Factories of the future: challenges and leading innovations in intelligent manufacturing

This special issue includes 16 reference research works in the domain of industrial manufacturing systems and production sites. They include discussion of the state-of-the-art in their challenges on further research and key enabling technologies towards the visionary ‘Factories of the Future’ (FoF).

This special issue opens with a comprehensive analytical paper developed by the guest editors that analyses, examines and interprets the relevance of the 16 contributing research works within the scope of 5 intertwined dimensions: manufacturing systems frameworks, theories and models; the pervasiveness of cyber-physical systems; the critical role of semantic technologies and interoperability; the virtual organisation of manufacturing systems; and the servitisation of manufacturing systems – all concerning to the realisation of the FoF and their leading innovations, including their contribution for the advances beyond the state-of-the-art in Innovations in Intelligent Manufacturing.

The first paper, by Erastos Filos – ‘Four Years of “Factories of the Future” in Europe: Achievements and Outlook’, puts into a historic perspective the efforts of the European Commission to facilitate more networking and innovation within the research and industrial communities in order to jointly pursue and achieve leadership in key enabling and industrial technologies for supporting the competitiveness of the European Factories of the Present and Future by means of public–private partnerships, manufacturing technology platforms, collaborative R&D projects and open innovation models. Furthermore, Filos discusses the need of strategic thinking in terms of road mapping, investment prioritisation and impact creation in research programme activities in order to address the challenges of a world-class manufacturing base.

The second paper, and one of the three contributing to the intertwined dimension of manufacturing systems frameworks, theories and models of the FoF, is presented by Moghaddam and Nof – ‘The Collaborative Factory of the Future’, proposing a framework to enable the engineering and augmentation of collaboration among networks of intelligent and autonomous entities within the e-factory, using the formalism of collaborative control theory.

The third paper is a contributing research work within the first intertwined dimension of the FoF, by Marcelino-Jesus et al. – ‘A Framework for Technological Research Results Assessment’, proposes a framework that intends to assure that project developments reach their desired output accordingly to their identified requirements (goals) and seeks to validate their technological research results through an effective business analysis and by its end-users testing. The effectiveness of the framework is tested by the authors in a textile manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprise.

The fourth paper is contributing to the first FoF analytical intertwined dimension, by Ilie-Zudor et al. – ‘Decision Support Solutions for Factory and Network Logistics Operations’, examines the relationship of decision levels, performance measures and modelling and decision support approaches in two decision support systems aimed at assisting virtual factories and networked logistics operations.

The fifth paper is the first of two research works contributing to the second intertwined FoF dimension named the pervasiveness of cyber-physical systems, by Ghimire et al. – ‘IoT based Situational Awareness Framework for Real-Time Project Management’. It provides a situational awareness framework for efficient project management enabled by IoT technologies capable of reducing the time for decision-making, thanks to their ability to capture events (in real-time) and determine their meaning in support of the project manager. The proposed framework has been validated in a real industrial scenario in the construction industry sector.

The sixth paper, also addressing the intertwined FoF dimension of the pervasiveness of cyber-physical systems, by Delgado-Gomes et al. – ‘Energy Consumption Awareness in Manufacturing Production Systems’, proposes a standard-based architecture and infrastructure to collect and monitor energy data in real-time from manufacturing and production systems, along with a production energy management system capable of facilitating the analysis of the collected data in order to support energy-based decisions for consumption reduction strategies.

The seventh paper, and one of the five contributing research works to the third intertwined FoF dimension addressing the critical role of semantic technologies and interoperability, by Repta et al. – ‘Towards the Development of Semantically Enabled Flexible Process Monitoring Systems’, introduces the design of a semantically enabled system capable of monitoring and analysing flexible or transient processes that typically occur in enterprise environments, in which the human factor plays a very important role in the execution and planning of activities. The semantically enabled system aims to support activity recognition, plan recognition and process mining.

The eighth paper, also contributes with research work to the third intertwined FoF dimension, by Milicic et al. – ‘Autonomous System for PLM (product lifecycle management) Domain Data Exploitation’, presents an autonomous system for automated PLM domain data mining developed by modelling PLM data mathematically and exploiting the advantages of having a semantic model of data, relaxed time constraints and sub-optimal accuracy to tackle the challenges of PLM data analysis and data modelling. The proposed system has been tested in an industrial use case demonstrating the value gained from such autonomous system.

The ninth paper, contributes as well with research work to the intertwined dimension of the critical role of semantic technologies and interoperability of the FoF, by Ferreira et al. – ‘End-to-End Manufacturing in Factories of the Future’, proposes a framework for plug-and-play software adapters to enable an end-to-end manufacturing platform capable of integrating any manufacturer’s systems with such platform, in a way that guarantees seamless interoperability, thus ensuring proper communication and data exchange between all the partners in a manufacturing network throughout the entire manufacturing lifecycle, from supplier search to manufacturing execution and monitoring. The platform use case scenario presented is developed in the furniture manufacturing sector.

The tenth paper, and fourth contributing research work to the third intertwined FoF dimension, by Mehrbod et al. – ‘Matching Heterogeneous e-Catalogues in B2B Marketplaces Using Vector Space Model’, addresses the e-procurement interoperability challenge of matching a buyer with the right product e-catalogues in different e-marketplaces, which may have different structure and classification, and be provided by various suppliers, using a vector space model customised to solve the matching problem of the e-catalogues. The proposed approach and model uses syntactic correlation of e-catalogues and semantic ontologies to expand the matching mechanism with semantic relationships of data attributes.

The eleventh paper is the last research work corresponding to the intertwined dimension of the critical role of semantic technologies and interoperability of the FoF, by Nodehi et al. – ‘ICIF: An Inter-Cloud Interoperability Framework for Computing Resource Cloud Providers in Factories of the Future’, discusses a framework which supports inter-cloud interoperability in a heterogeneous computing resource cloud environment with the goal of dispatching the workload to the most effective clouds available at runtime using a genetic algorithm-based job-scheduler.

The twelfth paper is the first one of the three contributing research works corresponding to fourth intertwined FoF dimension focus on the virtual organisation of manufacturing systems, by Knoke et al. – ‘Collaborative Open Innovation Management in Virtual Manufacturing Enterprises’, addresses the challenging problem of collaborative open innovation in the context of virtual enterprises and illustrates solutions that are based on a knowledge-centric approach and a business innovation reference framework characterised by flexible guidelines, capable of providing useful guidance without hindering freedom and creativity with tight engineering practice.

The thirteenth paper, and second contributing research work to the fourth intertwined FoF dimension, by Shamsuzzoha et al. – ‘Collaborative Smart Process Monitoring within Virtual Factory Environment: An Implementation Issue’, focusses on elaborating a collaborative business process monitoring system within virtual factory environment by means of a dashboard user interface featuring state-of-the-art business intelligence and advanced data visualisation. The proposed monitoring system uses a wizard-driven widget and an extensive array of data visualisation components to create smart and personalised dashboards for the virtual factory broker and partners.

The fourteenth paper is the last contributing research work to the fourth FoF analytical intertwined dimension, by Gorecky et al. – ‘Introduction and Establishment of Virtual Training in the Factory of the Future’, introduces the design, implementation and evaluation of an advanced virtual training system of assembly and service processes, which has been successfully tested in the automotive manufacturing sector.

The fifteenth paper is one of two contributing research works devoted to the fifth intertwined FoF dimension focused on the servitisation of manufacturing systems, by Wiesner and Thoben – ‘Requirements for Models, Methods and Tools supporting Servitisation of Products in Manufacturing Service Ecosystems’, identifies a set of requirements for models, methods and tools to support servitisation through collaboration of manufacturing enterprises and service providers and presents a toolkit of models, methods and tools to realise products and services in virtual enterprises, which has been validated in four test cases.

The sixteenth paper closes the special issue with a last research work contributing to the fifth FoF intertwined dimension, by Angulo et al. – ‘A Service-Oriented Architecture and its ICT-Infrastructure to support Eco-efficiency Performance Monitoring in Manufacturing Enterprises’, describes an ICT-infrastructure based on a service-oriented architecture capable of integrating production and environmental information from diverse data sources in order to support the eco-efficiency performance monitoring of manufacturing enterprises.

The Guest Editors would like to thank the IJCIM Editor-in-Chief as well as his Editorial Board for the opportunity of editing this special issue, and to the authors and referees for their contributions, hoping that this issue becomes a valuable material for those interested in the Challenges and Leading Innovations in Intelligent Manufacturing shaping the ‘Factories of the Future’.

Acknowledgements to the European Commission, DG Research & Innovation, Factories of the Future Public-Private Partnership; the European Factories of the Future Association; IFIP WG5.7 on Advances in Production Management Systems, IFIP WG5.12 on Architectures for Enterprise Integration and IFAC TC5.3 on Enterpri se Integration and Networking.