A Framework Towards Realization of Smart Manufacturing Systems

Abstract

Germany’s National Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech) published its proposals for implementing the key initiative Industry 4.0 in 2013, requiring horizontal integration and vertical integration within and across multiple enterprises and end-to-end digital integration across the product lifecycle. Likewise, a smart manufacturing system emphasizes enhancing the capabilities of manufacturing enterprises considering multiple objectives, like resource utilization and productivity, necessitating the realization of the business cycle for supply chain management, product development lifecycle, and production system lifecycle. However, realizing these individual lifecycles and integrating them as part of a smart manufacturing system is not straightforward due to manifold reasons (e.g., difficult to define the interface points necessary to interact with the various systems associated with these lifecycles). The current article elaborates a systematic framework considering these lifecycles to realize a smart manufacturing system. The framework is divided into different layers starting from the process layer at the bottom all the way up to the smart layer at the top. Finally, a use case from the end-to-end additive manufacturing process has been discussed that employs the previously elaborated framework.