DiFac: Digital Factory for Human Oriented Production System, the application

DiFac is an IST research project (FP6-2005-IST-5-035079) funded by the European Commission within the 6th Framework Programme priority addressing "Collaborative Working Environment". The project aims to the development of an innovative Collaborative Manufacturing Environment (CME) for the next generation of Digital Factory in order to support SMEs in some processed during the product/process life-cycle so improving their competitiveness. At the end of the project, this paper presents the developed framework and the main outcomes of the research activities. The definition and the development of a set of tools, methodologies and guidelines collected into the Digital Activities represents one of the milestone of the project. The DiFac outcomes are summarized and also validated in a Integrated Scenario also presented in the paper. It's anticipates by the iPortal description. DiFac iPortal is the entry point for reaching the project results and it contains the whole knowledge repository. The user can define there the enterprise needs and find a correct way for solving them using the DiFac frameworks.