Virtual Manufacturing for an Automotive Company (II) - Constuction and Operation of a Virtual Body Shop

자동차 가상생산 기술 적용 (II) - 차체공장 가상플랜트 구축 및 운영

Virtual Manufacturing is a technology facilitating effective development and agile production of products via computer models representing physical and logical schema and the behavior of the real manufacturing systems. For the successful application of this technology, a virtual plant as a well-designed and integrated environment is essential. We propose a series of systematic approaches and effective methods for construction and operation of a virtual plant in this paper, such as a 3-D CAD modeling, cell and line simulations and databases. We developed key technologies for measuring and 3-D CAD modeling of many equipments, facilities and structures of the buildings. In order to study the benefit of virtual manufacturing, we constructed a sophisticated virtual plant model of a Korean automotive company's body shop, and conducted precise simulations of unit cell, lines and the whole plant. We could obtain the benefit of savings in time and cost in many manufacturing preparation activities in the new car development processes.