digital_manufacturing.pdf

Digital manufacturing: history, perspectives, and outlook G Chryssolouris, D Mavrikios, N Papakostas, D Mourtzis*, G Michalos, and K Georgoulias Department of Mechanical Engineering and Aeronautics, University of Patras, Patras, Greece The manuscript was received on 23 May 2008 and was accepted after revision for publication on 20 June 2008. DOI: 10.1243EM1241 Abstract: Digital manufacturing has been considered, over the last decade, as a highly promis- ing set of technologies for reducing product development times and cost as well as for addres- sing the need for customization, increased product quality, and faster response to the market. This paper describes the evolution of information technology systems in manufacturing, outlin- ing their characteristics and the challenges to be addressed in the future. Together with the digi- tal manufacturing and factory concepts, the technologies considered in this paper include computer-aided design, engineering, process planning and manufacturing, product data and life-cycle management, simulation and virtual reality, automation, process control, shopfloor scheduling, decision support, decision making, manufacturing resource planning, enterprise resource planning, logistics, supply chain management, and e-commerce systems. These tech- nologies are discussed in the context of the digital factory and manufacturing concepts. Keywords: information technology, computer-integrated manufacturing, computer-aided design, computer-aided engineering, computer-aided manufacturing 1 INTRODUCTION The need for reduced development time together with the growing demand for more customer-oriented product variants have led to the next generation of information technology (IT) systems in manufactur- ing. Manufacturing organizations strive to integrate their business functions and departments with new systems in an enterprise database, following a unified enterprise view [1]. These systems are based on the digital factory/manufacturin