A Diagnosis and Evaluation Method for Strategic Planning and Systematic Design of a Virtual Factory in Smart Manufacturing Systems

Technology developments are ushering in the introduction of smart manufacturing (SM) systems, unmanned production lines and sustainable production. SM will minimize human intervention and allow systems to control sites intelligently. To realize such an era, many global manufacturers are trying to develop different SM methods. The virtual factory is a digital-manufacturing-based SM system that predicts, solves (improves) and manages (controls) problems with overall production tasks by linking them to the actual sites, in a virtual environment. This paper proposes a strategic plan and a systematic design for the efficient implementation and application of the virtual factory to real manufacturing companies. In addition, an efficient and systematic means of introducing the virtual factory is presented via diagnosis, analysis and establishment of the strategy, implementation plan and system design case with an electronic parts manufacturing company.