Operation Modes of Smart Factory for High-
End Equipment Manufacturing in the Internet
and Big Data Era
Feng Zhang
1
, Min Liu
1
, Weiming Shen
1,2
1
College of Electronics & Information Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 201804, China
2
Key Lab. of Embedded System & Service Computing, Tongji University, Shanghai 201804, China
jayden.zhang@foxmail.com, lmin@tongji.edu.cn, wshen@ieee.org
Abstract—Due to the sustained and rapid growth of
information and communication technology (ICT) and
automation techniques, smart factories for high-end equipment
manufacturing involve extensive collaborative networks and
knowledge sets. Conventional manufacturing modes are
undergoing profound reforms in the Internet and Big Data era,
and operations management of such factories should lay more
emphasis on service values. To this end, the current
manufacturing modes and operations management strategies are
fully investigated in this paper. A CPSS (cyber-physical-social
system)-based manufacturing mode of smart factories for high-
end equipment manufacturing is put forward. The connotation of
operations management of smart factory is extended based on
the introduction of service value and value chain, thus
contributing to a win-win situation of an enterprise and its
customers. Furthermore, a multi-participation Blockchain-based
collaborative manufacturing model for smart factories is
presented.
Keywords—smart factory; operations management; Blockchain;
collaborative manufacturing
I. INTRODUCTION
The trend of permeating the new generation information
technology into industry area gives rise to fundamental
changes in high-end equipment manufacturing industry, in
term of operation modes and management strategies. The
Internet plays a vital role in promoting service-oriented
manufacturing and inter-enterprises collaboration, making
servitization becoming one of the development movements in
modern manufacturing. Besides, the rapid popularization of the
Internet of Things (IoT) [1] realizes the interconnection
between person and person, person and device, device and
device in the enterprise production system, which will quicken
the establishment of an intelligent manufacture system
characterized by Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). Moreover,
Big Data analytics [2] helps manufacturers improve their
abilities in data perception, acquisition, analysis and sharing,
thus to handle data with complex sources, abundant types and
enormous volume. These techniques show an innovative
thinking of crossover, syncretic and ubiquitous, which could
provide a whole new perspective on the manufacturing’s
transforming and upgrading in the Internet and Big Data era.
Regarded as the main organization pattern and production
mode of intelligent manufacturing, smart factory has become
the major direction of world-class manufacturing enterprises to
give impetus to industrial transformation and upgrading.
Industry 4.0 [3] was first proposed by the Germany
government, which is the earliest initiators and practitioners of
smart factory. Products of high-end equipment are complicated,
with a high degree of knowledge, therefore the manufacturing
process is a process of knowledge creation, sharing and
updating, rather than a simple transformation process of
materials into products. Smart factory is derived from the high
fusion of the high-end equipment manufactory with the thought
and techniques of Internet and Big Data. The goal of smart
factory is to break through key links in the process of
enterprise’s production and operation, and realize a seamless
and intelligent integration of quick exchange, delivery, storage
and processing of information through all links from device
control to enterprise resource planning. In this case, all
activities in the process are able to acquire data support,
process optimization and validation from cyberspace; and these
activities in physical systems execute in real time while
keeping interactions with cyberspaces.
At present, a relationship concerning interdependence and
common development has been built between high-end
equipment manufactory and service area. The products and
services with high added-value, have the tendency to merge
constantly, thus forming a new manufacturing mode. It enables
customer to take full participation in manufacturing process,
and manufacturers to provide productive service and service
production (non-manufacturing) for each other. As for high-
end equipment manufacturers, the requirements of operations
management are becoming more and more urgent, since the
conventional manufacturing mode based on products
production no longer meets the needs of the manufacturing’s
transforming and upgrading. Due to this reason, the
manufacturing mode of smart factories demands a shift from
independent, closed and stable to interactive, open and
dynamic. Smart factory should make improvements in service
value, so as to maximize the benefits of all stakeholders in the
value chain of manufacturing, and realize the integration of
decentralized manufacturing resources as well. In this paper,
based on the model of social-cyber-physical-system (SCPS), a
novel manufacturing mode of smart factories for high-end
equipment manufacturing is put forward. Besides, a multi-
2017 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC)
Banff Center, Banff, Canada, October 5-8, 2017
978-1-5386-1645-1/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE 152