Title: Industry 4.0 Cyber-Physical Factory that Produces Products like High-Performance Computers
Time: 9:00 to 11:00, Tuesday, June.13, 2023
Place: F310, School of Mechanical Engineering
Host: JIANG Zuhua, Professor (Department of Industrial Engineering and Management)

Biography
George is Chair Professor of Smart Manufacturing at Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He has conducted research projects in areas of Smart Manufacturing, Logistics, and Construction Systems Analytics through IoT-enabled Cyber-Physical Internet with substantial government and industrial grants exceeding HK$120M. He collaborated closely with industries through joint projects and start-up companies. He has published extensively and his works have been widely cited by research communities. He serves as associate editors and editorial members for several international journals. He is Chartered Engineer (CEng), Fellow of ASME, CILT, HKIE, IET, and IISE.

Abstract
The talk is about our first attempt to propose and develop an Industry 4.0 intelligent factory following a formal computer architecture and operating system. In the iFactory architecture, value-adding units are digitized to become intelligent processors. The computational powers, in both hardware and software forms, of digital twins of manufacturing resources are used to construct the iFactory CPU around the processor. The iFactory architecture provides new opportunities to explore and study factory uncertainties through cyber-physical visibility and spatial-temporal traceability, and to develop brand-new data-driven decision models for factory operations planning, scheduling and execution. iFactory demonstrates a new approach to implement Industry 4.0 smart manufacturing systems for high performance, responsiveness and resilience.