AI integration modernizes factory operations and enables manufacturers to achieve greater business results. Manufacturing is getting a major system upgrade. As AI amplifies existing technologies--like digital twins, the cloud, edge computing, and the industrial internet of things (IIoT)--it is enabling factory operations teams to shift from reactive, isolated problem-solving to proactive, systemwide optimization. Digital twins--physically accurate virtual representations of a piece of equipment, a production line, a process, or even an entire factory--allow workers to test, optimize, and contextualize complex, real-world environments. Manufacturers are using digital twins to simulate factory environments with pinpoint detail. "AI-powered digital twins mark a major evolution in the future of manufacturing, enabling real-time visualization of the entire production line, not just individual machines," says Indranil Sircar, global chief technology officer for the manufacturing and mobility industry at Microsoft.

AgiBot is using AI-powered robots to do new manufacturing tasks. Smarter machines may transform physical labor in China. AgiBot, a humanoid robotics company based in Shanghai, has engineered a way for two-armed robots to learn manufacturing tasks through human training and real-world practice on a factory production line. The company says its system, which combines teleoperation and reinforcement learning, is being tested on a production line belonging to Longcheer Technology, a Chinese company that manufactures smartphones, VR headsets, and other electronic gadgets. AgiBot's project shows how more advanced AI is starting to change the abilities of industrial machines--an innovation that may creep into new areas of manufacturing in China and elsewhere.

Accurate indoor localization is crucial in industrial environments. Visible Light Communication (VLC) has emerged as a promising solution, offering high accuracy, energy efficiency, and minimal electromagnetic interference. However, VLC-based indoor localization faces challenges due to environmental variability, such as lighting fluctuations and obstacles. To address these challenges, we propose a Transfer Learning (TL)-based approach for VLC-based indoor localization. Using real-world data collected at a BOSCH factory, the TL framework integrates a deep neural network (DNN) to improve localization accuracy by 47\%, reduce energy consumption by 32\%, and decrease computational time by 40\% compared to the conventional models. The proposed solution is highly adaptable under varying environmental conditions and achieves similar accuracy with only 30\% of the dataset, making it a cost-efficient and scalable option for industrial applications in Industry 4.0.

One of the key safety considerations of battery manufacturing is thermal runaway, the uncontrolled increase in temperature which can lead to fires, explosions, and emissions of toxic gasses. As such, development of automated systems capable of detecting such events is of considerable importance in both academic and industrial contexts. In this work, we investigate the use of deep learning for detecting thermal runaway in the battery production line of VDL Nedcar, a Dutch automobile manufacturer. Specifically, we collect data from the production line to represent both baseline (non thermal runaway) and thermal runaway conditions. Thermal runaway was simulated through the use of external heat and smoke sources. The data consisted of both optical and thermal images which were then preprocessed and fused before serving as input to our models. In this regard, we evaluated three deep-learning models widely used in computer vision including shallow convolutional neural networks, residual neural networks, and vision transformers on two performance metrics. Furthermore, we evaluated these models using explainability methods to gain insight into their ability to capture the relevant feature information from their inputs. The obtained results indicate that the use of deep learning is a viable approach to thermal runaway detection in battery production lines.

We introduce PerfCam, an open source Proof-of-Concept (PoC) digital twinning framework that combines camera and sensory data with 3D Gaussian Splatting and computer vision models for digital twinning, object tracking, and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) extraction in industrial production lines. By utilizing 3D reconstruction and Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), PerfCam offers a semi-automated approach to object tracking and spatial mapping, enabling digital twins that capture real-time KPIs such as availability, performance, Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), and rate of conveyor belts in the production line. We validate the effectiveness of PerfCam through a practical deployment within realistic test production lines in the pharmaceutical industry and contribute an openly published dataset to support further research and development in the field. The results demonstrate PerfCam's ability to deliver actionable insights through its precise digital twin capabilities, underscoring its value as an effective tool for developing usable digital twins in smart manufacturing environments and extracting operational analytics.

Many production lines require active control mechanisms, such as adaptive routing, worker reallocation, and rescheduling, to maintain optimal performance. However, designing these control systems is challenging for various reasons, and while reinforcement learning (RL) has shown promise in addressing these challenges, a standardized and general framework is still lacking. In this work, we introduce LineFlow, an extensible, open-source Python framework for simulating production lines of arbitrary complexity and training RL agents to control them. To demonstrate the capabilities and to validate the underlying theoretical assumptions of LineFlow, we formulate core subproblems of active line control in ways that facilitate mathematical analysis. For each problem, we provide optimal solutions for comparison. We benchmark state-of-the-art RL algorithms and show that the learned policies approach optimal performance in well-understood scenarios. However, for more complex, industrial-scale production lines, RL still faces significant challenges, highlighting the need for further research in areas such as reward shaping, curriculum learning, and hierarchical control.

When clothing designers place an order at Katty Fashion's factory in Iași, Romania, they expect a bespoke service. If necessary, the factory will even rejig its production lines to make whichever garment a designer commissions. "From order to order, we may have to adapt," says Eduard Modreanu, the company's technical lead. "We cannot create one production line or shop floor that fits everyone." This adaptability is useful given the many diverse clients and orders Katty Fashion juggles, but it could also help future-proof the company against climate shocks.

Automating a production line with robotic arms is a complex, demanding task that requires not only substantial resources but also a deep understanding of the automated processes and available technologies and tools. Expert integrators must consider factors such as placement, payload, and robot reach requirements to determine the feasibility of automation. Ideally, such considerations are based on a detailed digital simulation developed before any hardware is deployed. However, this process is often time-consuming and challenging. To simplify these processes, we introduce a much simpler method for the feasibility analysis of robotic arms' reachability, designed for non-experts. We implement this method through a mobile, sensing-based prototype tool. The two-step experimental evaluation included the expert user study results, which helped us identify the difficulty levels of various deployment scenarios and refine the initial prototype. The results of the subsequent quantitative study with 22 non-expert participants utilizing both scenarios indicate that users could complete both simple and complex feasibility analyses in under ten minutes, exhibiting similar cognitive loads and high engagement. Overall, the results suggest that the tool was well-received and rated as highly usable, thereby showing a new path for changing the ease of feasibility analysis for automation.

The manufacturing industry is undergoing a transformative shift, driven by cutting-edge technologies like 5G, AI, and cloud computing. Despite these advancements, effective system control, which is crucial for optimizing production efficiency, remains a complex challenge due to the intricate, knowledge-dependent nature of manufacturing processes and the reliance on domain-specific expertise. Conventional control methods often demand heavy customization, considerable computational resources, and lack transparency in decision-making. In this work, we investigate the feasibility of using Large Language Models (LLMs), particularly GPT-4, as a straightforward, adaptable solution for controlling manufacturing systems, specifically, mobile robot scheduling. We introduce an LLM-based control framework to assign mobile robots to different machines in robot assisted serial production lines, evaluating its performance in terms of system throughput. Our proposed framework outperforms traditional scheduling approaches such as First-Come-First-Served (FCFS), Shortest Processing Time (SPT), and Longest Processing Time (LPT). While it achieves performance that is on par with state-of-the-art methods like Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL), it offers a distinct advantage by delivering comparable throughput without the need for extensive retraining. These results suggest that the proposed LLM-based solution is well-suited for scenarios where technical expertise, computational resources, and financial investment are limited, while decision transparency and system scalability are critical concerns.

Production Lines and Conveying Systems are the staple of modern manufacturing processes. Manufacturing efficiency is directly related to the efficiency of the means of production and conveying. Modelling in the industrial context has always been a challenge due to the complexity that comes along with modern manufacturing standards. Long Short-Term Memory is a pattern recognition Recurrent Neural Network, that is utilised on a simple pneumatic conveying system which transports a wooden block around the system. Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) capture temporal dependencies through feedback loops, while Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks enhance this capability by using gated mechanisms to effectively learn long-term dependencies. Conveying systems, representing a major component of production lines, are chosen as the target to model to present an approach applicable in large scale production lines in a simpler format. In this paper data from sensors are used to train the LSTM in order to output an Automaton that models the conveying system. The automaton obtained from the proposed LSTM approach is compared with the automaton obtained from OTALA. The resultant LSTM automaton proves to be a more accurate representation of the conveying system, unlike the one obtained from OTALA.