Factory Layout Planner

The Manufuture strategic research agenda identifies two fronts of intense and growing competitive pressure for European manufacturing: in the high-tech sector, we face other developed countries and, on the other hand, in more traditional sectors, low-wage countries pose a serious threat. One of the response envisioned and strongly promoted is the development of ground-breaking Information and Communication Technologies meant to support new approaches to industrial engineering. Clearly drawing inspiration from this vision, the tool presented in this paper, the Factory Layout Planning, aims to be such kind of technology, enabling the multi-site, multi-level distributed design of factory layout and performance simulation. This paper gives an overview on the main features, in terms of concrete software characteristics of this tool, that can be considered one of the cornerstones for the Next Generation Factory.