Factory Layout Planner
Factory Layout Planner
Factory Layout Planner
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Diego Rovere
University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland
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Abstract
The Manufuture strategic research agenda identifies two fronts of intense and growing competitive pressure for
European manufacturing: in the high-tech sector, we face other developed countries and, on the other hand, in more
traditional sectors, low-wage countries pose a serious threat. One of the response envisioned and strongly promoted
is the development of ground-breaking Information and Communication Technologies meant to support new
approaches to industrial engineering. Clearly drawing inspiration from this vision, the tool presented in this paper, the
Factory Layout Planning, aims to be such kind of technology, enabling the multi-site, multi-level distributed design
of factory layout and performance simulation. This paper gives an overview on the main features, in terms of
concrete software characteristics of this tool, that can be considered one of the cornerstones for the Next Generation
Factory.
Keywords
Digital factory, layout planning, distributed, simulation
1 Introduction
Seek To Reform The Environment, Not Man [Full82].
This famous sentence clearly mirrors the objective of our research: we hold out to innovate the
environment in which a factory designer perform his activity, without constraining his creativity
(the man). The availability of innovative technologies, such as distributed applications or multi-
touch technologies, is enhancing the possibility to support collaboration in software applications,
and offers the opportunity to create innovative environments.
The tool, described in this paper, wedge technologies to become a real new environment
supporting the design lifecycle of a factory layout. The Factory Layout Planner (FLP) allows the
multi-user, network-based visual creation and management of a factory layout: the design team
can co-operate on the same layout both acting on a common multi-touch device, or collaborating
from different part of the world.
[Bat07][Boe06] have envisioned and presented the rise of a new generation of planning tools,
such as the FLP, as concrete solutions towards the cost-effective and rapid creation, management
and use of the Next Generation Factory. Moreover, a key element in this revolution, is the
capability to provide an “adherent to reality” representation of manufacturing process, as gain
highlighted in the “Manufuture Strategic Research Agenda” [EC04].
Based on this preliminary considerations, hereinafter the reader can find a complete overview of
the main features of this software solution: functionalities available, interaction modes, standards
adopted and hints on design choices, so to provide a comprehensive picture of the FLP.
The user connects to a server using the dialog show in Figure 1 and can choose to create a new
document or edit an existing one. The documents are stored on the central server and the
application maintains an updated local copy. Once the connection to the server is established, the
application also synchronizes its local copy of the catalogue of available equipments (templates)
that are presented in the catalogue browser (left of the working area in Figure 2). This update is
done in background, without blocking the usage of the application while the entire catalogue is
downloaded. On the contrary, if some template is required to open an existing document, the
download of such element is prioritized to ensure that the latest version of the resource is
available.
Beside the catalogue, an inventory of factory elements represented as a hierarchical tree list is
available with a list of all the users currently connected to the same server. The catalogue is
managed with drag & drop support: new objects can be added to the virtual scene simply
dragging the icon from the catalogue to the 3D view. Properties of any element, its position and
orientation, are all available by double clicking on the element itself.
Most of the application window is occupied by the 3D view of the layout. The user can interact
with it using the mouse and the desired interaction mode:
• Camera: in this mode, the mouse is used to explore the layout: pan, zoom and rotate
function are available for natural navigation in the 3D scene.
• Edit: this is the main mode used to modify the layout. The objects can be selected,
grouped, moved, rotated and their properties viewed and edited. A snap grid can
optionally be enabled to assist the positioning of the objects.
• Connection: when this mode is enabled, the user can connect objects to create logical
relationship useful for the DES simulation. The available ports are shown and the user
can connect then tracing lines from one port to the other.
3.1 Data storage
The catalogue is a collection of different type components (machines, resources, operators…)
used for the layout, described by a set of files. For each component the FLP stores:
•Image file (JPEG) used to visualize the component in the catalogue browser
•XML file defining objects relationships with frames1 and joints and referring to
geometrical aspect (3D XML)
• VRML file to define the 3D appearance of the objects (such file format is usually easy
exportable from any CAD system)
• Java class in a JAR file that describe the behaviour of a component
• Properties file for DES parameters and ports.
An important aspect of the data concerns naming. In fact the FLP can handle components
without the need of knowing their details (the catalogue is dynamically extensible without
changing the FLP); further the files building a component come from different independent
sources (e.g. CAD system, XML editors, Java programming environment). For those reasons, it
happens that the same item (port, frame or property) is cross referenced in more than one file.
This requires a consistent naming within a template.
For example: a new component “roughing machine” has a specific parameter “roughing-level”.
Defining this parameter as a property in the properties XML file enables the FLP to show the
parameter in a dialog and let the used change its value. The same parameter is used in the Java
class defining the behaviour of the component during DES simulation.
Finally all the files mentioned above are listed in a catalogue.xml with the version used by client:
this technique allows to discover if the user local copy is synchronized with the server one. Thus
for each item it is specified the template name, a label, the URL of the 3D XML, the URL of the
preview image, the URL of the properties file, the template category, a description, the version
number and a list of URLs of required resources. The XML of the catalogue is validated against
XSD [XSD04] (catalogue.xsd) to ensure the data to be coherent with the data model used by the
FLP.
The FLP uses a XML file for each factory layout. This file contains all the instances of objects
that are in the layout. Those objects are described by an identifier (ID), a reference template
name, the properties values, a position and all the connections to other objects.
1
Positioning reference: represents a reference system in terms of location and orientation
Once again, data binding between files is done by an unique name: data contained in the
catalogue are referred thanks to the template name, that is unique in the layout XML file. Thus,
for a complete description of the system, both the layout and the catalogue information are
needed.
Figure 4 : A running DE
ES simulationn
7 Usage scenario
In this section we will describe a sample usage scenario of a reconfiguration of a shoe factory
plant: we can assume that two teams, one at the headquarters and one at the plant location, must
cooperate to evaluate the performance of a new layout. They can use their browser to open the
page of FLP from the company intranet and start the application clicking on the appropriate link.
If necessary, the application is downloaded and installed or update to ensure that both team use
the same version. The headquarter team has worked on different layout proposal and saved them
on the FLP server and now they can discuss with the remote team. They enable the Demo mode -
to gain control of the camera - and show to the remote team the changes they want to implement.
When finished they exit the Demo mode and the remote team can propose, for example, a
different number of working station because they know they have more workers that are able to
do a certain task: they can modify it on their PC and the changes appears immediately on the
other PC. Lastly, it is possible to activate the DES mode to evaluate the throughput of the new
layout using the DES simulation.
8 Conclusions
This paper has presented an innovative tool for the factory layout planning. The capability to
support a collaborative editing of the layout (possibly distributed) in a 3D environment, and the
integrated DES possibilities, makes FLP to be an high value adding tool for cost-effective and
rapid creation, management and use of the Next Generation Factory.
This paper highlights how all the efforts in the design and development of this tool went in the
direction of creating a comfortable environment for the layout designer and his team.
The possibility to interact with the FLP from different part of the world, for person belonging to
different department of a company, allow to state that this tool allow multi-site multi-user multi-
level collaborative and distributed management of a factory layout.
Acknowledgement
This work has been partly funded by the European Commission through NMP Project DOROTHY: Design Of
customeR dRiven shOes and multi-siTe factorY (No. FP7-NMP-2007-SMALL-1). The authors wish to acknowledge
the Commission for their support. We also wish to acknowledge our gratitude and appreciation to all the DOROTHY
project partners for their contribution during the development of various ideas and concepts presented in this paper.
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