Experiences in virtual factory prototipe-modular plants design and simulation

Production systems are changing very fast according with the rapid development of the market, the customer needs and the requirements and the products themselves. Designers and Engineers are asking for supporting tools in order to follow this trend in the proper way; the factory layout should be redesigned (for improving throughput or producing new products) or the factory has to be designed for another location (moving in a more cost-effective countries). ITIA has conducted research on Virtual Reality and Discrete Event Simulation applied to factory design and process simulation. Copyright © 2004 IFAC.