Digital Factory for Human-oriented Production Systems, 2011 The Integration of International Research Projects

Digital factory is a comprehensive approach providing methodologies, models and tools that support manufacturing enterprises in the rearrangement of their organizational structures to deal with expected changes in manufacturing processes and markets.

Digital Factory for Human-oriented Production Systems investigates the impact of the digital factory through a consideration of the entire product/process lifecycle, and the broad network of product engineering, material and component suppliers, manufacturing equipment suppliers, and customers involved in current and next generation manufacturing. It covers the utilization and integration of:

• human body ergonomics models;
• production system discrete event simulation;
• 3D/virtual and augmented reality visualization;
• collaborative design tools;
• automatic data capture; and
• knowledge management systems based on semantic web ontologies integrated by a continuous data management.

The coverage of various types of factory and manufacturing phases, representations and simulations allows researchers in academia and industry to perform a dynamic analysis and up-to-date modeling of the processes involved. Digital Factory for Human-oriented Production Systems describes the tools that allow a move towards the integrated digital factory and underlines the business impact that companies can obtain by adopting these tools. As well as benefiting international organizations, the proposed methodologies and technologies have also been developed in order to facilitate their adoption by small or medium-sized businesses, making them relevant to all product engineers and managers who want improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their enterprises.

Dr Luca Canetta is a researcher and lecturer at the Scuola Universitaria Professionale, Svizzera Italiana (SUPSI), in the Department of Innovative Technology, ICMSI. He holds a Laurea in Industrial Engineering from the University of Bergamo (1999) and a PhD in Demand Modelling and Operations Management from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne (EPFL) (2009). At SUPSI it is responsible of various courses in Operations Managements taught at the Precision Manufacturing Master of Science, the Industrial Engineering Bachelor of Science and various Master of Advanced Studies (Industrial Engineering and Operations; Sustainable Pharmaceutical Operations and Engineering; Reliability Maintenance and Safety in collaboration with Politecnico of Torino). He was invited lecturer for various master of science courses and postgraduate courses (Master of Science in Business Information Systems at the HEC Lausanne, Executive Master Program in Management of Logistical Systems (IML) at the EPFL, Executive MBA in Management of Technology at the EPFL).  His main research interests are production system robustness, customer behaviour analysis, modelling of market demand scenarios and sustainable mass customisation. He is the author of many journal and conference articles.

Since 2002, Dr Claudia Redaelli has worked for ITIA-CNR, Institute of Industrial Technology and Automation, National Research Council of Italy as dissemination and communication manager and human factors specialist. She holds a university degree in Foreign Languages and Literature with a specialization in Cross-Cultural Psychology, a Master’s in Information Science for those who graduated in liberal arts. As dissemination manager in different European and IMS projects, she develops the dissemination strategies and plans the communication both inside the consortium and for a more general audience with help from institutional websites, events and public presentations of theproject r