Information management for the factory planning process

Abstract: This thesis is based on the present needs for the factory planning support, of which the most important ones are: • A structured reuse of knowledge and support for industries. Because today the industry handbook in factory planning is not satisfying enough to support this complex process. • Better methods to represent and communicate data between software within the factory layout area for easier data communication and thereby information access, exchange and reuse. To support the factory planning, based on the mentioned needs, a mapping of the present factory planning process is made based on knowledge from industry and academy. Since the factory planning process is a huge and complex process that no one can handle by themself, a puzzle work is performed. Based on gathered information and knowledge an activity model is developed, to structure the data and information. The model gives a better overview on the actual course of events and in this way also “captures” the most important information to be represented for data exchange among different software applications and different people. In this thesis the most important information in factory layout is gathered and structured in a concept model for factory layout. Since the concepts depend on the context in which they are used, it is extremely important to present every concept in its relationship with other related concepts within the area.  A general theory and state-of-the-art definitions in the area is presented and discussed for a factory planning information management system. An evaluation and discussion is made for the state-of-the-art software in the area of concern.