In the era of Industry 4.0, manufacturing and production systems were revolutionized by increasing operational efficiency and developing and implementing new business models, services, and products. ...Concretely, the milestone set for Industry 4.0 was to improve the sustainability and efficiency of production systems. By extension, the emphasis was focused on both the digitization and the digitalization of systems, providing room for further improvement. However, the current technological evolution is more system/machine-oriented, rather than human-oriented. Thus, several countries have begun orchestrating initiatives towards the design and development of the human-centric aspect of technologies, systems, and services, which has been coined as Industry 5.0. The impact of Industry 5.0 will extend to societal transformation, which eventually leads to the generation of a new society, the Society 5.0. The developments will be focused on the social and human-centric aspect of the tools and technologies introduced under the framework of Industry 4.0. Therefore, sustainability and human well-being will be at the heart of what comes next, the Industry 5.0, as a subset of Society 5.0. Industry 5.0 will build on the foundations laid during Industry 4.0 by emphasizing human-centered, resilient, and sustainable design. Consequently, the authors in this research work, through a critical literature review, aim to provide adequate reasoning for considering Industry 5.0 as a framework for enabling the coexistence of industry and emerging societal trends and needs. The contribution of this research work extends to the provision of a framework to facilitate the transition from Industry 4.0 to Society 5.0.
Digital Twins, as a technological pillar of Industry 4.0, correspond to the virtual representation and bi-fold a real-time communication of a digital counterpart of a process or a physical object. As ...the industrial and manufacturing landscape is shifting towards Industry 5.0, huge investments focusing on enhancing interactions between Operators and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) occur. Yet, Metaverse strengthens these interactions as it enables human immersion into a virtual world. Furthermore, it examines the very promising relationships between the CPS, through the digital twins of these CPS. Therefore, this short review presents the concept of the Digital Twin inception in Industrial Metaverse. Additionally, a service-oriented digital twin architecture with Metaverse-enabled platforms for added value creation and interactions with CPS towards achieving Industry 5.0 challenges and beyond is proposed.
As the industrial requirements change at a rapid pace due to the drastic evolution of technology, the necessity of quickly investigating potential system alternatives towards a more efficient ...manufacturing system design arises more intensely than ever. Manufacturing systems simulation has proven to be a powerful tool for designing and evaluating a manufacturing system due to its low cost, quick analysis, low risk and meaningful insight that it may provide, improving thus the understanding of the influence of each component. Simulation comprises an indispensable set of IT tools and methods for the successful implementation of digital manufacturing. It allows experimentation and validation of product, process, and system design and configuration. This paper investigates the major historical milestones in the evolution of manufacturing systems simulation technologies and examines recent industrial and research approaches in key fields of manufacturing. It describes how the urge towards digitalisation of manufacturing in the context of the 4th Industrial revolution has shaped simulation in the design and operation of manufacturing systems and reviews the new approaches that have arisen in the literature. Particular focus is given to technologies in the digitalised factories of the future that are gaining ground in industrial applications simulation, offering multiple advantages.
Despite the high automatization that characterizes modern production, human operators still hold a vital position in manufacturing, which should be reinforced in the transition to the era of Industry ...4.0. As human operators may support increased flexibility and adaptability to their tasks, they gain an advantage in highly customized productions, where products’ configuration and tasks allocated per workstation may be dynamically changed. In order to support dynamic knowledge transfer to the human operators in a way that is perceivable and does not limit operators’ capabilities, it is important to exploit novel visualization technologies introduced by Industry 4.0. This paper presents an automated approach for remotely supporting assembly workstations, with human operators using augmented reality technology. The system retrieves the workstation’s schedule and automatically generates assembly instructions, utilizing information from the product’s design, enriched with order-specific annotations based on product customization. Then, the generated augmented reality instructions are transmitted through a cloud environment to the assembly station operator, aiming to support dynamic production re-scheduling. The developed system is validated in a real-life case study provided by the automotive industry.
In the realm of the current industrial revolution, interesting innovations as well as new techniques are constantly being introduced by offering fertile ground for further investigation and ...improvement in the industrial engineering domain. More specifically, cutting-edge digital technologies in the field of Extended Reality (XR) have become mainstream including Augmented Reality (AR). Furthermore, Cloud Computing has enabled the provision of high-quality services, especially in the controversial field of maintenance. However, since modern machines are becoming more complex, maintenance must be carried out from experienced and well-trained personnel, while overseas support is timely and financially costly. Although AR is a back-bone technology facilitating the development of robust maintenance support tools, they are limited to the provision of predefined scenarios, covering only a limited number of scenarios. This research work aims to address this emerging challenge with the design and development of a framework, for the support of remote maintenance and repair operation based on AR, by creating suitable communication channels between the shop-floor technicians and the expert engineers who are utilizing real-time feedback from the operator’s field of view. The applicability of the developed framework is tested in vitro in a lab-based machine shop and in a real-life industrial scenario.
The design and evaluation of product-service systems (PSS) constitutes a challenging problem due to its multidimensionality. This challenge becomes bigger when the PSS customization is required ...within the new manufacturing paradigm of Industry 4.0. Nevertheless, limited literature work is observed regarding the customization of PSS and the PSS investigation within the Industry 4.0. Towards bridging these gaps, the present research work proposes a methodology for the quantification of PSS customization complexity, considering Industry 4.0 aspects. The proposed metrics are applied in a real industrial case study from a large laser machining industry, aiming to evaluate the different PSS alternatives in terms of complexity. It is demonstrated that the proposed approach can support the strategic level decision-making of a company, by quantifying the complexity and producing additional meaningful information towards the selection of the product and services that could be designed and offered to the customers.
Resistance spot welding for industrial applications is a fully automated process which however lacks this aspect when it comes to quality assessment (QA). The current study introduces an online QA ...approach that utilizes machine learning methods, on data captured from an infrared (IR) camera, mounted on an RSW-robotized system. The models’ development was carried out in the context of two experimental approaches which included a different number of process parameters and weld-quality criteria. Results indicated that the quality-prediction uncertainty of the models depends on the proximity of the points of the process parameter space. The maximum IR intensity and the temporal features of the IR cooldown profile offered the greatest class separability and marked the corresponding classifiers as the most successful ones. In addition, the advantage of IR monitoring was highlighted, and it was justified that in an industrial scenario where the time between welds is short, the IR data from such a monitoring system may include limited temporal information, which depending on the model used could potentially compromise the model’s prediction performance.
Under the framework of Industry 4.0, machines and machine tools have evolved to smart and connected things, comprising the Internet of Things (IoT) and leading to the Mass Personalization (MP) ...paradigm, which enables the production of uniquely made products at scale. MP, fueled by individualization trends and enabled by increasing digitalization, has the potential to go beyond current mass customization. Although this evolution has enabled engineers to gain useful insight for the production, the machine status, the quality of products, etc., machines have become more complex. Thus, Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO) operations should be undertaken by specialized personnel. Additionally, Augmented Reality (AR) can support remote maintenance assistance to handle unexpected malfunctions. Moreover, due to advances regarding Product Service Systems (PSS), manufacturing companies are offering many services to improve user experience. Consequently, in this manuscript the design and development of a method based on the principles of servitization for the provision of an intelligent and adaptable maintenance service assisted by AR are presented. The contribution of the manuscript extends to the provision of an optimization algorithm for adapting the schedules of the stakeholders based on the energy supplier predictions. The developed method was tested and validated on an industrial case study of injection mold maintenance, achieving 11% energy reduction, 50% less time for mold inspection, and a 20% rise in on-time mold deliveries.
Blockchain can be realized as a distributed and decentralized database, also known as a “distributed ledger,” that is shared among the nodes of a computer network. Blockchain is a form of ...democratized and distributed database for storing information electronically in a digital format. Under the framework of Industry 4.0, the digitization and digitalization of manufacturing and production systems and networks have been focused, thus Big Data sets are a necessity for any manufacturing activity. Big Data sets are becoming a useful resource as well as a byproduct of the activities/processes taking place. However, there is an imminent risk of cyberattacks. The contribution of blockchain technology to intelligent manufacturing can be summarized as (i) data validity protection, (ii) inter- and intra-organizational communication organization, and (iii) efficiency improvement of manufacturing processes. Furthermore, the need for increased cybersecurity is magnified as the world is heading towards a super smart and intelligent societal model, also known as “Society 5.0,” and the industrial metaverse will become the new reality in manufacturing. Blockchain is a cutting-edge, secure information technology that promotes business and industrial innovation. However, blockchain technologies are bound by existing limitations regarding scalability, flexibility, and cybersecurity. Therefore, in this literature review, the implications of blockchain technology for addressing the emerging cybersecurity barriers toward safe and intelligent manufacturing in Industry 5.0 as a subset of Society 5.0 are presented.
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