that the virtual modeling process is time-consuming and costly. In this study, we propose a point cloud based virtual factory modelling approach for the VLP tasks. It incorporates point cloud representation of physical environment with CAD data to model the virtual factory with the aims of simplifying the modelling process and improving decision-making for the VLP tasks. The proposed approach is exemplified and refined through three industrial cases. The implementations and results of the cases are highlighted and discussed in details. At the end, a general guidance for VLP is extracted and presented for future point cloud based VR support in FLP tasks.