Like a gigantic, impossibly complex but wonderfully efficient factory, East Asia churns out a vast array of manufactured goods with world-beating price-quality ratios. But this is not a series of national efforts. Manufacturing processes that used to be performed in single factories (mostly in Japan and Korea) have been fractionalised and dispersed across the region – creating what Baldwin (200...

So far the desktop manufacturing is mainly done as islands of process modules or in some seldom cases the desktop factory is created in form of manufacturing line. Tampere University of Technology has been working on such desktop factory concepts for years and come out a microFactory concept (TUT-μF). The paper discusses architectural aspects and proposes some solutions for them. It specifies a...

Amongst the consistently fluctuating conditions prevailing today, changeability represents a strategic key factor for a manufacturing company to achieve success on the international markets. In order to cope with turbulences and the increasing level of incalculability, not only the flexible design of production systems but in particular the employee as enabler of change provide the focus here. ...

In this report, we present our work in visualization and augmented reality technologies supporting collaboration in manufacturing automation. Our approach is based on (i) analysis based on spatial models of automation environments, (ii) next-generation controllers based on single board computers, (iii) cloud-, serviceand web-based technologies and (iv) an emphasis on experimental development us...

This paper proposes a model based continuous improvement methodology to support efforts to achieve sustainable manufacturing, i.e., to increase efficiency and reduce environmental impact of manufacturing systems. Past efforts have provided guidance at a high level or with a focus on products. This paper focuses on supporting efforts for manufacturing, in particular, at the factory level. A fram...

The so-called smart factory is a novel paradigm that is rapidly gaining ground in scenarios for factories of the future. Many manufacturing companies try to raise the level of smartness by considering a number of aspects related to the smart factory. However, there is a lack of field-oriented systematic research to help them fit the interest of industry for promoting interest and diffusion of s...

Various methods for controlling manufacturing systems have been proposed, but until now the problem could not be considered as being solved. This may be due to the lack of a sound mathematical foundation. Therefore, an algebraic modelling method to describe manufacturing systems is developed. The result of this system modelling is a state equation which can be used for the design of closed loop...

Virtual factory (VF) can provide a total solution for shortening manufacturing cycle time and achieving customer satisfactions. Hence, many world-class companies dedicate themselves to establish their own virtual factories. However, it is di€ficult to implement a virtual factory because of the lack of assistant tools. A three-tier architecture based colored timed Petri net emulator is developed...

As high technology product market becomes more dynamic and competitive, chip manufacturers need to bring products to customers in short periods of time. As a result, semiconductor fabrication plants regularly contain lots with priority status. These lots have several unique characteristics compared to other production lots, both in terms of lot transport and scheduling on tools. These lots cons...

One of the most widespread techniques to evaluate various aspects of an existing manufacturing system is discrete-event simulation (DES). However, building a simulation model of a manufacturing system needs great resource expenditures. Automated data collection and model buildup can drastically reduce the time of the design phase as well as support model reusability. Since most of the manufactu...