Unit 10 Virtual Manufacturing and Networked Manufacturing课件.ppt

Unit 10 Virtual Manufacturing and Networked Manufacturing;events in the world. TV is of finite dimension. Computers have become infinite in dimension. The number of places you can access and the wealth of information you can get and the variety of things you can accomplish have reached astounding proportions already. The advent and progress of the internet technology and the associated servers have paved the way for us to travel through the information superhighway. Let us first examine the underlying backbone of the change, namely information technology. The hardware and software advances are many fold. Computers have become more powerful, versatile but smaller. The evolution is from simple data processing machines of the 1950s to the knowledge processing systems. Software and hardware advances are very significant. A number of advances such as Internet, World Wide Web servers, digital libraries, interactive learning tools, virtual classrooms and multimedia, etc. , are revolutionizing our;daily life. It is needless to stress their importance in manufacturing. Knowledge is power and IT is facilitating the storing, processing and transmission of knowledge. IT will dramatically affect the way we manufacture, educate and market. Let us now examine the globalization process. Society has changed from a closed market and a closed manufacturing place to an open one. It is no longer necessary to have centralized manufacturing facilities. The functions could be distributed. Design could be done in France, and manufacturing could be in Mexico, Indonesia or some other country where the costs could be possibly kept low; production planning could be done in USA; marketing strategies evolved in Hong Kong and service parts produced in mainland China. Such a globalization leads to a cross-cultural dialogue between governments, corporations, societies and most importantly individuals. We as manufacturing researchers have;concentrated on manufacturing processes, materials and