A conceptual framework for the ubiquitous factory

To cope with today's industrial demands requiring (1) coverage of the whole product life cycle, (2) environmentally conscious manufacturing, (3) competitive sustainability manufacturing, etc., a new manufacturing paradigm should be developed. In this paper, we develop a conceptual framework for a new paradigm called ubiquitous factory (u-Factory) by applying ubiquitous computing technology to the manufacturing system. The u-Factory is based on our previously developed paradigm, called UbiDMR 1, meaning product design, manufacturing, and recycling via ubiquitous computing technology. The essence of u-Factory can be represented by three key phrases: (1) information transparency, (2) autonomous control, and (3) sustainable manufacturing. This paper comprises two parts. In the first part, we show the derivation procedure for the framework of the u-Factory using problem analysis of the current manufacturing system, design consideration and derivation of the architecture for the ubiquitous factory. In the second part, to demonstrate the validity and impact of the derived architecture, we develop the TO-BE model for manufacturing resource management. This is followed by a comparison with the AS-IS model.