Process control using interactive simulation in a virtual production system

Supply chain management will be a major component of the industrial competitive strategy along with enterprise integration and global optimization to enhance organizational productivity and profitability. Students of manufacturing and industrial computing need to equip themselves with an understanding and experience of industrial practice in the industry particularly its supply chain activities. Supply chain activities involved five modules particularly are procurement or supplier, design and engineering, production or manufacturing, logistics or warehousing and product order or customer. This paper propose an implementation of virtual production or manufacturing module in a virtual factory for the real industry emphasizing the risk, thorough inspection and controlling the processes of machines to ensure that the manufacturing is integrated with success. The virtual factory will use small to medium size manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) as the production model. This paper focus on the architecture of the interactive simulator and the methodologies for developing a web-based learning system. Major benefits of the proposed work are discussed.