Research directions for an open unit manufacturing process repository: A collaborative vision

The design of manufacturing systems can see dramatic improvements through the use of digital technologies for modeling and simulation prior to deployment. At the 2017 ASME International Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference held jointly with the 45th SME North American Manufacturing Research Conference, researchers met within a workshop to discuss structuring and presenting research for modeling manufacturing processes to support life cycle assessment. Workshop participants explored a vision for using standard formats to represent manufacturing processes in a community-based repository and identified research opportunities and challenges. This paper places these resulting research directions into a plan for implementing the vision.