The role of simulation in digital manufacturing: applications and outlook

TLDR

Digital manufacturing reduces development time and cost while expanding customization, with simulation-based technologies central to experimenting and validating product, process, and system configurations amid evolving computing hardware, cloud, and IoT services. This article investigates simulation-based applications across diverse technological and manufacturing domains. The authors review current industrial practice centered on information technology and explore simulation-based solutions for product and process design as well as enterprise resource planning.

Abstract

Digital manufacturing technologies have been considered an essential part of the continuous effort towards the reduction in a product's development time and cost, as well as towards the expansion in customisation options. The simulation-based technologies constitute a focal point of digital manufacturing solutions, since they allow for the experimentation and validation of different product, process and manufacturing system configurations. This article investigates simulation-based applications in a series of different technological and manufacturing domains. First, this article discusses the current industrial practice, focusing on the use of information technology. Next, a series of simulation-based solutions are explored in the domains of product and production process design, as well as in the area of enterprise resource planning. The current technologies and research trends are discussed in the context of the new landscape of computing hardware technologies and the emerging computing services, including the initiatives comprising both the Internet cloud and the Internet of things.