The State-of-the-Art and Prospects of Learning Factories

Changeability of manufacturing systems is an important enabler for offering large variety of competitive products to satisfy customers' requirements. Learning factories, as teaching and research environments, can play a key role in developing new solutions for changeability, transferring them to the industry and using them in educating engineers. The results of a survey of existing learning factories and their characteristics are presented. Their use in research, teaching and industrial projects is analyzed. A novel scheme to classify those systems with regard to their design, products and their changeability characteristics is outlined. Conclusions about the future of learning factories are drawn. (c) 2012 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Professor D. Mourtzis and Professor G. Chryssolouris.