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 Environment (VME), highlighting the potential application areas and the resulting benefits. Two significant cases are presented as example of the applicability of the concept.