Costs Management of Research and Development in the Factories of the Future Using Virtual Reality

The costs of research and development (R&D) activities represent a large part of the product costs. These activities require new methodologies to keep up with the development of the business environment and the factories of the future (FoF). One of the most significant tools used in this domain is a Virtual Reality (VR) in a manufacturing environment which called Virtual Manufacturing (VM). This paper aims to examine the impact of (VM) on mitigating risks and costs management of R&D activities which support the FoF. As well as, the study performed a technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) to determine the importance of improving R&D activities in FoF. There are many criteria used to assess the impacts of (VM) on costs management of R&D activities and decrease the risks in FoF. The experimental results of this work showed that the full application of (VM) technique in R&D activities leads to almost 99 % performance improvement whereas the partial application of VM leads to improvement by 68.7 %. Thus, this paper is considered one of the best contributions which provide an evaluation of impact of VM on R&D activities to meet changing customer requirements. In addition, it can serve as a valuable reference in academic research which is interested in sustainable business.