Soemon Takakuwa,

Faculty of Science and Engineering, Chuo University,

ABSTRACT

The fourth industrial revolution or Industry 4.0 is a collective term involving a number of technologies of automation, data exchange and supply chain including manufacturing systems via the Internet. In an Industry 4.0 environment, cyber-physical systems communicate with each other and with human participants in real time over the Internet of Things (IoT). Both internal and cross-organizational services are offered and utilized by members of the supply chain. This means that direct communication between the shop floor and a customer can be performed, and mass customization will be adopted as a manufacturing system. The concept of mass customization is defined as "producing goods and services to meet individual customer's needs with near mass production efficiency" in both manufacturing and service industries.

In an Industry 4.0 environment, there should be quick decision making, not only by monitoring the status of manufacturing activities but also by administering an achievement control. From the standpoint of operations management, achievement control in process control is treated to execute shop floor control. Although the IoT is an important means for monitoring the status of shop floor, it is difficult to perform expeditious follow-up and control of available capacity to adjust for the difference between the planned amount and the actual achievement amount. Simulation and scheduling techniques will play an important role meeting deadlines in the process control and the accounting of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Manufacturing Execution System (MES), and shop data. In this context, real-time simulation,　real-time scheduling, cloud computing for executing simulation, and Risk-based Planning and Scheduling (RPS) are reviewed and introduced.