An ‘Industry 4.0’ digital model fostering integrated product development

Abstract

Product development has to increasingly handle challenges such as highly competitive market scenarios and rapidly changing customer demands. The Industry 4.0 paradigm has brought about a new range of methods and technologies which can support industry in dealing with these challenges. This paper contributes a digital manufacturing model which aims to support industry to bridge the gap with this advanced digital technologies and foster integrated product development. This digital model achieves this aim by providing a means to illustrate how these technologies can be employed during the different phases of the factory life cycle. The digital manufacturing model also illustrates the soft and meta-skills which need to be developed in order to support digitisation of product development activities. A number of use cases are presented which explore how Industry 4.0 technologies can be implemented within an integrated product development environment.