Manufacturing strategy is a plan for moving a company from where it is to where it wants to be. Determining the best manufacturing strategy is not easy because of the wide range of choices and constraints a company faces. Manufacturing strategy frameworks or models are helpful because they identify the objects that comprise manufacturing strategy and organize these objects into a structure that...

The Virtual Factory is a job shop scheduling tool that was developed at NC State. It has been found to provide nearoptimal solutions to industrial-sized problems in seconds. Recently, the Virtual Factory was expanded to include interfactory transportation operations which enabled the detailed scheduling of entire multi-factory manufacturing supply chains. Separately, a rolling horizon procedure...

This paper describes a virtual factory in which almost any manufacturing process can be deened, modelled, and then carried out. The results of this are designs of the components manufactured (in the form of geometric models) and part programs and process plans for their manufacture. Both of these can subsequently be reloaded into the virtual factory and amended and enhanced, or|in the case of t...

In this era of digital technology and network communications, paper-based data management can be a bottleneck, slowing factory-wide information transfer. This study explores the evolution of paperless communication in a factory environment and reviews some of the key technologies that contribute to the implementation of a paperless system including digital communication, the virtual factory, co...

Cloud manufacturing (CMfg) is a new-generation service-oriented networked manufacturing model that provides distributed users centralized managed manufacturing resources, ability, and services. CMfg is applied here to a semiconductor manufacturing factory. Benefits are classified into five aspects: cost savings, efficiency, additional data analysis capabilities, flexibility, and closer partner ...

Both researchers and industrial engineers interested in Manufacturing Scheduling and Control (MSC) are frustrated by the complexity of the problem and the wide range of approaches that have been proposed. The research environment often discourages scientists from the extensive effort and hands-on experience needed to gain a realistic view of the problem, and manufacturing engineers have no way ...

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...

This paper studies organizational change following a shift in an industry environment, in the context of how a focused factory adapts to a change in its manufacturing objectives. We use the organizational nature of production operations to suggest that the effectiveness of adaptation will depend on how well the manufacturing requirements of the new objectives match manufacturing capabilities at...

Due to short product life cycles, increasing variety of products and short cycles of leap innovations manufacturing companies have to increase the flexibility of factory structures. Flexibility of factory structures is based on defined factory planning processes in which product, process and resource data of various partial domains have to be considered. Thus factory planning processes can be c...

Numerous and significant challenges are currently being faced by manufacturing companies. Product customization demands are constantly growing, customers are expecting shorter delivery times, lower prices, smaller production batches and higher quality. These factors result in significant increase in complexity of production processes and the necessity for continuous optimization. In order to fu...