Virtual factory: an integrated approach to manufacturing systems modeling

Rapid product/process realization and enterprise integration have been identified among the major imperatives for enabling the next generation manufacturing, paradigm. This paper proposes a virtual factory modeling approach to support these imperatives. A virtual factory is defined as an integrated simulation model of major subsystems in a factory, that considers the factory as a whole and provides an advanced decision support capability. It seeks to go beyond the typical modeling of one sub-system at a time, such as the manufacturing model, the business process model and/or the communication network model developed individually and in isolation. A basic virtual factory model of a semi-conductor backend factory has been developed for concept demonstration. Application examples are used to demonstrate the integration between business processes and manufacturing system performance. Future work will move further toward; the development of the complete virtual factory and its industry applications.