Open Access Conference Proceedings

Production and logistics systems are currently undergoing revolutionary changes. They are gaining new features and functionalities. We are finally starting to perceive production as a holonic system. Machines, robots and products are becoming intelligent and advanced information and communication technologies are becoming the central nervous systems of the future production. In the near future, artificial intelligence will take on many management and decision-making functions in production. Production systems will be able to learn from their past operations. Virtualization will bring massive deployment of sensors in production, allowing us to collect large amounts of data, generate information, process these and use them to create and apply new knowledge. The new production environment will maintain and operate its virtual image using the technologies of the Internet of Manufacturing and clouds. Without intelligent and adaptive production and logistics, companies will not be able to operate effectively in the competitive environment of global markets. The effort to speed up and streamline the design cycle of such intelligent production and logistics systems leads to the current trend of digitalization and virtual design of such systems. Attempts to improve the level of visualization, transparency, presentation of design outputs, as well as the effort to assess the feasibility of the proposed solution in a complex way and identify potential collisions in the proposed system while still at the designing stage, lead to the creation and utilization of 3D models of individual objects as well as complex production and logistic systems. In the article, the authors describe Interactive Designing System CEIT Table, which represents an integrated solution for the support of intuitive, team-oriented design of intelligent production and logistics systems of plants of the future. By a suitable combination of software and hardware, it is possible to accelerate and optimize the entire designing process while keeping the option of team decision-making. The article describes the basic concept of CEIT Factory Twin which is intensively being built at the authors’ workplace, one of the main parts being the interactive designing system CEIT Table.

Keywords: Factories of the future, factory twin, smart factory

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