A Primer on the Factories of the Future

Abstract

In a dynamic and rapidly changing world, customers' often conflicting demands have continued to evolve, outstripping the ability of the traditional factory to address modern-day production challenges. To fix these challenges, several manufacturing paradigms have been proposed. Some of these have monikers such as the smart factory, intelligent factory, digital factory, and cloud-based factory. Due to a lack of consensus on general nomenclature, the term Factory of the Future (or Future Factory) has been used in this paper as a collective euphemism for these paradigms. The Factory of the Future constitutes a creative convergence of multiple technologies, techniques, and capabilities that represent a significant change in current production capabilities, models, and practices. Using the semi-narrative research methodology in concert with the snowballing approach, the authors reviewed the open literature to understand the organizing principles behind the most common smart manufacturing paradigms with a view to developing a creative reference that articulates their shared characteristics and features under a collective lingua franca, viz., Factory of the Future. Serving as a review article and a reference monograph, the paper details the meanings, characteristics, technological framework, and applications of the modern factory and its various connotations. Amongst other objectives, it characterizes the next-generation factory and provides an overview of reference architectures/models that guide their structured development and deployment. Three advanced communication technologies capable of advancing the goals of the Factory of the Future and rapidly scaling advancements in the field are discussed. It was established that next-generation factories would be data rich environments. The realization of their ultimate value would depend on the ability of stakeholders to develop the appropriate infrastructure to extract, store, and process data to support decision making and process optimization.

Keywords: Industry 4.0; Internet of Things; advanced manufacturing; artificial intelligence; cyber manufacturing; cyber physical systems; data driven manufacturing; intelligent manufacturing; smart factory.

Figure 1

Diagram depicting the four industrial revolutions and degrees of system sovereignty.

Figure 2

Emerging technologies enabling the development of the Future Factory.

Figure 3

Cyber Manufacturing Systems (CMS).

Figure 4

Characteristics of the Future Factory.

Figure 5

Automation pyramid.

Figure 6

Horizontal Integration.

Figure 7

End-to-end integration.

Figure 8

Classical automation pyramid laid side by side with a CPS-based automation model.

Figure 9

Reference Architectural Model Industrie 4.0 (RAMI 4.0). Source: Plattform Industrie 4.0.

Figure 10

The seven OSI layers.

Figure 11

TSN components.

Figure 12

AAS showing an asset (3D Printer).

Figure 13

Common intra-factory asset administration shell.

Figure 14

Common inter-factory (factory-to-factory) asset administration shell.

Figure 15

A network of assets wrapped in their AAS.

Figure 16

AAS metamodel for a 3D printer.

Figure 17

Building blocks.

Figure 18

An implementation of a digital twin.

Figure 19

Layers of transformative technologies shaping the Future Factory.

Figure 20

Cloud–fog–edge layer architecture.

Figure 21

Machine learning (ML) algorithms’ acronyms: support vector machines (SVM), K-nearest neighbors (KNN), logistic regression (LR), Naïve Bayes multinomial (NBM), principle component analysis (PCA), singular value decomposition (SVD), frequent pattern-growth (FP-Growth).

Figure 22

The neXt Future Factory Test Bed at University of South Carolina.