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Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition (SMLC) believes that intelligent manufacturing is a kind of manufacturing characterized by enhanced application of advanced intelligent systems, rapid manufacturing of new products, dynamic response to product demand and real-time optimization of industrial production and supply chain network (Coalition, 2011). Its core technologies are networked sensors, data interoperability, multi-scale dynamic modeling and simulation, intelligent automation and scalable multi-level network security. Although the German Industry 4.0 strategy does not explicitly put forward the concept of intelligent manufacturing, it also proposes to integrate enterprise machines, storage systems and production facilities into the cyber physical systems (CPS) to realize the automatic exchange of information, trigger actions and control independently (Reischauer, 2018). Based on the above concepts, we believe that intelligent manufacturing is a new production mode with self-perception, self-learning, self-decision, self-execution, self-adaptation and other functions. It is based on the deep integration of the new generation of information and communication technology and advanced manufacturing technology, running through the design, production, management, service and other manufacturing activities of each link.
According to the functional hierarchy model of manufacturing enterprises proposed by IEC62264 standard (Chen, 2005), combined with field investigation and expert interviews, this paper proposes the intelligent manufacturing system structure, including the following four levels: production line, workshop/factory, enterprise and enterprise collaboration, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Intelligent manufacturing system structure
- (1)
Production line layer: production site equipment and control system, mainly composed of operational technology (OT) network1, sensors, actuators, industrial robots, numerically-controlled machine tools, industrial control system, personnel/tools, etc.
- (2)
Workshop/factory layer: manufacturing execution system and workshop logistics storage system, mainly including OT/IT network, data acquisition and analysis system, manufacturing execution system (MES), asset management system (AMS), logistics management system (LMS), warehouse management system (WMS), logistics and storage equipment, etc.
- (3)
Enterprise layer: product life cycle management and enterprise management and control system, including product lifecycle management (PLM), IT network, data center, customer relationship management (CRM), computer aided technology (CAX), enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain management (SCM), business intelligence (BI), etc.
- (4)
Enterprise collaboration layer: a manufacturing network covering the value chain based on network and cloud applications, mainly including manufacturing resource collaboration platform, collaborative design, collaborative manufacturing, supply chain collaboration, resource sharing, information sharing, application services, etc.