Digital twin inception in the Era of industrial metaverse

Digital Twins, as a technological pillar of Industry 4.0, correspond to the virtual representation and bi-fold a real-time communication of a digital counterpart of a process or a physical object. As the industrial and manufacturing landscape is shifting towards Industry 5.0, huge investments focusing on enhancing interactions between Operators and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) occur. Yet, Metaverse strengthens these interactions as it enables human immersion into a virtual world. Furthermore, it examines the very promising relationships between the CPS, through the digital twins of these CPS. Therefore, this short review presents the concept of the Digital Twin inception in Industrial Metaverse. Additionally, a service-oriented digital twin architecture with Metaverse-enabled platforms for added value creation and interactions with CPS towards achieving Industry 5.0 challenges and beyond is proposed

A Literature Review of the Challenges and Opportunities of the Transition from Industry 4.0 to Society 5.0

In the era of Industry 4.0, manufacturing and production systems were revolutionized by increasing operational efficiency and developing and implementing new business models, services, and products. Concretely, the milestone set for Industry 4.0 was to improve the sustainability and efficiency of production systems. By extension, the emphasis was focused on both the digitization and the digitalization of systems, providing room for further improvement. However, the current technological evolution is more system/machine-oriented, rather than human-oriented. Thus, several countries have begun orchestrating initiatives towards the design and development of the human-centric aspect of technologies, systems, and services, which has been coined as Industry 5.0. The impact of Industry 5.0 will extend to societal transformation, which eventually leads to the generation of a new society, the Society 5.0. The developments will be focused on the social and human-centric aspect of the tools and technologies introduced under the framework of Industry 4.0. Therefore, sustainability and human well-being will be at the heart of what comes next, the Industry 5.0, as a subset of Society 5.0. Industry 5.0 will build on the foundations laid during Industry 4.0 by emphasizing human-centered, resilient, and sustainable design. Consequently, the authors in this research work, through a critical literature review, aim to provide adequate reasoning for considering Industry 5.0 as a framework for enabling the coexistence of industry and emerging societal trends and needs. The contribution of this research work extends to the provision of a framework to facilitate the transition from Industry 4.0 to Society 5.0

Real-Time Remote Maintenance Support Based on Augmented Reality (AR)

In the realm of the current industrial revolution, interesting innovations as well as new techniques are constantly being introduced by offering fertile ground for further investigation and improvement in the industrial engineering domain. More specifically, cutting-edge digital technologies in the field of Extended Reality (XR) have become mainstream including Augmented Reality (AR). Furthermore, Cloud Computing has enabled the provision of high-quality services, especially in the controversial field of maintenance. However, since modern machines are becoming more complex, maintenance must be carried out from experienced and well-trained personnel, while overseas support is timely and financially costly. Although AR is a back-bone technology facilitating the development of robust maintenance support tools, they are limited to the provision of predefined scenarios, covering only a limited number of scenarios. This research work aims to address this emerging challenge with the design and development of a framework, for the support of remote maintenance and repair operation based on AR, by creating suitable communication channels between the shop-floor technicians and the expert engineers who are utilizing real-time feedback from the operator’s field of view. The applicability of the developed framework is tested in vitro in a lab-based machine shop and in a real-life industrial scenario

Towards the 5th industrial revolution: a literature review and a framework for process optimization based on big data analytics and semantics

The digitalization of modern manufacturing systems has resulted to increasing data generation, also known as Big Data. Although there are several technologies and techniques under the term Data Analytics for gathering such data, their interpretation to information, and ultimately to knowledge remains in its infancy. Consequently, albeit engineers currently can monitor the factory level, optimization is cut off of the data acquisition, and is based on data related methodologies. The focus should be pivoted on designing and developing suitable frameworks for integrating Big Data to process optimization based on the context of information gathered from the shopfloor. This paper aims to investigate the opportunities and the gaps as well as the challenges arising in the current industrial landscape, towards the efficient utilization of Big Data, for process optimization based on the integration of semantics. To that end, a literature review is performed, and a data-based framework is presented

The Metaverse in Industry 5.0: A Human-Centric Approach towards Personalized Value Creation

In the context of Industry 5.0, the concept of the Metaverse aligns with the vision of Web 4.0, representing a digital ecosystem where individuals and organizations collaborate in a human-centric approach to create personalized value. This virtual universe connects multiple interconnected worlds, enabling real-time interactions between users and computer-generated environments. By integrating technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR), and the Internet of Things (IoT), the Metaverse within Industry 5.0 aims to foster innovation and enhance productivity, efficiency, and overall well-being through tailored and value-driven solutions. Therefore, this entry explores the concept of the Metaverse in the context of Industry 5.0, highlighting its definition, evolution, advantages, and disadvantages. It also discusses the pillars of technological advancement, challenges, and opportunities, including its integration into manufacturing. The entry concludes with a proposal for a conceptual framework for integrating the human-centric Metaverse into manufacturing

Robust Engineering for the Design of Resilient Manufacturing Systems

As the industrial requirements change rapidly due to the drastic evolution of technology, the necessity of quickly investigating potential system alternatives towards a more efficient manufacturing system design arises more intensely than ever. Production system simulation has proven to be a powerful tool for designing and evaluating a manufacturing system due to its low cost, quick analysis, low risk and meaningful insight that it may provide, improving the understanding of the influence of each component. In this research work, the design and evaluation of a real manufacturing system using Discrete Event Simulation (DES), based on real data obtained from the copper industry is presented. The current production system is modelled, and the real production data are analyzed and connected. The impact identification of the individual parameters on the response of the system is accomplished towards the selection of the proper configurations for near-optimum outcome. Further to that, different simulation scenarios based on the Design of Experiments (DOE) are studied towards the optimization of the production, under predefined product analogies