Performance Factory – a new approach of performance assessment for the Factory of the Future

Abstract

Factories of the Future have to be flexible, adaptable and committed to shorter product life-cycles and varying demand patterns in order to be competitive. Thus, three essential activities – Monitoring, Optimization and (Re-)Design – are seen to become even more important and shall be supported. This work focuses on the Monitoring activity which aims at assessing the current performance of a factory. Monitoring activity is seen as a basis for strategic planning and decision making in the Factory of the Future. Unfortunately, traditional performance assessment approaches neither sufficiently consider the data related to flexible production nor provide enough support for their specific needs. Referring to this need, a new measurement and assessment framework, called Performance Factory (PerFact) and its current implementation state, is presented in this work. In addition, the Virtual Factory Framework Project (VFF) is presented. VFF is in line with the concept of the Factory of the Future and envisions the development of a Virtual Factory in order to support and improve the real factory. This in turn allows and promotes the application of PerFact by selectively assessing the real performance or the performance of planning scenarios.