Smart Factory - A Step towards the Next Generation of Manufacturing

Abstract

The Stuttgart Model of adaptive, transformable and virtual factories, already implemented in German basic research performed at the Universität Stuttgart has been extended with a new perspective, the so-called "Smart Factory". The Smart Factory approach is a new dimension of multi-scale manufacturing by using the state-of-the-art ubiquitous/pervasive computing technologies and tools. The Smart Factory represents a context-sensitive manufacturing environment that can handle turbulences in real-time production using decentralized information and communication structures for an optimum management of production processes. This paper presents our research steps and future work in giving reality to the envisioned Smart Factory at the Universität Stuttgart. Keywords:Smart Factory; Real-time Factory; Ubiquitous computing PROBLEM STATEMENTIn recent years manufacturing engineering experienced a dramatic change through different parallel running developments. The globalisation and the wish to produce highly customized products lead to a higher proliferation of variants, shorter product life cycles and closer enterprise networks. The short planning horizons and product life cycles induce the decrease of batch sizes and do therefore require a high dimension of manufacturing flexibility. In order to make the right management decisions, real-time information and the direct realisation of the decisions are indispensable.Dynamical changes in the factory, caused through internal or external turbulences like a machine breakdown or an order fluctuation in the market, can often not be taken into account and therefore lead to false decisions on different planning levels. Due to complex interactions of the different functions and departments of the factory and their task-oriented specific data formats, the causes of the dynamic changes exponentiate themselves and their consequences for the factory as well. Thus, high flexibility demands are posed to the manufacturing resources, their planning and control [1].The management control of the complex processes inside and outside of the factory is even today performed through Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) and applications. The increased market turbulences and therefore increased flexibility of manufacturing require complex manufacturing sequences, which are difficult to realise with the today's solutions. Outdated information in the different information systems are leading directly to problems in planning and production.The information management is responsible for the allocation of the job and process specific information like NC programs or machine properties, however the material management is responsible for the supply of components. Tool and device systems are additional mobile manufacturing resources to conduct a manufacturing process. The coordination of many heterogeneous subsystems providing all required resources, materials and information at the work place is necessary to ensure a constant resource load. To achieve this synch...

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