Smart Factory Production Process Using Virtual Cost Optimization

Customisation, time to market, agile production, and flexible assets are crucial for the success of modern businesses. By embracing customisation and implementing agile production strategies, companies can adapt quickly to market changes. Flexible production must enable real-time decision-making to determine the optimal path for product manufacturing. To achieve this, an optimisation method that considers critical aspects of production is essential. In this work, the utilisation of a groundbreaking optimisation approach called “Virtual Cost” is proposed, and its practical application is demonstrated. The Smart Factory Production Process using Virtual Cost calculates the optimal path by considering all relevant business parameters (resources, cycle time, energy consumption, energy efficiency, etc.) that require optimisation at a specific time. Importantly, these parameters can evolve dynamically over time. When the Virtual Cost is built upon optimisation goals that contradict each other (e.g., speed and power consumption), each parameter is weighted, meaning the process will favour one goal over another. The showcased Smart Factory Production Process, which includes the developed Virtual Cost method, demonstrates significant adaptability to both the factory and the product. It is easily scalable, comprehensible, and modifiable. By leveraging the Virtual Cost method, production is continuously optimised based on specific factory requirements, resulting in improved resource consumption, time efficiency, and the ability to embrace batch-size one production. The process quickly responds to product changes, enabling customer-centric production and providing transparent feedback from the production line. Through precise product tracking via Asset Administration Shell, comprehensive information about each production step is delivered with the product. The showcased Smart Factory Production Process demonstrates promising results, including up to a 60% increase in the test factory production speed and reduced downtime through seamless adjustment of the production schedule.