from the conferences organized by TANGER Ltd.
The arrival of the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) opens the door to a completely new concept called a virtual foundry. The concept is a specific type of digital factory. A virtual foundry can be imagined as a simulation of a fully functioning company, encompassing all elements of the production process, from receipt of goods, through logistics to sales to the end customer. With the virtual foundry, it will be possible to shorten the time of the entire production process, deliver products faster to customers, reduce innovation cycle times and achieve greater energy and resource savings. High employee turnover is a serious problem for many companies, as training new employees is very expensive. The virtual foundry can also serve as an educational tool for new employees. This new concept will certainly be demanding on hardware requirements. This could solve the interconnection of the virtual foundry with cloud computing. Cloud computing can be defined as a new form of computer usage where data is processed, stored and managed on remote servers hosted on the Internet instead of a local server or personal computer. Cloud computing has become a major technology trend, and many experts assume it will change not only information technology processes but also the entire IT market. This article aims to define, on the basis of available literary and news sources, the possibilities of a virtual foundry and the benefits of linking a virtual foundry to cloud computing.
Keywords: Cloud computing, Industry 4.0, virtual foundry© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.