Diego Rovere

Virtual factory manager

The current challenges in manufacturing engineering are the integration of the product/process/factory worlds (data and tools) and the synchronization of their lifecycles. Major ICT players already offer all-comprehensive Product Lifecycle Management suites supporting most of the processes. However, they do not offer all the required functionalities and they lack of interoperability. An answer will be given by the development of a Virtual Factory Framework (VFF): an integrated virtual environment that supports factory processes along all the phases of its lifecycle. This paper will focus on the Virtual Factory Manager (VFM) that acts as a server supporting the I/O communications within the framework for the software tools needing to access its data repository. The VFM will ensure data consistency and avoid data loss or corruption while different modules access/modify partial areas of the data repository at different times. Finally, an industrial case study will show the potentiality of the VFM.

Factory Layout Planner

The Manufuture strategic research agenda identifies two fronts of intense and growing competitive pressure for European manufacturing: in the high-tech sector, we face other developed countries and, on the other hand, in more traditional sectors, low-wage countries pose a serious threat. One of the response envisioned and strongly promoted is the development of ground-breaking Information and Communication Technologies meant to support new approaches to industrial engineering. Clearly drawing inspiration from this vision, the tool presented in this paper, the Factory Layout Planning, aims to be such kind of technology, enabling the multi-site, multi-level distributed design of factory layout and performance simulation. This paper gives an overview on the main features, in terms of concrete software characteristics of this tool, that can be considered one of the cornerstones for the Next Generation Factory.

Towards sustainability assessment: Reference data model for integrated product, process, supply chain design

Sustainability is an emerging factor companies are called for considering in their business according to the growing people-awareness about the impact of their behaviour as customers against environmental, social and economic issues. However, companies seldom manage to focus on sustainability all along the design and decisional process due to lack of proper sustainability measurement systems and/or inability to propagate this analysis on all the actors involved in the extended production system definition. This paper presents a novel approach aimed at supporting an integrated product, production system and supply chain design for sustainability. This goal will be pursued by, first, providing the system architecture of a system that supports the design activities taking place at the abovementioned three levels and, second, a data model encompassing all the required entities of the design for implementing the sustainability assessment.

A Digital Fabrication Infrastructure Enabling Distributed Design and Production of Custom Furniture

Thanks to the implementation of advanced technologies within simple-to-use responsive design interfaces, everyone can now purchase perfect-fit products from home. This is possible in several sectors, thanks to the great developments in information and communications technology (ICT) and the wide use of cloud computing. The furniture sector is yet scarcely influenced by this trend, still lacking of systems able to translate parametric design libraries in optimally scheduled, ready to be manufactured projects, correlated by list of operations and specifications for on time customers’ order fulfilment. This paper aims at describing an application model of the mass customization paradigm within the furniture sector, focusing on field-level solutions implemented to create a fully operative “design to manufacturing in one step” process. The integration of several software tools, market ready or specifically developed for the need, paved the way for the design of a seamlessly integrated production system able to manage the complexity of a mass customization environment. The proposed IT infrastructure is intended to run distributed design and production facilities fulfilling the requirements of a highly variable customer demand both in terms of product requirements and buying experience. The developed system has been tested within the context of a shopping mall where the design area and the manufacturing site have been installed for several days.