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The global trend in manufacturing has shifted from a manufacturing-centric process toward a user-centric process. This has resulted in a shorter lifespan and a high product replacement rate of any consumer product. Germany has introduced the concept of Industry Revolution 4.0 (IR 4.0) to convert manufacturing processes and mechanisms into cyber-physical systems (CPS). Digital factory, being the first step into CPS and IR4.0, is being targeted as the most important evolution of the manufacturing industry. This paper defines digital factories and their differences between other similar domains such as smart factories, CPS, and virtual factories. The requirements and goals of a digital factory are explained in detail to facilitate future digital factory tool developments. Furthermore, the current challenges faced in the implementation of the digital factory are proposed to be approached by adapting an interoperable virtual reality technology. This paper emphasizes the usage of virtual reality (VR) in simulating a digital factory that aids in the decision-making and efficient operation of a manufacturing facility. Furthermore, recommendations gathered from previous studies for developing VR-based digital factory tools are also explained in detail in this paper.

The digital factory represents an indispensable method for factory layout planning. Based on digital factory methods numerous tools for layout planning have been developed in the last years, which enable the space organization of the assets of a factory based on 2D/3D data. Such tools have a difficulty to show the whole layout plan and to interact and to handle with the factory assets in intuitive and realistic manner. This paper presents and discuss a VR-based approach for efficient factory planning. This approach enables fully immersion in the virtual environment represented factory and an intuitive interaction with factory equipment. Hence, the layout planning can be assessed in real time regarding e.g. efficiency of surface use, martial flow, ergonomics. The presented approach has been designed based on the many years experience of the author as digital factory engineer in the industry and based on intensive discussion with industry experts.

This study evaluates the use of virtual reality (VR) platforms, which is an integrated part of the digital factory for an industrial training and maintenance system. The digital factory-based VR pl...

On the basis of the research on the development tendency of modern automobile industry and the analysis of the present situation of new product’s development and management in Dongfeng Honda, the paper discusses the necessity and importance of the establishment of a virtual simulation system for general assembly based on digital factory under the situation of SPEED development process. And it expounds how Dongfeng Honda apply virtual manufacturing technology to the new products to achieve rapid industrialization from the perspectives of virtual technology and digitalization.

The idea of a digital factory is closely combined with the concept of virtual or digital twins. The development and implementation of virtual twins is facilitated by the so-called game engines which offer huge possibilities in the virtual space. These game engines provide programming interfaces to several development environments. This paper describes early steps of the development of a virtual twin for a 6-axle industrial robot including a user interface. This user interface was evaluated. The results of the evaluation are the basis for a bold redesign, which is described in this paper shortly.

Der Fabrikplanungsprozess stellt einen ��u��erst komplexen und stark interdisziplin��ren Vorgang dar, an dem neben dem Projekt-Kernteam viele weitere Stakeholder beteiligt sind. Dieser Prozess kann in einzelne Phasen unterteilt werden, die allerdings nicht immer einheitlich definiert sind und in denen die unterschiedlichsten Methoden und Werkzeuge zum Einsatz kommen. Durch den technologischen Fortschritt hat Virtual Reality mittlerweile eine so hohe Technologiereife erreicht, dass der Einsatz als zus��tzliches Tool im Fabrikplanungsprozess durchaus Sinn machen kann. Es ist allerdings unklar, in welchen Phasen VR als sinnvolle Unterst��tzung eingesetzt werden kann, wie VR-Visualisierungen ausgehend von der verwendeten Fabrikplanungssoftware erstellt werden k��nnen sowie welche Auswirkungen auf den Fabrikplanungsprozess dadurch zu erwarten sind. In dieser Arbeit wird deshalb zu Beginn der Fabrikplanungsprozess im Detail analysiert und ein einheitliches Phasenmodell definiert. Zus��tzlich werden die technologischen Grundlagen von Virtual Reality er��rtert, notwendige Software f��r VR vorgestellt sowie der State-of-the-Art in der Fabrikplanung und ��hnlichen Einsatzgebieten recherchiert. Da keine definierten Vorgehensmodelle f��r die Erstellung von VR-Erfahrungen aus Fabrikplanungsanwendungen existieren, werden in einem Workshop Anforderungen, die ein solches Vorgehensmodell erf��llen soll, als Entwicklungsgrundlage definiert. Ausgehend von diesen Anforderungen sowie der vorgestellten VR-Software werden drei Vorgehensmodelle zur VR-Visualisierung von Planungsergebnissen aus Vistable, Plant Simulation und Autodesk Factory Design Utilities entwickelt und hinsichtlich dem Erf��llungsgrad dieser Anforderungen bewertet. Die beiden am besten bewerteten Vorgehensmodelle werden in vier Use Cases einem Praxistest unterzogen sowie den Fabrikund Lagerplanern von der Fraunhofer Austria Research GmbH vorgestellt. Mit Hilfe von Frageb��gen und Experteninterviews werden zum Abschluss dieser Arbeit die zu erwartenden Potentiale durch den Einsatz von VR im Fabrikplanungsprozess, m��gliche Einsatzphasen im definierten Fabrikplanungsprozess sowie bevorzugte Einsatzszenarien ermittelt. Zus��tzlichen werden aber auch Verbesserungsvorschl��ge f��r VR-allgemein und die entwickelten Vorgehensmodelle sowie noch zu bew��ltigende Herausforderungen beim Einsatz von VR abgefragt und dokumentiert. Das Ergebnis dieser Arbeit ist, dass zwei der entwickelten Vorgehensmodelle in der Praxis anwendbar sind und der Einsatz von VR in der Fabrikplanung durchaus sinnvoll sein kann. Wie sehr allerdings VR diesen Planungsprozess ver��ndern wird, h��ngt stark von zuk��nftigen Entwicklungen im Hardund Software-Bereich dieser Technologie ab und muss in realen Fabrikplanungsprojekten ausgetestet werden., The factory planning process is an extremely complex and highly interdisciplinary procedure, involving many other stakeholders in addition to the project core team. This process can be divided into single phases, which are often not defined uniformly and in which a wide variety of methods and tools are used. Due to the technological progress, Virtual Reality has reached a high technological maturity degree, so the use of it as an additional tool can certainly make sense. However, it is not clear, in which phases VR can be used meaningful as an additional tool. Furthermore, it is not clear, how VR-visualizations can be created based on the factory planning software and what effects can be expected on the factory planning process. At the beginning of this thesis, the factory planning process is analysed in detail and a phase model is defined. Additionally, the basics of Virtual Reality are discussed from a technological view, software for Virtual Reality is presented and the state-of-the-art of VR in the factory planning process and related fields of application is investigated. Due to the fact, that there are no standardized procedure models for the generation of VR-experiences from factory planning applications, the requirements, which should be fulfilled from such a procedural model, are defined in a workshop as a development basis. Based on the software for VR and the requirements, three process models for VR-visualization out of Autodesk Factory Design Utilities, Vistable Touch and Plant Simulation are developed. These process models are evaluated with regard to the degree of fulfilment of these requirements. The two best rated procedural models are tested in practice in four use cases and are presented to the factory and warehouse planners at Fraunhofer Austria Research GmbH. At the end of this thesis, questionnaires and expert interviews are used to determine expected potentials due to the use of VR in the factory planning process, possible operational phases in the defined factory planning phase model as well as preferred application scenarios. Additionally, suggestions for improvements for VR in general and the developed procedural models as well as challenges to overcome before using VR are queried and documented. The result of this work is, that two of the developed process models are applicable in practice, and that the use of VR can be helpful in the factory planning process. However, it is not clear, how much VR will change the planning process. This depends on future developments in the hardware and software sectors of this technology and VR has to be tested in real factory planning projects.

In the context of the Industry 4.0 and of the digital factory, digital twin and virtual reality represent key technologies to design, simulate and optimize cyber-physical production system and interact with it remotely or in a collaborative way. Moreover, these technologies open up new possibilities which can be involved in the co-design and ergonomics studies of workstations, based on Industry 4.0 components like cobots. In order to satisfy these needs and to create dynamic and immersive virtual environment, it is therefore necessary to combine the capacities of the digital twin to perform simulation of the production system with the capacities of the immersive virtual environment in term of interactions. This paper proposes a co-simulation and communication architecture between digital twin and virtual reality software, then it presents a use case on a human-robot collaborative workplace design and assessment.

The Industry 4.0 vision anticipates that internet technologies will find their way into future factories replacing traditional components by dynamic and intelligent cyber-physical systems (CPS) that combine the physical objects with their digital representation. Reducing the gap between the real and digital world makes the factory environment more flexible, more adaptive, but also more complex for the human workers. Future workers require interdisciplinary competencies from engineering, information technology, and computer science in order to understand and manage the diverse interrelations between physical objects and their digital counterpart. This paper proposes a mixed-reality based learning environment, which combines physical objects and visualisation of digital content via Augmented Reality. It uses reality-based interaction in order to make the dynamic interrelations between real and digital factory visible and tangible. We argue that our learning system does not work as a stand-alone solution, but should fit into existing academic and advanced training curricula.

Therefore, in order we are to better orient and introduce the future workplace, it is very useful tool of immersive technologies CAVE. It is a device which creates virtual reality. The device CAVE as the product does not offer any manufacturer. The device is necessary to design with the components from different suppliers. The article deals with the experience of CAVE design and using CAVE in cooperation with the Tecnomatix Jack or Process Simulate and the Microsoft Kinect tracking system. In the article are used the results of their own research of CAVE designing with the active and passive projections and with the creation of the 3D view.

Wang, X., 2018. Virtual reality of 3D digital factory based on coastal environment. In: Liu, Z.L. and Mi, C. (eds.), Advances in Sustainable Port and Ocean Engineering. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 83, pp. 507–512. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. This paper establishes a complete virtual reality based 3D digital factory, to improve the production and training efficiencies and reduce labour intensity. First, the 3D interactive modes in virtual reality scenes are designed, especially those in roam and device operation in detail. Then, the real-time rendering problem of large-scale scenes in digital factories is solved from the aspects of model optimization and dynamic preloading and undoing of models. Finally, the automatic semantic annotation algorithm of 3D models is proposed by using deep learning methods and Internet images, which improves the development efficiency. The results show the feasibility and effectiveness of application of virtual reality technologies in d...

Zusammenfassung Der vorliegende Artikel erläutert den Einsatz von Virtual Reality in der Fabrik- und Anlagenplanung, anhand einer am Institut für Maschinelle Anlagentechnik und Betriebsfestigkeit der TU Clausthal entwickelten Vorgehensweise. Dazu werden die bei Anwendung des beschriebenen Vorgehensmodells in Praxisprojekten feststellbaren Verlagerungen von Modellnutzungsintensität und Erstellungsaufwand beschrieben und interpretiert.

The paper focuses on the research & development of the Digital Factory solutions for industry. The developed methodology and solution of Factory Mock Up (FMU) is presented. The results of research and development cover design of assembly system, its processes, simulation model, ergonomic analysis etc. In the paper are presented the solutions developed in the framework of co-operation with industrial partners like Volkswagen Slovakia, Thyssen Krupp – PSL, Whirlpool. The advantages, restrictions and way of utilization of Digital Factory solutions are also shown in the paper.

Mit zunehmender Verbreitung von Virtual-Reality (VR)-Technologien seit Beginn der 90er Jahre hat es viele Ansatzpunkte gegeben, VR für Aufgaben in der Planung und Begleitung industrieller Produktion einzusetzen. Dieser Fachbeitrag gibt einen Überblick über den aktuellen Stand des Einsatzes von Virtual Reality in Produktionsanwendungen. Im Bereich der Produktentwicklung werden lediglich die Produkteigenschaften betrachtet, welche die Produzierbarkeit beeinflussen.

An international group of industrial companies and research institutions is actually creating an integrated platform for industrial process control, process design, staff training and product design. By linking simulation and virtual reality, project IRMA (A Configurable Virtual Reality system for multi-purpose industrial manufacturing applications) is to improve manufacturing performance. The core integration module is the Delfoi INTEGRATOR™, a PC based message broker used to link a virtual environment and a production/failure database scenario, to different simulations (QUEST and ARENA material flow simulation, IGRIP robot kinematics simulation) or to programmable logic controls using their OPC interface.

Learning Factories are becoming popular as tangible measures to teach engineering methods while making use of them in an industrial-like environment. Their core component is usually a factory demonstrator, users are physically working with. For factory planning such approaches can hardly be adapted, due to long lasting realization phases.

Turbulent influencing factors — based on market requirements and technological demands — lead to a permanent change and improvement in the factory processes, manufacturing systems and layouts. New investigations in manufacturing show that the application of new machining processes and tools require a systematic and stepwise change of the layout and the organisation in order to activate the economic potentials. It is evident that continuous improvement and optimisation with the perspective to medium-term objectives can be realised by means of new methods and new computerised systems for factory planning. Digital models and the technology of virtual reality allow the continuous planning of changes in factories. This paper includes results of the planning of future manufacturing systems and the systematics of continuous planning based on digital modelling and virtual manufacturing.

In the last years an enormous progress has been made in improving the visual quality of virtual worlds through approximations of former computationally expensive global illumination (GI) effects. Nevertheless, the handling of dynamic or even deformable content in massive data sets illuminated and shadowed by massive light sources still represents some kind of killer application. Besides the gaming industry, these demands are especially made in digital factory planning applications, where moreover preprocessing times and additional manual preparations of the virtual scenarios have to be avoided to keep a short time to production and accordingly to market. Therefore, we present an efficient rendering pipeline and concept for the creation of a plausible illumination for the digital factory, able to handle dynamic content in massive data sets at a large extent, that are plausibly illuminated and shadowed with a lot of light sources and encoded with high dynamic range information at interactive frame rates in a high resolution. The most important aspects for a visually plausible result are analysed on basis of real images of a factory and at last evaluated with the achieved results. Finally, we give a detailed overview and analysis of the performance of the incorporated techniques on modern graphics hardware to identify the main bottlenecks and key points for future research and conclude with an extensive reflection of the benefits of a plausible illumination for digital factory planning applications.

DiFac is an IST research project (FP6-2005-IST-5-035079) funded by the European Commission within the 6(th) Framework Programme priority called "Collaborative Working Environment". The project aims to develop an innovative Collaborative Manufacturing Environment (CME) for the next generation of Digital Factory in order to support the competitiveness of SMEs. A digital factory represents a persistent hybrid community where a rich virtualised environment representing a variety of factory activities will facilitate the sharing of factory resources, manufacturing information and knowledge, and help the simulation of collaborative design, planning, production and management among different participants and departments. The DiFac CME will be used as a framework to support group work in an immersive and interactive way for three manufacturing activities: product development; factory design and analysis; and training of workers. Furthermore it will provide support for data analysis, visualization, advanced interaction and presence within the VE, ergonomics analysis and collaborative decision-making.

Unternehmen sehen sich durch Globalisierung und zunehmenden Wettbewerb neuen Herausforderungen gegenübergestellt. Diesen Herausforderungen kann mit Investitionen in neue Technologien begegnet werden. Virtual Reality (VR) ist eine solche Technologie, die vielfältige Nutzenpotentiale aufweist, welche in der Vergangenheit größtenteils von großen Unternehmen (beispielsweise Automobilherstellern) erschlossen wurden. Problematisch war und ist ein positiver Nachweis der Wirtschaftlichkeit vor dem Hintergrund von teilweise hohen Hardwarepreisen sowie Aufwänden zur Einarbeitung, zur VR-Systempflege und zum VR-Systembetrieb. Durch sinkende Hardwarepreise steht diese Technologie mittlerweile auch kleinen und mittelständischen Unternehmen zur Verfügung. Das in diesem Beitrag vorgestellte Modell hat zum Ziel, VR-Anwendungen einer Bewertung zugänglich zu machen und stellt dazu ein Vorgehen bereit, mit dem der Unternehmensnutzen der Technologie ermittelt werden kann.

Planungs- und Gestaltungsaufgaben in der "Digitalen Fabrik" erfordern die Zusammenarbeit mehrerer Experten über fachliche und räumliche Distanzen hinweg. Mit dem Einsatz von Methoden der Virtuellen Realität (VR) kann nicht nur ein intuitiver Zugang zu den einzelnen Planungswerkzeugen geschaffen werden, vielmehr wird den Planungsexperten hiermit eine Kooperationsplattform zur Verfügung gestellt, die ein effizientes gemeinsames Planen ermöglicht.

The application of new information and communication technologies in manufacturing systems gives companies the possibility to create value-added services in the usage phase, for example through remote operations or virtual facility management. In this regard a communication platform for a digital factory was developed to make diagnoses of the machine, changes of programs or process optimisations possible in less time by using an integrated control system, visualisation and surveillance. The precise reproduction of the production system in a virtual world makes it possible to analyse and optimise all influences on the real production in that virtual world. Especially the integration of virtual reality applications to provide 3D visualisations of the machine behaviour leads to a higher level of immersion for the user. Modern value-added services allow to boost the economic success of a product. The article introduces two new prototypes for TeleX applications which launch new opportunities of service business to both industrial and private customers.

Turbulent influencing factors - based on market requirements and technological demands - lead to a permanent change and improvement in the factory processes, manufacturing systems and layouts. New investigations in manufacturing show that the application of new machining processes and tools require a systematic and stepwise change of the layout and the organisation in order to activate the economic potentials. It is evident that continuous improvement and optimisation with the perspective to medium-term objectives can be realised by means of new methods and new computerised systems for factory planning. Digital models and the technology of virtual reality allow the continuous planning of changes in factories. This paper includes results of the planning of future manufacturing systems and the systematics of continuous planning based on digital modelling and virtual manufacturing.

The Industry 4.0 vision anticipates that internet technologies will find their way into future factories replacing traditional components by dynamic and intelligent cyber-physical systems (CPS) that combine the physical objects with their digital representation. Reducing the gap between the real and digital world makes the factory environment more flexible, more adaptive, but also demand broader skill of human workers. Interdisciplinary competencies from engineering, information technology, and computer science are required in order to understand and manage the diverse interrelations between physical objects and their digital counterpart. This paper proposes a system architecture for a mixed-reality based learning environment, which combines physical objects and visualization of its digital content via Augmented Reality. It allows to make the dynamic interrelations between real and digital factory visible and tangible. The proposed learning environment is not meant to work as a stand-alone solution, but should enrich existing academic and advanced training curricula.