Generative AI Empowering Parallel Manufacturing: Building a “6S” Collaborative Production Ecology for Manufacturing 5.0

Since Manufacturing 4.0 faces various challenges, including the risks of data leakage and privacy violation, the struggle to meet the growing demand for personalization, and the limitations in harnessing human creativity, it has become crucial to embark on a transformation toward Manufacturing 5.0. To this end, we propose a DeFACT framework for parallel manufacturing and Manufacturing 5.0, which focuses on safe, efficient and personalized collaborative production. In DeFACT, different enterprises and parallel workers (i.e., digital, robotic and biological workers) are organized, coordinated and scheduled based on decentralized autonomous organizations and operations to promote mutual benefits among members, even in the context of low or zero trust. This contributes to providing customers with higher-quality personalized products and services while ensuring the confidentiality and safeguarding of data. Additionally, various advanced technologies, such as generative artificial intelligence, scenarios engineering, and blockchain, are leveraged to achieve trustworthy and adaptable decision making, user-friendly human–machine interaction, and the federated control and management of parallel workers. Finally, the effectiveness and efficiency of DeFACT are experimentally validated through the design and implementation of three case studies.