The paper presents a general concept of smart design and production control as key elements for efficient operation of a smart factory. The authors present various techniques that aid the design process of individualized products and organization of their production in the context of realization of the mass customization strategy, which allows a shortened time of development for a new product. Particular attention was paid to integration of additive manufacturing technologies and virtual reality techniques, which are a base of the so-called hybrid prototyping.

This paper presents possibilities of application of the immersive VR and the haptic technologies during the complex process of design and virtual prototyping of the manufacturing workplaces characterized with a high level of ergonomic quality. Two case studies are presented: a workplace for stud welding and a set of two workplaces, for hole drilling and manual assembly. In the first case study, haptic device with force feedback effect was used to improve ergonomics of main operator activities. In the second case study, immersive approach was used, namely Head-Mounted Device, tracking and gesture recognition systems, to test and improve ergonomics of the whole workplace. Application of VR techniques allows to present the virtual prototype of the workplace in its real operation environment, limiting the need for use of real mock-ups. Therefore, Virtual Reality allows to conduct a number of analyses related to designed prototypes, such as: dimensions of devices and possibilities of adjustment to height of the human operator, and arrangement of control and signaling devices according to the rules of ergonomic design. To conduct these analyses, full interaction between user and workplace must be programmed, including collision detection, kinematics of the devices and possibilities of activating their various functions in relation with other objects in the virtual scene

The paper presents results of research conducted on a batch of additively manufactured individualized openwork wrist–hand orthoses made of thermoplastics and designed automatically based on 3D-scanned geometry of a given patient. The aim of the work was to establish an automated design process and find a reliable set of parameters for rapid and affordable manufacturing of usable orthoses on popular 3D printers, with little or no supervision of the process. The paper presents motivations, methodology of automated design, plan of manufacturing and testing, the obtained results in terms of process stability, fit and assessment by patient and strength of the obtained orthoses. Almost 100 manufacturing processes of ready-to-use orthosis parts were carried out in a controlled environment and their results were analyzed thoroughly. The results are promising, as most of the obtained products fulfil the strength criteria, although not all of them meet the economic criteria. As a result, a recommended set of process parameters was determined. These parameters were included in a prototype of the automated design and in a production system developed by the authors.

The article presents the results of research on the impact of virtual reality on the effectiveness of training employees performing production tasks. The research was carried out in the Smart Factory laboratory, which is a model of a smart factory functioning in accordance with the concept of Industry 4.0. A prototype VR system and its building process were presented, starting with the digitization of the laboratory, through logical programming and connecting peripheral devices. The subject, scope and plan of conducting comparative studies of operator training at both real production stations and in a virtual environment were presented. As a criterion for comparing the results achieved by individual groups subject to the study, the following were adopted: the time to complete the production task and the number of non-compliant products achieved in real conditions.