Customised manufacturing on the horizon
The face of the manufacturing industry is changing as consumers demand more tailor-made products. This requires a whole new way of thinking and intensive hardware and software changes for the industry. The EU-funded project 'Distributed cloud product specification and supply chain manufacturing execution infrastructure' (MANUCLOUD) developed an information technology (IT) platform to help production networks make customisable products. It enabled manufacturers to set pre-defined options in order to achieve customisation and upgrade their product range. For this purpose, the project team outlined equipment, processes and factory considerations involved in integrating factory-level IT systems such as manufacturing execution systems. In particular, the project developed IT innovation for the automotive and organic semiconductor industries, which represent two important and growing markets in Europe. For the latter, project members facilitated product configuration of customisable façade elements consisting of organic photovoltaic and light-emitting diode elements. Importantly, MANUCLOUD worked on enhancing manufacturing capabilities of configurable, virtualised production networks based on cloud-enabled, federated factories. It developed an intra-factory environment for cross-fertilisation related to best practices, standards and technologies available in different industries. The inter-factory environment supports on-demand integration of federated production IT systems from different vendors, encouraging joint specification management, shop-floor data transfer, advanced traceability and distributed quality management. The project team also established a cloud connector that links factories to the cloud manufacturing environment. It created a web portal for end users or potential customers who like to select and configure their products through an online marketplace. Small business associations or similar clusters of industrial companies that aim to provide customisable products could stand to benefit considerably from such a platform. It could increase their customer base and help penetrate new markets, in addition to enabling different companies to collaborate on product specifications, order management and manufacturing. This success could eventually help develop IT applications for other industries, creating excellent synergies in the manufacturing sector, meeting customers' needs and stoking the European economy.
