Conversion of a Manufacturing Lab as a Learning Factory to Educate Factories of the Future Concept

Abstract

AbstractThe demand for enhancing the flexibility and efficiency of the manufacturing industry has rapidly increased over the years due to mass customization to cater to the needs of society. The conventional manufacturing industry could not survive these rapid changes. Though, the manufacturing sector is the forerunner to embrace technological paradigm shift, which paves the way for Industry 4.0 or the 4th industrial revolution. With Industry 4.0, now many world leaders are moving towards a new concept called “Factories of the Future” (FoF), which predominantly engages with the cyber-physical world to digitalize manufacturing while maintaining a strong link between hardware and the cyber-physical world. To perform any manufacturing, engineering teaching/learning programs should introduce these concepts with some practical exposure, which will enable students to contribute to the manufacturing industry all around the world. Therefore, this study focuses on converting an old manufacturing lab into a learning factory to promote FoF concept. This is achieved by enabling existing manufacturing machines to be digitally connected via Industry 4.0 while creating connections with the other machines to create flexible manufacturing systems (FMS). Competencies in integrated scheduling of machine centers and autonomous material handling systems were also explored. Furthermore, the study suggested that the conversion of the manufacturing lab needs to be done in many different integration platforms.