Today, manufacturing industries are trying to improve their competitiveness by combining manufacturing per se with information technology. Virtual reality is being used in product development processes in manufacturing enterprises as a helpful technology to achieve rapid consolidation of information and decision-making through visualization and experience. In this article, 154 articles relevant to virtual reality’s application to manufacturing were surveyed and analyzed. For this, (1) an analysis map was created, based on a virtual reality technology classification and the new product development process; (2) the articles investigated were located on the map; and (3) bibliometric analyses were carried out. Trends in past and present research were examined and future virtual reality research directions and application plans for manufacturing enterprises are discussed.

Smart manufacturing systems (SMSs) are envisioned to contain highly automated and IT-driven production systems. To address the complexity that arises in such systems, a standard and holistic model for describing its activities and their interrelationships is needed. This paper introduces a factory design and improvement (FDI) activity model and illustrates a case study of FDI in an electromechanical component factory. In essence, FDI is a reference activity model that encompasses a range of manufacturing system activities for designing and improving a factory during its initial development and also its operational phases. The FDI model shows not only the dependency between activities and manufacturing control levels but also the pieces of information and software functions each activity relies on. We envision that the availability of these pieces of information in digital form to integrate across the software functions will increase the agility of factory design and improvement projects. Therefore, our future work lies in contributing to standards for exchanging such information.

The worldwide manufacturing industry is facing a wide range of changes. Examples include the diversification of customer demands, increases in labor costs and energy resource costs, environmental pollution, and growth uncertainty. Based on the experience of advanced countries and global manufacturers, smart manufacturing systems (SMS) have the potential to address these. SMS can connect raw materials, production systems, logistic companies, and maintenance schedules using the capabilities of industrial, internet of things (IoT). These connections are creating cyber-physical production systems (CPPS) and linking functions across the entire product lifecycle. These connections are possible today because of the advances in digital manufacturing (DM) technologies that can facilitate factory design, redesign, and analysis in CPPS and help to continuously and efficiently manage factory performance optimization. However, implementing DM today, especially in SMEs, is difficult because the required interface standards and data schema do not exist – unlike other technologies and system such as CAD, PLM, MES, and SCM. This paper describes an approach to design and develop such a data schema based on a reference activity model developed by NIST. The paper then develops a cloud-based DM system based on the data schema. Lastly, its application cases are described, and application effects are discussed.

A digital twin is a virtual model of a process, product, or service, which is one of the key technologies in the fourth industry. The pairing of the virtual and physical world allows analysis of data and monitoring of systems to head off problems before they occur. This paper presents a digital twin architecture and a system based on an interoperable data model. It explains how to build a digital twin for the integrated control monitoring using edge devices, data analytics, and realistic 3D visualization. The system allows continuous collaboration between field engineers for data gathering, designers for modeling 3D models, and layout engineers for layout changing by generating 3D digital twin models automatically. The system helps stakeholders focus on their respective roles to build digital twins. Examples applied to the Korean automotive parts makers are also introduced in this paper. The system can be easily used by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as well as large companies. Beyond simply watching the production site with CCTV, the production site can be intuitively managed based on the digital twin.

PLM (product lifecycle management) is an innovative manufacturing paradigm which allows company's engineering contents to be developed and integrated with all business processes in the extended enterprise throughout the product lifecycle. This allows engineering decisions to be made with a full understanding of the product and its portfolio, including processes, resources, and plants. For today's manufacturing industries, support from software systems is essential for the creation, management, and coordination of all manufacturing-related information. Generally, PDM (product data management) systems are extended to PLM systems to manage all PPR (product, process, resource) information throughout the product lifecycle. To implement PLM in an environment where many different information management systems are being used, an application to exchange data, files, and information between heterogeneous PLM systems is essential, and a standard file format for the exchanges is extremely desirable. In this paper, PPRX is defined as a standard data format using XML for a neutral file containing PPR information, and PLM integrator, which supports PPR information exchanges between commercial heterogeneous PLM systems and other systems is developed. With the proposed implementation and a case study for an automotive company, exchanges of PPR information can be made without loss, which reduces unnecessary effort and helps successful implementation of PLM by supporting effective integration and information sharing.