Improvement of virtual manufacturing technologies for product changes and uncertainties

市场上高度定制化和多样化的产品增加了制造系统的不可预测性和不确定性。虚拟制造已被证明是实现大规模定制和系统柔性的一种经济有效的技术。虚拟制造在产品设计和制造的各种应用中得到越来越广泛的应用。然而，在复杂的产品开发动态环境中，制造系统具有层次性、异构性和分布性。使用现有的方法和工具对制造系统进行建模是一项挑战。尚未深入探讨VM作为可变化性推动者的潜力。现有的VM解决方案不能提供足够的决策可靠性。为了满足动态制造环境处理制造系统不确定性和复杂性的需要，必须将高效的建模和人在决策中的作用集成到虚拟制造系统中。

Highly customized and varying products in the market increase unpredictability and uncertainty of manufacturing systems. Virtual manufacturing (VM) has been proved a cost-effective technology for mass customization and system flexibility. VM is increasingly employed in various applications of product design and manufacturing. Manufacturing systems however are hierarchical, heterogeneous and distributed in the complicated dynamic environment of product development. It is a challenge to model manufacturing systems using existing methods and tools. The potential of VM as a changeability enabler has not been explored in depth. Existing VM solutions do not give enough decision reliability. Efficient modeling and human role in the decision-making have to be integrated into VM systems to meet the need of dynamic manufacturing environments for handling uncertainty and complexity of manufacturing systems.