Manufacturing has evolved and become more automated, computerised and complex. In this paper, the origin, current status and the future developments in manufacturing are disused. Smart manufacturing is an emerging form of production integrating manufacturing assets of today and tomorrow with sensors, computing platforms, communication technology, control, simulation, data intensive modelling and predictive engineering. It utilises the concepts of cyber-physical systems spearheaded by the internet of things, cloud computing, service-oriented computing, artificial intelligence and data science. Once implemented, these concepts and technologies would make smart manufacturing the hallmark of the next industrial revolution. The essence of smart manufacturing is captured in six pillars, manufacturing technology and processes, materials, data, predictive engineering, sustainability and resource sharing and networking. Material handling and supply chains have been an integral part of manufacturing. The anticipated developments in material handling and transportation and their integration with manufacturing driven by sustainability, shared services and service quality and are outlined. The future trends in smart manufacturing are captured in ten conjectures ranging from manufacturing digitisation and material-product-process phenomenon to enterprise dichotomy and standardisation.

The paper reviews applications of data mining in manufacturing engineering, in particular production processes, operations, fault detection, maintenance, decision support, and product quality improvement. Customer relationship management, information integration aspects, and standardization are also briefly discussed. This review is focused on demonstrating the relevancy of data mining to manufacturing industry, rather than discussing the data mining domain in general. The volume of general data mining literature makes it difficult to gain a precise view of a target area such as manufacturing engineering, which has its own particular needs and requirements for mining applications. This review reveals progressive applications in addition to existing gaps and less considered areas such as manufacturing planning and shop floor control.

The traditional production paradigm of large batch production does not offer flexibility toward satisfying the requirements of individual customers. A new generation of smart factories is expected to support new multivariety and small-batch customized production modes. For this, artificial intelligence (AI) is enabling higher value-added manufacturing by accelerating the integration of manufacturing and information communication technologies, including computing, communication, and control. The characteristics of a customized smart factory are: self-perception, operations optimization, dynamic reconfiguration, and intelligent decision-making. The AI technologies will allow manufacturing systems to perceive the environment, adapt to the external needs, and extract the process knowledge, including business models, such as intelligent production, networked collaboration, and extended service models. This article focuses on the implementation of AI in customized manufacturing (CM). The architecture of an AI-driven customized smart factory is presented. Details of intelligent manufacturing devices, intelligent information interaction, and construction of a flexible manufacturing line are showcased. The state-of-the-art AI technologies of potential use in CM, that is, machine learning, multiagent systems, Internet of Things, big data, and cloud-edge computing, are surveyed. The AI-enabled technologies in a customized smart factory are validated with a case study of customized packaging. The experimental results have demonstrated that the AI-assisted CM offers the possibility of higher production flexibility and efficiency. Challenges and solutions related to AI in CM are also discussed.

Data have been utilised in production research in meaningful ways for decades. Recent years have offered data in larger volumes and improved quality collected from diverse sources. The state-of-the-art data research in production and the emerging methodologies are discussed. The review of the literature suggests that production research enabled by data has shifted from that based on analytical models to data-driven. Manufacturing and data envelopment analysis have been the most popular application areas of data-driven methodologies. The research published to date indicates that data mining is becoming a dominant methodology in production research. Future trends and opportunities for data-driven production research are presented.

Manufacturing is undergoing transformation driven by the developments in process technology, information technology, and data science. A future manufacturing enterprise will be highly digital. This will create opportunities for machine learning algorithms to generate predictive models across the enterprise in the spirit of the digital twin concept. Convolutional and generative adversarial neural networks have received some attention of the manufacturing research community. Representative research and applications of the two machine learning concepts in manufacturing are presented. Advantages and limitations of each neural network are discussed. The paper might be helpful in identifying research gaps, inspire machine learning research in new manufacturing domains, contribute to the development of successful neural network architectures, and getting deeper insights into the manufacturing data.