Virtual factory-a novel testbed for an advanced flexible manufacturing system

Nowadays, the market place is continuously changing and unpredictable, and hence an efficient prototyping environment is crucial. We propose a virtual factory wherein an efficient prototyping testbed is provided. This paper is one among very few that tries to represent the virtual factory in an analytic form so that many existing mathematical analysis can be applied. New pseudo resources can be added to form a new virtual environment, and control policy designed by engineers will be evaluated before being issued. An example of utilizing the prototyping testbed is given. The proposed testbed is compared with a traditional testbed and the results validate the intelligence and efficiency of the present prototyping testbed