Operation Twins: Synchronized Production-Intralogistics for Industry 4.0 Manufacturing

The widespread adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies in factories are transforming manufacturing operations management. Multiple resources are interconnected, massive data are real-timely collected by smart devices to provide visibility and traceability. It is generally acknowledged that real-time data are beneficial for manufacturing operations management. How to utilize these data for facilitating production and intralogistics (PiL) operations management is an emerging challenge. This study proposes a new concept, operation twins, for achieving synchronized PiL operations based on three dimensions of synchronization (cyber-physical synchronization, spatial-temporal synchronization, and data-driven decisions synchronization).

Automated summary

The widespread adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies in factories is transforming manufacturing operations management. Real-time data are acknowledged as beneficial for this management, and utilizing these data to facilitate production and intralogistics operations is an emerging challenge. This study proposes the concept of operation twins for achieving synchronized PiL operations based on three dimensions of synchronization.