A.W Lung - Course Director to MSc in Advanced Manufacturing Systems
R Benhadj-Djilali - Senior Lecturer
J.A Garcia - Lecturer

The increasing globalisation of the world’s economy and the acute demand for product customisation, higher quality and short lead time has forced many manufacturing companies to modernise their processes through the adoption of emerging technologies. Latest developments in IT, CAD/CAM/CAE, and PDM are amongst these new adoptions by manufacturing companies aiming to maintain their leading edge in the global arena. Digital integration of these technologies currently offers an excellent opportunity to transform fundamentally manual manufacturing processes into fully automated processes. Early results indicate that both time and cost can be reduced dramatically, in addition to the convenience of managing the entire process virtually on line. The Internet in particular offers the infrastructure for aggregation of these online processes to form temporary matrixes of web-based enterprises that can be regarded as virtual factories (VF’s). This paper explores the application of this virtual factory concept with the development of a Total Virtual Factory (TVF) model that can serve as an interface for web-based small and medium enterprises (SME’s) so that they can join resources to do business in the larger and more competitive market place of the 21st century.

IT applications in Manufacturing, CAD/CAM/CAE, e-Design/e-Manufacture, PLM