ABSTRACT
A dear child has many names, commonly mini, micro or Desktop® factory. The research of miniature production systems has continued since the early 90’s. Development of these systems started in Japan and, shortly after the beginning of the millennium, spread around the globe. Today miniaturized production systems, i.e. micro and desktop factories, are widely studied in several universities and research centers around the world.
The terminology and the definitions vary from country to country and from researcher to researcher. However, they all share the same ideology: to decrease the footprint of production technology and match the system with products in size. Miniature production equipment is expected to save energy and materials, decrease capital investments and enable flexible product customization, among other things. However, compared to research efforts worldwide, the level of commercialization and the amount of real industrial applications remains relatively low.
Researching miniaturization of production systems and micro and desktop factories has been a key topic at the Department of Production Engineering at Tampere University of Technology (TUT) since 1999. This paper summarizes the developments accomplished during recent years, introduces some demonstrations and discusses the future of microfactories.
Keywords: Desktop factory, Microfactory, TUT microfactory, Industrial practice, Future visions, Finland.
