Virtual Manufacturing Advantages And Disadvantages

Disadvantages The advantages of Virtual Manufacturing are discussed by many authors and there is a fair amount of agreement and overlap. The disadvantages however, are less comprehensively covered and less supported by other authors. In addition, the disadvantages are really places where there is room for improvement. The current drawbacks to the field are expense and complexity, but to some degree the advancement of the field will lessen these disadvantages. There are no permanent disadvantages considered by the papers reviewed; that may be an area in which improvements can be made.

High Expense One of the largest disadvantages, especially to small businesses, is the upfront cost of VM technology. Though (1) tells us that the small savings

The increased communication allowed by VM is sometimes undermined by the information being non transferable. (7) tells us that after data is obtained it needs to be managed so that it is reusable in the future. However more than just reusable, (12) wants data to be standardized so that it can be used by all software rather than just saved for individual future use. (13) proposes a way to do this, by integrating all the necessary data not into the software, but into the model. That way when a model is transferred, the data and conditions are transferred as well. The other difficulty currently with compatibility is interfacing between web based programs and product formatting (13). Though being able to communicate information over the web and collaborate in that way would be useful, at this point that isn’t possible because of the incompatible formats. Fixing the compatibility seems to be an issue of time. As better formats are discovered and as the field grows together, this will become less of a problem. However, currently this is one of the limiting factors on the

The reviewed authors do a fair job of summarizing the impact of Virtual Manufacturing, however there are definite spots for improvement in consideration of the field. The lack of standardized definition or description is an area that merits further study. The general ideas are common between each authors definition, so it shouldn’t be a hard task to standardize a definition and would definitely be a beneficial addition to the field. The vision of VM is definitely a guiding point for the field, as shown by the variety of ways each author expressed the want for more extensive VM abilities. The reviewed authors discuss in depth the advantages of the introduction of VM to manufacturing. The design benefits are clear and the increased competitive edge is agreed upon and evaluated to several degrees of depth. The increased ability to communicate is especially important and is considered mostly with the expansion to a global market. Rather than a lack of disadvantages, as predicted at the beginning of the review, the disadvantages are just less deeply discussed. What was surprising in the research was that most of the disadvantages will fade out over the next few years, probably making way for new problems and potential drawbacks. However, an area that definitely deserves more study is