Virtual manufacturing as a way for the factory of the future

Virtual Manufacturing represents the emerging approach the enterprises can use to improve their processes, introducing new products more quickly in the market in a cost effective way. The fundamental idea is to create an integrated and synthetic environment, composed of software tools and systems such as Virtual Reality and Simulation to support such processes. This paper presents the Virtual Manufacturing (VM) environment, highlighting the potential application areas and the resulting benefits. The role of Simulation Lab and ITIA-CNR in applying the VM is discussed, the research activities currently carried out by the institutes are presented and two significant cases developed as example of the applicability of the concept are shown.