Virtual reality (VR) has become an important and useful tool in science and engineering. VR applications cover a wide range of industrial areas from product design to analysis, from product prototyping to manufacturing. The design and manufacturing of a product can be viewed, evaluated and improved in a virtual environment before its prototype is made, which is an enormous cost saving. Virtual ...

    Dynamic cellular manufacturing systems,   Mixed-integer non-linear programming,   Production planning, Manufacturing attributes   This paper presents a novel mixed-integer non-linear programming model for the design of a dynamic cellular manufacturing system (DCMS) based on production planning (PP) decisions and several manufacturing attributes. Such an integrated DCMS model with an extensi...

Virtual Reality (VR) is amongst the technologies that have existed as early as the 1960s. Only until recently it has resurrected and is making a comeback into many shapes and forms of our daily lives. This paper describes in general the use of VR tools in the manufacturing sector. Examples of successful adoption of VR technologies in manufacturing companies and organisations are described. Issu...

Virtual reality (VR) refers to an immersive, interactive, multi-sensory, viewer-centered, three-dimensional (3D) computer generated environment and the combination of technologies required to build such an environment (Cruz-Neira, 1993). Related to problems of engineering design and manufacturing, this new technology offers engineers the ability to work with computer models in a three-dimension...

This Science Fiction Prototype explores the idea that the current interest in maker space activities could continue to grow to the point where it causes a sea change in the manufacturing industry as it shifts from centralised production in factories, to a distributed production in people’s communities or homes. This move is a natural extension of a number of research trends, such as the increas...

This paper presents a method for simulating basic manufacturing operations (unload, load, process, move, and store) in a 3D virtual environment. The virtual environment provides a framework for representing a facility layout in 3D, which encapsulates the static and the dynamic behavior of the manufacturing system. The 3D manufacturing objects in the facility are mapped with the nodes in the fra...

The Virtual Organizations paradigm is gaining a growing importance in manufacturing as an instrument to help companies face the challenges of fast evolving market conditions. In this context an overview of current trends in areas such as virtual enterprises, industry clusters, virtual communities, remote supervision and virtual laboratories, and required infrastructures is presented. Fast shop-...

During the analysis and design of manufacturing systems, enterprises are challenged by existing restrictions and the running production. To handle these key issues, different digital tools and approaches have widely been implemented in recent years. By mean of such tools and approaches, a manufacturing system is able to be adapted whenever changes occur. As one of the most important approaches,...

Alcatel-Lucent is a major player in the eld of telecommunications. One of the products it o ers to network operators is wireless infrastructure such as base stations. Such equipment is delivered in cabinets. These cabinets are packed with various pieces of electronics: lters, ampli ers, circuit packs, etc. The exact con guration of a cabinet is dependent upon the circumstances it is being place...