 
Series::View From the Suite:Virtual Learning
Total Running Time:7:32 Airdate:14-Feb-2001
In the world of education, virtual reality is changing the dynamics of learning for both students and teachers. We talk to students and teachers to find out how.
ABOUT THE WILLIAM KECK VIRTUAL FACTORY LABORATORY visit the website
The past fifteen years have witnessed a revolution in computing capabilities. Hardware is cheaper and faster. Software is increasingly powerful. Improvements in software technology range from new paradigms, to graphical user interface technology, to virtual reality environments.
At the same time, modern manufacturing systems are becoming increasingly complex and capital-intensive. Costly system designs require a great deal of modeling and analysis to ensure acceptable system performance after implementation. This modeling and analysis takes many forms in many different types of problems -- everything from equipment selection and configuration, to layout, to control system design and operating policy selection. Modeling and analysis methodologies have progressed tremendously through an enormous amount of research. However, this research has focused mainly on specific modeling techniques for narrowly-defined problems. There is little integration of existing tools and technologies into a framework that supports large-scale activities (e.g., design of a full system).
The Virtual Factory is a metaphor for the integration of a variety of software, modeling tools and methodologies to support solutions to a range of problems in the manufacturing domain. In the Virtual Factory, it will be possible to developed detailed models to support system design and operation, to test different system configurations and control policies, in short to manipulate all system features which impact performance, and to see the results of these manipulations, all without disrupting the actual system.
With funding from the Keck Foundation, the Keck Virtual Factory Lab has been established in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering to further education and research in the development and application of modeling technology for manufacturing systems. |
