The current trend in mass personalization is making it ever-more important to achieve a smooth transition towards a more flexible production process to keep up with global competition. IFF has therefore developed the concept of the Matrix Fusion Factory (MFF). MFF fuses the standardized coordinate system developed by IFF with the real factory, thus linking physical factories with their digital images. It is based on modularized, mobile machines capable of configuring and positioning themselves according to the tasks and context concerned. The necessary information, such as machine areas or work instructions, is gathered practically in realtime depending on location, time, order and equipment, and made available within the factory in a context-based manner. In the MFF, this information is considered as being part of the physical factory. This allows the impact of the available information on the production system to be identified and simulated and, the availability of information to be adjusted. This mutual dependence between the physical and the digital factory can only be achieved through fusion. The end-result is a digital-physical factory that enables efficient and flexible value-adding processes in modularized mobile factories.
