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com/science/article/pii/S0736584518306343
Manuscript_16d35506b1b99d89f9ba5bfd16ef7495

A proactive material handling method for CPS enabled shop-floor

Wenbo Wang a, Yingfeng Zhang a,b,*, Ray Y. Zhong c

a
Key Laboratory of Contemporary Design and Integrated Manufacturing Technology,
Ministry of Education, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China;

b
Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering, Southern University of Science and
Technology

c
Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, The University of Hong
Kong, Hong Kong, China

*
Corresponding author

Abstract
Cyber physical system (CPS) enables companies to keep high traceability and controllability
in manufacturing for better quality and improved productivity. However, several challenges
including excessively long waiting time and a serious waste of energy still exist on the shop-
floor where limited buffer exists for each machine (e.g., shop-floor that manufactures large-
size products). The production logistics tasks are released after work-in-processes (WIPs) are
processed, and the machines will be occupied before trolleys arrival when using passive
material handling strategy. To address this issue, a proactive material handling method for
CPS enabled shop-floor (CPS-PMH) is proposed. Firstly, the manufacturing resources
(machines and trolleys) are made smart by applying CPS technologies so that they are able to
sense, act, interact and behave within a smart environment. Secondly, a shop-floor digital
twin model is created, aiming to reflect their status just like real-life objects, and key
production performance indicators can be analysed timely. Then, a time-weighted multiple
linear regression method (TWMLR) is proposed to forecast the remaining processing time of
WIPs. A proactive material handling model is designed to allocate smart trolleys optimally.
Finally, a case study from Southern China is used to validate the proposed method and results
show that the proposed CPS-PMH can largely reduce the total non-value-added energy
consumption of manufacturing resources and optimize the routes of smart trolleys.

© 2019 published by Elsevier. This manuscript is made available under the Elsevier user license
https://www.elsevier.com/open-access/userlicense/1.0/
Keywords
Cyber physical system (CPS), Material handling, Shop-floor, Prediction model, Remaining
processing time, Large-size product

Abbreviations
AGV Automatic guided vehicle MLR Multiple linear regression
AR Augmented reality MRP Material requirements planning
CEP Complex event processing NSGA-II Non-dominated sorting genetic
CPS Cyber physical system algorithms-II
CNC Computer numerical control NVD Non-value-added
CPPS Cyber physical production system PI Physical Internet
CPS-PMH Proactive material handling for CPS- PT Processing time
enabled shop-floor PLS Production and logistics system
CSA Centralized storage area RFID Radio frequency identification
DT Digital twin ROI Return on investment
EIS Enterprises information system RPT Remaining processing time
EPL Event processing languages SoLS Self-organising logistics system
IoT Internet of Things TWMLR Time-weighted multiple linear
IoMT Internet of Manufacturing Things regression
KPI Key performance indicator VD Value-added
LR Linear regression WIP Work-in-process

1. Introduction

Nowadays, the emerging cyber physical system (CPS) presents a significant opportunity to
implement smart manufacturing [1]. The CPS can assist manufacturing systems with
advanced technologies, including Internet of Things (IoT) [2,3], big data analytics [4–6],
cloud computing[7], etc. Typical manufacturing resources are thus converted into smart
objects using these technologies so that they are able to sense, act and behave within a smart
environment. In addition, CPS is a collection of modelling, simulation and optimisation [8,9],
and predictive analytics [10,11], which supports manufacturing applications make reasonable
decisions accurately. As a result, CPS enables companies to cope with increasingly
customized products with a shorter lead-time to market and higher quality [12].
Manufacturing sectors are striving to upgrade their current production decision-making
modes to a more transparent, lean and intelligent level, and many new production paradigms
are proposed, such as digital twin shop-floor [13,14], Internet of Manufacturing Things
(IoMT) [15], intelligent Physical Internet (PI) containers [16,17], cloud manufacturing [18,19]
and cloud-based cyber physical production system (CPPS) [20,21].
Material handling on shop-floor is critical to ensure that each machine or workstation is
being fed with the right material in the right quantity and quality at the right point in time. It
has gained great attention to keep a high degree of production fluency. For example, Teruaki
Ito and Abadi proposed an agent-based material handling and inventory planning method in a
warehouse [22]. Chakraborty and Banik designed a material handling equipment selection
model using analytic hierarchy process [23]. Khayat et al. proposed an integrated production
and material handling scheduling method [24]. Pan et al. proposed a self-organising logistics
system (SoLS) which can function without significant intervention by humans and central
control by software [25]. Recently, by applying the CPS technologies in the manufacturing
environment, several real-time material handling strategies are proposed. Ren et al. proposed
a framework for shop-floor material delivery based on real-time manufacturing big data [26].
Zhang et al. proposed an optimization method for shop-floor material handling method,
where each trolley is an active entity which will request the transport tasks [27]. Qu et al.
discussed an IoT-based real-time production logistics synchronization system under smart
cloud manufacturing [28].
Based on these works, the material handling efficiency can be improved from three aspects:
1) real-time and multi-source manufacturing data has become accessible and ubiquitous,
which can provide accurate and comprehensive information support for production logistics
decision-making. 2) production disturbances (such as logistics tasks change and movement
equipment breakdowns) can be detected timely and responded rapidly. 3) material movement
trolleys are made ‘smart’, which can communicate with the management system actively,
execute production logistics decisions accurately and adjust their status dynamically, make
optimal and reliable material handling decisions using intelligent algorithms.
Despite significant progress achieved by the researchers in the field of material handling,
major challenges still exist in a CPS enabled shop-floor. They are summarized as follows:
1) Most of existing material handling systems use passive strategies. The delivery tasks
are always released after work-in-processes (WIPs) are processed, and an excessively
long waiting time and energy will be wasted before the tasks are assigned and executed
by smart trolleys. For the shop-floor that manufactures large-size products, which often
set limited buffer, it is challengeable for material handling. For example, a tire mould
manufacturing factory always set only one centralized storage area (CSA), each WIP
has to be delivered to the CSA or next workstation directly after being processed,
otherwise the workstation will be occupied.
2) Some assumptions, such as constant processing time and continuous facility
availability, are usually made when making material handling decisions. However,
some assumptions are not reasonable since there are many uncertain factors in real-life
manufacturing systems. For example, the proficiency of different workers often varies
 largely due to the difference among their working ages and motivations, which may
further lead to different setup time and manufacturing time of a same process. Besides,
machines cannot be available all the time because of the unavoidable occurrences of
unexpected machine breakdown. How to combine real-life production uncertainties in
production decision-making so that the allocation can be more practical should be
further discussed.
To tackle these problems, this paper proposed a proactive material handling method for
CPS enabled shop-floor (CPS-PMH). It integrates three important components. The first is a
CPS-enabled shop-floor where typical resources are made smart which can achieve the
capability of identifying their real-time status and interacting with the upper management
system. The second is a remaining processing time prediction method for WIPs, which can
combine historical manufacturing data and real-time manufacturing state simultaneously in
the prediction model. The third is the proactive material handling strategy, which can
proactively assign logistics tasks to smart trolleys with minimized transport distance of
trolleys and non-value-added energy consumption of machines and trolleys. After the
descriptions of the overall architecture and key technologies of CPS-PMH, a case study from
Southern China is used to validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.
The designed material handling model will provide a new paradigm for manufacturing
enterprises to implement more efficient material handling.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 reviews the related literature.
Section 3 outlines the proposed CPS-PMH. Section 4 presents the construction method of
shop-floor digital twin. Section 5 describes the overall solution for predicting the remaining
processing time of WIPs. Section 6 presents the overall solution of proactive material
handling strategy. In section 7, a case study is used to illustrate the implementation of the
proposed CPS-PMH. Conclusions and future works are given in Section 8.

2. Literature review

Three streams of the literature are relevant to this research. They are CPS and their
application in manufacturing, material handling in shop-floor, and processing time prediction.

2.1. CPS and their application in manufacturing

The term CPS was coined by UC Berkeley, with the realisation of the increasing importance
of integration between computing systems and physical processes [29]. Research and
applications of CPS have been active in many areas like transportation, smart home, robotic
surgery, aviation, critical infrastructure, etc. [30,31]. In the manufacturing environment,
Monostori et al. introduced the concept of CPPS, which is denoted as fundaments for
Industry 4.0 [32]. Mourtzis et al. proposed an adaptive shop-floor scheduling and condition-
based maintenance method for CPPS [21]. Zhang et al. proposed a framework of agent and
CPS-based self-organizing and self-adaptive intelligent shop-floor [33] and an energy-cyber-
physical system enabled management for energy-intensive manufacturing industries [34,35].
Álvares et al. developed a CPS framework for monitoring and teleoperation of a computer
numerical control (CNC) lathe based on MT-connect and OPC protocols [36]. Tao et al.
proposed the CPS-enabled industrial Internet of Things hub which supports manufacturing
services online generation and quick configuration and implementation for smart
interconnection [37].
The digital twin (DT) is one of the main concepts associated with the applications of CPS
in manufacturing systems. It can be defined as an integrated multi-physics, multi-scale,
probabilistic simulation of a complex product and uses the best available physical models,
sensor updates, etc. to mirror the life of its corresponding twin [38]. Tao et al. presented a
digital twin driven prognostics and health management for complex equipment [39]. Leng et
al. proposed a digital twin-driven manufacturing CPS for parallel controlling of the smart
workshop [40,41]. Zhuang et al. proposed a digital twin-based smart production management
and control architecture for complex product assembly shop-floor [42]. Zheng et al. proposed
an application framework of DT for product lifecycle management [43].

2.2. Material handling in shop-floor

To achieve a high-efficient material handling strategy, two main streams of the literature are
important. On the one hand, some experts focused on the collaborative optimization of
production and logistics systems (PLS). Teruaki et al. proposed an agent-based material
handling system, within which the subsystems can cooperate together to facilitate the just-in-
time exchange of orders and materials [22]. Khayat et al. discussed an integrated production
and material handling scheduling method using mathematical programming and constraint
programming [24]. Umar et al. proposed a hybrid multi-objective genetic algorithms for
integrated dynamic scheduling and routing of jobs and automatic guided vehicles (AGV) in
flexible manufacturing systems [44]. Qu et al. introduced an IoT-based real-time production
logistics synchronization system for cloud manufacturing [28]. Zhang et al. proposed a
framework for integration between production and logistics in job shops based on CPS and
industrial IoT, and intelligent modelling of key resources and self-organizing configuration
mechanisms are proposed to fulfil their target [45].
On the other hand, some research focused on material handling equipment allocation and
path routing. Veeravalli et al. designed an optimal material delivery scheduling framework in
flexible manufacturing system [46]. Xidias et al. proposed an integrated path planning,
routing, and scheduling method for logistics operations in manufacturing facilities [47].
Zhang et al. proposed a CPS-based smart material control model where AGVs and base
stations at intersections can communicate and interact with each other and share the real-time
information online [48]. Zhou and Shen discussed the multi-objective optimization of
material delivery for mixed model assembly lines, and a taboo enhanced particle swarm
optimization algorithm is developed to solve the problem [49].

2.3. Processing time prediction

Generally, the processing time of a WIP through a process or a set of processes is always set
as a constant value. However, the processing time of WIPs often changes with different
workers or machines. The related concepts of processing time include due-date, flow time,
and cycle time, which have attracted many interests from specialists. For example, Abdoli
and Choobineh used the Bayes method to forecast multi-class job flow times in a resource-
sharing environment [50]. Alenezi et al. proposed a real-time method for predicting order
flow times using support vector regression [51]. Asadzadeh et al. presented a flexible
algorithm for estimating lead time by combining artificial neural network, fuzzy regression,
and conventional regression [52]. Ioannou and Dimitriou presented a lead time estimation
method in material requirements planning (MRP) systems based on the system’s current
status [53]. Wu et al. proposed a Petri Net modelling method to analyse the cycle time of
dual-arm cluster tools with wafer revisiting [54]. Mourtzis et al. proposed a knowledge-based
method for estimating manufacturing lead time for complex engineered-to-order products
[55]. Wang et al. proposed a big data based cycle time parallel prediction method in a
semiconductor wafer fabrication system [56].

2.4. Knowledge gaps

From this review, although significant progress has been made in the three dimensions
mentioned above, there are still some gaps that need to be fulfilled.
In the term of CPS and their application in manufacturing, most studies mainly focused on
the combination and coordination between physical and computational elements, or high-
level frameworks of CPS-enabled production management. Limited effort was made on
 the extraction, prediction, and optimization of production KPIs for CPS-enabled shop-
floor. This paper proposes an overall architecture of CPS-PHM, which can analyse
production KPIs based on the shop-floor digital twin model, predict production KPIs
dynamically and making proactive material handling decisions optimally.
In the term of material handling in shop-floor, most of the studies focused on the
collaborative optimization of PLS for a stable production system and used passive modes
for allocation and path routing of material handling resources. However, production
disturbances often occur in real-life production, the decisions are hard to be executed
following initial plans, which may lead to excessively long waiting time of logistics tasks
and a serious waste of energy consumption of machines and trolleys. The proposed
method can make material handling decisions before logistics tasks are released so that the
assignment of smart trolleys can be more optimal and usable.
In the term of processing time prediction, most of the studies focus on statistical
estimation of a manufacturing process. Such forecasts are meaningful for the initial
production decision making but may not be suitable for operational production systems
since many uncertainties exist in real-life production. How to predict the remaining
processing time (RPT) in a dynamic production environment needs to be further discussed.
This paper proposed a TWMLR method for predicting RPT, which can give a more
reliable prediction.

3. Overview of CPS-PMH

This research focuses mainly on discrete manufacturing shop-floors which have a centralized
storage area and limited buffer around each workstation. The objective of the proposed
method is to change traditional passive material handling strategy by using predictive
analytics and CPS technologies.

3.1. Comparison of traditional passive material handling and CPS-PMH

For better understanding, the two kinds of material handling strategies (i.e., the traditional
passive material handling strategy and the proposed CPS-PMH strategy) are compared in Fig.
1. The two strategies can be compared from four aspects, i.e., production monitor,
requirement release, resource allocation, and decision execution.
At the production monitor level, for the traditional passive material handling, production
systems are monitored according to manual and paper-based means, which often leads to
inaccurate and delay collection of production information. In contrast, CPS-PMH makes
machines and material handling systems ‘smart’ by using CPS technologies, which are
capable of active perception and accurate transfer of production data about their status and
the environment.
At the requirement release level, the production management demands are published after
WIPs are processed or production exceptions happened, thus only passive response
decisions can be made, and high production efficiency is hard to be achieved. In contrast,
the CPS-PMH can predict the future status of production systems, and the RPT of WIPs
and the occurrence of production exceptions can be forecasted and responded in advance.
At the resource allocation level, the traditional passive material handling strategy assigns
material movement tasks to trolleys based on their historical information, and the
allocation efficiency and feasibility level relies on the ability of material handling workers.
In contrast, the CPS-PMH strategy allocates trolleys according to their real-time status and
the results are obtained based on intelligent algorithms, which can obtain more optimal
and feasible allocations.
At the decision execution level, the material movement tasks are delivered to trolleys
manually or in a regular time, and the execution of tasks are based on worker experience.
In the CPS-PMH strategy, the trolleys can obtain material handling tasks timely, and the
tasks can be executed following navigation instructions. Based on these updates, the
processed WIPs can be unloaded from machines timely and next WIPs can arrive in time,
which can largely reduce the occupation or idle time of machines and trolleys.
 Fig. 1. Comparison between two material handling strategies

3.2. The overall architecture of CPS-PMH

The overall architecture of the proposed CPS-PMH strategy is shown in Fig. 2. Mainly it
consists of three modules, i.e., physical shop-floor, shop-floor digital twin, and proactive
material handling.
(1) Physical shop-floor
This module is responsible for constructing a smart shop-floor by adopting CPS technologies.
In a shop-floor, manufacturing resources can be divided into two main sets: manufacturing
system (machines, workers, tools, etc.) and material handling system (pallets, trolleys,
workers, etc.). The production objects are made ‘smart’ by equipping the physical
manufacturing resources with sensing devices to achieve the capability of identifying their
real-time status and interacting with the environment [57,58]. Based on this, the real-time
status of machines and trolleys can be sensed and tracked by upper-level production system.
Besides, production decisions from upper systems can be received and executed accurately
by smart objects too, e.g., which parameter should be set when a machine operates, which
trolley is assigned to move a finished WIP, etc.
 Fig. 2. Overall architecture of CPS-PMH

(2) Shop-floor digital twin

This module is used to construct a digital twin model for physical shop-floor. A multi-level
structure is applied when constructing the shop-floor digital twin model, i.e., resource level
(each machine, trolley or worker), cell level (a set of machines or production line), and shop-
floor level. After the virtual structure is constructed, the critical attributes are further added
following three main domains, including element domain, behaviour domain, and rule
domain.
At the element domain, the shop-floor digital twin is composed of shop-floor elements’
physical models, e.g., geometric model, product model, or environment model. The
commonly applied tools include Pro/E, AutoCAD, etc.
At the behaviour domain, the shop-floor digital twin consists of equipment behaviours, i.e.,
worker’s action, equipment’s operations, and trolley’s movement. Several tools can be
used to model the dynamics of the physical system, e.g., CPN tools, Prom, and FlexSim.
At the rule domain, the shop-floor digital twin consists of operational mechanisms or
association rules among different elements, which ensures the shop-floor digital twin can
match real situations and truly simulate the physical shop-floor’s status, operation, and
evaluation.
Based on these settings, real-life production can be reflected accurately in a virtual
environment, production key performance indicators (KPI) (such as production progress,
worker efficiency) can be extracted easily, and production decisions can be made optimally.
(3) Proactive material handling
The proactive material handling is responsible for making material handling decisions based
on the prediction of the future status of manufacturing systems, including future logistics
tasks prediction and trolley status prediction. In a shop-floor, mainly four kinds of logistics
tasks are important, i.e., raw material entrance (from warehouse or last shop-floor to the
shop-floor), processed WIPs movement (from one workstation to next workstation or CSA),
queuing WIP movement (from CSA to workstation), and finished product exit (to outside
warehouse or next shop-floor). This paper focuses on the WIP movement within a shop-floor,
i.e., the second and third kind tasks.
Since the processing activities of a WIP are similar with historical similar ones and more
recent manufacturing cases are more valuable, this paper proposes a time-weighted linear
regression method (TWMLR) by combing time series technology and multiple linear
regression to predict processing time of WIPs. For each processing WIP, its remaining
processing time can be forecasted accordingly. At the same time, the future status (locations,
capacity, etc.) of trolleys can also be predicted based on their current status and assigned
delivery tasks. Lastly, a non-dominant sorting genetic algorithm-II (NSGA-II) based
optimization method is proposed to give an optimal material handling assignment schedule.

4. Shop-floor digital twin model

The core of shop-floor digital twin model is to give a mirror of physical shop-floor, which
can change the status of its elements with real-life production activities and convey
production decisions to corresponding smart objects timely. Manufacturing data is a main
connection between the two layers. Since raw data sensed in physical shop-floor often carries
many unrelated, duplicate information, it is necessary to analyse production KPIs. Then the
status of shop-floor digital twin can be updated easily with the changes of production KPIs.
Fig. 3 shows the main steps for the construction of shop-floor digital-twin model, which
consists of four main steps, real-time data modelling, data classification, data integration, and
KPIs extraction.

Fig. 3. Construction of shop-floor digital twin model

4.1. Real-time manufacturing data modelling

According to the three domains of shop-floor digital twin in Section 3.2, the status of a
manufacturing equipment (either machine or trolley) can be represented as a 3-tuple M=<E, B,
R>, the meanings of notations are presented as follows.
 E=<EID, LocID, Ea> denotes the element domain, where, EID denotes the equipment ID;
LocID denotes the location ID; Ea denotes other important attributes, such as service
length.
B=<Ba, Par, T> denotes the behaviour domain, where, Ba denotes the activity of the
behaviour, such as drilling or grinding for machines, and delivering or loading for trolleys;
Par denotes the parameters of the equipment, such as speed; T denotes the time.
R=<Wor, Cap, WL, Ra> denotes the rule domain, where, Wor denotes the worker that
operates the machine; Cap denotes the capacity of the equipment, such as the maximum
machining size of machine, material type that the trolley can move; WT denotes the
maximum continuous work time of machines or trolleys; Ra denotes the other rules that
the equipment needs to follow.

4.2. Data classification

The data classification aims to divide the integrated data sets into different groups. For
example, the operations of a production system can be divided into different sets based on
their status (running smoothly to jammed). The classification can be achieved by various
algorithms that differ significantly in their understanding of what constitutes a group and how
to efficiently find them. The popular algorithms include decision trees, k-means clustering,
and neural network, etc. Since there are many fuzzy information in real-life production
system, for example, a machine always works in middle status (neither best status nor total
breakdown), the fuzzy decision tree technologies are used in the data classification stage [59].

4.3. Data integration

After the modelling of real-time manufacturing data, the data sets are still too scattered to be
used. It is essential to perform the data integration operation. Since multi-level structure is
used when constructing a shop-floor digital twin, a four-level event model is used to integrate
the raw manufacturing data, i.e., primitive event, basic event, complex event, and critical
event. Each sensing data item can be seen as a primitive event. The basic events are used to
model the resource-level event, such as material loading, material processing, and parts
assembly events. The complex event is the cell-level event, such as a series of production
events from material loading to WIP processed. The critical event is the shop-floor level
event, whose state change will influence the status of shop-floor, e.g., a product finished. In
this paper, the concept of complex event processing (CEP) is introduced to fulfil the event
integration and processing, the Esper engine and its event processing languages (EPL) is used
for analysis of real-time arriving data and historical events [60].
4.4. Production KPIs extraction
After the classification, the data items from a same group can be analysed to find production
KPIs from different aspects, such as quality, time, cost, and energy. Production KPIs are a set
of quantifiable measures that a manufacturing system uses to gauge its performance (e.g.
efficiency, throughput, and quality) over time, which can be used for measuring, comparing
or assessing the operational state. The main steps for production KPIs extraction are
described as follows.
Step 1: The production application systems define the production KPIs according to their
needs and subscribe the KPIs to the data-processing system.
Step 2: The data-processing system maps the production KPIs with the multi-level events.
In general, the KPIs vary largely because of the different requirements from different
application systems. For example, the KPIs from resource-level (work, machine, trolley,
etc.) include work efficiency, service length, travel speed, etc. The cell-level KPIs
include the processing time of a WIP at a machine, available time of a set of machines,
the total work time of workers, etc. The KPIs from shop-floor include the total progress
of a project.
Step 3: The data-processing system publishes the production KPIs based on the analysis
of multi-level events. When an event is detected, the related critical information can be
obtained at the same time and transferred to the application systems.
Based on the subscribe and publish mechanism, production KPIs can be extracted
accurately. Then, the status of digital twin model can be updated with the real-life production,
and the production KPIs can be further analysed for proactive material handling.

5. Dynamic remaining processing time prediction

5.1. Work logic of dynamic remaining processing time prediction

In this section, the work logic for predicting remaining processing time (RPT) is introduced
in detail, as shown in Fig. 4. Based on the construction of shop-floor digital twin model, the
real-time KPIs of WIPs can be extracted easily, as discussed in section 4.4. Then, for each
processing WIP, a set of historical similar cases can be filtered out, and the relationship
between the processing time and the critical production factors can be obtained through
predictive analytics technologies. Currently, several predictive analytics technologies are
popular, such as linear regression (LR), neural network and support vector machine. The
multiple linear regression (MLR) method can provide a continuous result and consumes little
time to achieve better result. In addition, the current production process is more similar to
recent cases, thus a new RPT prediction method by combining MLR with time series analysis
(exponential smoothing) technology, i.e., TWMLR method, is proposed to predict the RPT of
WIPs.
After a prediction model is extracted, the processing time of a WIP can be predicted
according to real-time status of influential resources, and RPT can be calculated based on
real-time processing progress. In a CPS-enabled shop-floor, production status can be sensed
timely and production exceptions can be detected timely. If no exception occurs, the
remaining processing time can be updated according to the difference between the predicted
time and consumed time. If an exception happens, its influence on shop-floor need to be
evaluated. If no resource is required to change to solve the exception, the prediction of
remaining processing time only extends. Otherwise, a new round of RPT prediction is
necessary to achieve an accurate prediction.
Start

Find a processing WIP

Filter out historical similar

cases

Construct TWMLR model Yes

Obtain real-time status of No Change production

related resources environment?

Predict total non-value-added

processing time
Exception evaluation
Predict RPT of WIPs
Yes
Exception happens?
No
Update RPT with time

End

Fig. 4. Overall work logic of remaining processing time prediction

5.2. Time weighted multiple linear regression method

In the traditional MLR method, the historical observations are weighted equally. However, in
a real-life production system, the operations of production resources evolve with time passed
by, for example, the senior workers can be more efficient than young ones. Thus, recent
samples often reflect more information than old ones. Meanwhile, exponential smoothing is
one of many window functions commonly applied to smooth time-series data. This paper
uses the exponential functions to assign exponentially decreasing weights over time. The
work logic of TWMLR for predicting remaining processing time is described as follows.
1) New case
In order to represent a new prediction problem, the real-time information obtained by the KPI
analysis is denoted as a new prediction case (N’). The purpose of representing a problem
through a case style matrix is to reflect how a decision-maker would structure a new problem.
A new case is defined as
N ' = { x1' , x2' ,..., x 'j ,..., xn' } (1)

where, n refers to the total number of attributes; x 'j refers to the value of jth attributes, e.g.,

the worker’s seniority, WIP diameter, and WIP weight.

2) Historical WIP cases
After a new case comes, the historical cases of similar WIPs can be selected to create a data
set, which can be represented as M ' = { N i ' , y i , T i } , where, N i ' = { x1i ' , x2i ' ,..., x ij' ,..., xni ' } , yi

denotes the real processing time of the ith case; T i denotes the occurrence time of case N i ' ; i
refers to the case ID; x ij' refers to the value of jth attributes.

Since the attributes may have a large range of values and different attributes vary in their
types, a data standardization is necessary before creating a data matrix. In general, Z-score
normalization or min-max scaling are the most popular data standardization methods, this
paper selects the min-max normalization to normalize the raw data sets, as follows
x ij' − µ j
x ij = (2)
x 'j ,max − x 'j ,min

where, xij and x ij’ denote the standardized value and raw value of the jth attributes of case,

respectively; µ j , x'j ,max and x 'j ,min denote the average value, maximum value, and minimum

value in the data set, respectively. Based on the data standardization, the data set can be
changed to M = { N i , y i , T i } , where N i = { x1i , x2i ,..., x ij ,..., xni } .

3) Weight of historical cases calculation

According to the occurrence time, the weight of ith historical case can be calculated as
follows
  a, if WN i ≤ 1

 a (1 − a ),if 1 < WN ≤ 2
i
wi =  (3)
a (1 − a ) ,if 2 < WN ≤ 3
2 i

 ......

T c −Ti
where, WN i = denotes the time windows number between ith case and current time,
tw

T c denotes the current time; t w denotes the time window that the weight changes, which can
be defined according to real-life experience.
4) TWMLR model calculation
After a set of cases is collected and time weights are added to each case, the data set can
be analysed to find a prediction equation which can be described as
hθ ( x) = θ0 + θ1 x1 + ⋅⋅⋅ + θ j x j ⋅⋅⋅ +θn xn (4)

where, hθ (x) refers to the predicted processing time of a case; θ j denotes the parameters for

jth attributes.
Compared with traditional MLR method, the proposed model uses a time-weighted cost
function, which can be described as follows
1 m i n
J (θ ) = ∑
2 m i =1
w (∑ θ j x j ( i ) − y ( i ) ) 2
j =0
(5)

where, J (θ ) denotes the cost function with a set of θ . m denotes total number of cases.
Then, the gradient descent technologies are used to find a fitted model, repeat until
convergence, the equations are listed as follows
∂
θ j := θ j − ∂ J (θ 0 , θ1 ) (6)
∂θ j

5) Remaining processing time prediction

After the creation of a predictive model, a prediction of total processing time can be given
according to the attribute status of a new case. Then, the remaining processing time of the
case can be computed, as follows
Tr = hθ (x) − (Tc − Ts ) (7)

where, Tr denotes the predicted remaining processing time; Tc denotes the current time; Ts
denotes the start time of the new case.
6. Proactive material handling method

In this section, a proactive shop-floor material handling method is designed. It aims to find an
optimal combination between delivery tasks and smart trolleys according to their both future
status and current information. Since a huge number of logistics tasks exist in a
manufacturing shop-floor, a two-stage optimization method is designed to reduce the
complexity of the tasks assignment and improve the solving efficiency for real-time decisions.
In this two-stage optimization method, the first stage is used to obtain a candidate task set
from whole move tasks. The second stage is used to assign optimal tasks to smart trolleys.

6.1. Predictive information models of move tasks and trolleys

Before describing the proactive material handling method, it is necessary to give the
information model of tasks and smart trolleys.
The information model of N tasks is stored in a matrix N. Here, TIDi represents the ID of
ith task; CSi represents the WIP status of ith task (waiting to be processed, processing or
ready to delivery); FLi and TLi denote the from and to location of ith task; Ri represents the
release time that the ith task need to be delivered; Di denotes the due date of ith task, if a task
is going to be moved to the CSA, it will set as an infinity; Pi represents the priority of ith task;
EM i1 is used to define the occupation energy cost that will occur if a task is delivered after Ri.

If the task is delivered from CSA, it will be set as zero; EM i2 is used to define energy cost
that will occur if the task arrives after Di. If the tasks are delivered from CSA, it will be set as
zero.

 Ts1   TID1 FL1 TL1 R1 D1 P1 EM11 EM 12 

Ts   
 2  TID2 FL2 TL2 R2 D2 P2 EM 21 EM 22 
N =  ...  =  ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...  (8)
   
 Tsi   TIDi FLi TLi Ri Di Pi EM i1 EM i2 
 ...   ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 
The information model of smart trolleys is stored in a matrix V. Here, VIDh denotes the hth
trolley ID; CLh denotes the current location of hth trolley; ATh represents the available time;
ALh denotes the available location; Ehidle and Ehdelivery denote the unit energy consumption when
it moves without and with delivering task, respectively; Sh represents the average move
speed.
 V1  VID1 CL1 AT1 AL1 E1idle E1delivery S1 
V   idle delivery 
 2  VID2 CL2 AT2 AL2 E 2 E 2 S2 
V =  ...  =  ... ... ... ... ... ... ...  (9)
   
Vh  VIDh CLh ATh ALh Ehidle E delivery
h Sh 
....  ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 

6.2. Pre-optimization for candidate tasks and trolleys set

Pre-optimization for candidate tasks and smart trolleys set is used to select better tasks and
available trolleys for further assignment. It could avoid data redundancy because there are too
many material handling tasks and smart trolleys according to predictions.
Firstly, moving tasks are pre-optimized according to their priorities. The priority of each
task is defined based on its release time. If a task is moved from CSA, the release time will be
computed according to the difference between due-date and average move time. Generally,
the earlier the release time, the higher the priority.
Candidate task set could be formed following the rule: select top q tasks according to the
priorities, if several tasks have the same priority, select the task having earlier due time.
Information of candidate task set is stored in the matrix Q, as Q = Ts1 , Ts 2 ,..., Ts f ,..., Ts q  ,

here, f denotes the selected task number. Then, the smart trolleys whose available time before
the released time of any task will be selected and stored in a matrix Tr, as
Tr = V 1 , V 2 ,..., V e ,..., V p  , here, p is the total number of available trolleys and e denotes the

trolley number.
After the top q tasks and p available trolleys are selected, the NSGA-II based optimization
method will be involved to find an optimal allocation of trolleys for the material handling
tasks.

6.3. NSGA-II based optimization method

NSGA-II is known as a multiple criteria decision-making tool that is widely used in tackling
vehicle routing and scheduling problems[60,61]. Therefore, an NSGA-II based optimization
method is used to allocate the tasks to different trolleys. In this research, the transport
distance of trolleys (objective function 1) and the total energy consumptions (objective
function 2) are considered as the optimization targets. The mathematical representations are
described as follows.
Objective function 1:

Fdis tan ce = Min(∑e=1 ∑ ge=1 (( FLg − ALe ) + ( FLg +1 − TLg ) + (TLg − FLg )))
p q
(10)
Objective function 2:
Etotal = Min( Eoccupation
machine
+ Eidle
machine
+ Eoperational
trolley
+ Eidle
trolley
)
=Min(∑ e =1 ∑ ge=1 ( EM g1 max(0, Te,start
p q
g − Rg ) + EM g max (0, Te , g − Dg ))
2 finish
(11)
+ ∑ e =1 ∑ ge=1 ( Eeidle ((TFL ,1 − TAL ,e ) + (TFL , g +1 − TTL , g )) + ( Eeoperate (TTL , g − TFL , g ))))
p q

Subject to:

,( g +1) > Te , g
Testart , e = 1, 2,..., p, g = 1, 2,..., qe (12)
finish

Testart
,g ≥ ATe , e = 1, 2,..., p, g = 1, 2,..., qe (13)

Testart
,g ≥ Rg , e = 1, 2,..., p, g = 1, 2,..., qe (14)

Here, qe denotes the total task number that assigned to eth trolley; g denotes the task
number; Te,start
g denotes the time that eth trolley starts to move gth task; Tg
finish
denotes the time

that task is finished; TFL ,g and TTL ,g represent the from and to time of gth task.

In the above formulations, two objectives are used to determine a schedule that minimizes
the total routing distance of smart trolley Fdistance (Eq. (10)) and minimizes the total energy
consumption of non-value-added activities Etotal (Eq. (11)) which consists of the four parts:
occupation energy consumption of last machine, idle energy consumption of next machine,
idle and operational energy consumption of smart trolleys moves without and with tasks.
Constraint (12) ensures that no trolley can move more than one tasks at a time, a new task
need to load after last task is unloaded. Constraint (13) takes care of the requirement that the
start moving time of tasks should after the available time of each trolley. Constraint (14)
ensures that the start moving time of each task should after their release time.
After the problem is defined, the NSGA-II algorithm is used to optimise the allocation. The
NSGA-II algorithm consists of seven main steps which are briefly described as follows.
Step 1: Construct a parent population PoP0 whose size is pop. Each individual of PoP0 can
be seen as a chromosome which consists of q genes. Each gene consists of an integer
e (1 ≤ e ≤ p ) . Based on the genes and chromosome, the decoding schema is also designed.
The integer ‘e’ appeared in chromosome presents the trolley e. The appeared location of
integer ‘e’ refers to the tasks that are assigned to the eth trolley; p is the total available
trolleys; q refers to the total task number. The appeared order of integer ‘e’ also presents
the move sequence of the assigned tasks. For example, the chromosome ‘1-2-1-2’ presents
the processing order of four tasks assigned to two trolleys, i.e., trolley ‘1’ will move tasks
‘1’ and ‘3’ successively, and trolley ‘2’ will move tasks ‘2’ and ‘4’ in turn.
 Step 2: Generate one random number between 0 and 1. If the number exceeds a predefined
probability (e.g., 0.25), then adopt the crossover operator; else use the mutation operator.
The crossover operator is used to obtain offspring by recombining parents. In this case, we
adopt a multi-point crossover operator to permute the trolley order as well as keep the legality
of the generated chromosome. Firstly, choose two parents (A and B). Secondly, randomly get
two crossover points to form two crossover-sections. At last, exchange the genes in crossover
sections between the parents.
The mutation operator works on a single chromosome and generates offspring by altering
one or more genes.
Step 3: Combine the offspring and parent population to create a new population whose
size is 2×pop. Calculate the fitness functions of each individual. In this paper, the
objective functions are used as the fitness functions to evaluate the chromosomes.
Step 4: Sort the individuals according to non-dominated sorting procedure which ranks the
solutions into different Pareto fronts.
Step 5: As to the individuals in the same level, crowding distance sorting procedure is
used to rank them. The crowding distance can be calculated based on the following
equation:

dis pi = ∑ pj =1 ( f pipj+1 − f pipj−1 ) ( f max

pm pj
− f min
pj
) (15)

where, dispi represents the distance of pith point Ppi; pm represents the total number of
fitness functions, it equals 2 in this paper; f pipj+1 and f pipj-1 represent the value of fitness

function of neighbour points, respectively; f max

pj
and f min
pj
represent the maximum and
minimum of the fitness function in the population, respectively.
Step 6: Select the top pop individuals as the new population. Then, iterate the algorithm
from step 2 to step 5 until the termination condition is met.
Step 7: Choose one individual as the optimal assignment and output. In this paper, the
individual with the minimum relative Euler distance (Equation (16)) is chosen as the
default result.
2 2
 ( f x1 − f min
1
)   ( f x2 − f min
2
) 
Disf x =  1  + 2  (16)
 ( f max − f min )   ( f max − f min ) 
1 2
 1 2
where, Disf x represents the distance; f max and f max represent the maximum of the fitness
1 2
functions, respectively; f min and f min represent the minimum of the fitness functions,

respectively; f x1 and f x2 are the specific values of fitness functions of the individual.
After an optimal allocation decision is obtained, the trolleys will receive the decisions and
execute their assigned tasks accordingly. If an exception happens (e.g., a trolley breaks, a task
cancels), the consequence will be evaluated in time, and a new round of optimization will be
involved if the impact of exception will largely influence the normal operation of production
system.

7. Case study

7.1. Case description

Here, an industrial case from a collaborative company is used to demonstrate the proposed
CPS-PMH. The company is a typical manufacturer for tire mould production in Southern
China. Since the sizes of most tire moulds are large, it is expensive to keep a buffer area for
each machine. The shop-floor sets a CSA to store the materials and no buffer is set around
each machine. As a result, the WIPs need to be moved to the CSA or next workstation
directly from the manufacturing machine, otherwise, the machine will be occupied and
cannot process following materials.
Currently, the shop-floor uses a passive and manual material handling strategy in its
logistics system: 1) after a WIP is processed, the manufacturing worker asks an idle logistics
worker to move the WIP and bring next WIP. 2) the logistics worker finds a trolley and takes
related tools to load the WIP. 3) the logistics worker moves the WIP according to his
experience and production plan. 4) the logistics worker finds next WIP and bring it to the
machine. Under this situation, a long idle time of the machine is often consumed and much
unnecessary energy consumption from both trolleys and machines is also wasted. Therefore,
the company is truly in need of CPS-PMH methods and tools.
To demonstrate the advantages of the proposed CPS-PMH method, RFID technologies and
advanced information and communication technologies are applied so that production
fluctuations can be tracked timely, and predictive material handling decisions can be made
and executed accurately. As shown in Fig. 5, the shop-floor can be divided into three main
parts: manufacturing area, logistics system, and CSA. Three main kinds of material handling
activities are considered, i.e., from one machine (Mi) to another machine (Mj), from one
machine (Mi) to CSA, and from CSA to one machine (Mi). The following sections will use a
material handling case to illustrate the proposed CPS-PMH.

Fig. 5. Overview of case shop-floor

7.2. TWMLR-based RPT prediction
The total processing time consists of two kinds of time, i.e., value-added (VD) processing
time and non-value-added (NVD) processing time. The VD processing time is the time
consumed in manufacturing operations and is always set as a constant value which can be
obtained from the historical records. The NVD processing time is the time for preparation
and post-production activities, including setup, cleaning, uninstall, cooling, etc. The NVD
processing time often varies in real-life production system due to the existence of uncertain
factors. In general, the uncertain factors in a shop-floor can be divided into six aspects, i.e.,
man, machine, material, method, measurement, and environment. According to the discussion
with the managers of the case shop-floor, the production method, measurement, and
environment change little and have few impacts on the changes of processing time of WIPs.
Therefore, the other three kinds of factors are selected as the key research aspects. The
working age of worker, the size of WIP and the working age of machines are further chosen
as the specific impactors in the ‘man’, ‘material’, and ‘machine’ aspects, respectively.
Based on the analysis, a dataset that combines the three impactors and the processing time
can be extracted, and then a TWMLR-based RPT prediction model can be learned. For a new
case, the model can be used to forecast the NVD processing time, and the total processing
time can be calculated by adding fixed VD processing time. At last, the remaining processing
time can be computed according to the passed time of the case.
A process of one mould is selected as the research target. A dataset with 100 samples of
the same mould is extracted from historical production activities. Each sample contains three
main impactors: working age of worker (x1), size of WIP (x2) and working age of machine
(x3). Since different factors have different dimensions, the min-max normalization method is
used to pre-process the raw dataset. Table 1 shows a fragment of the standardized dataset.
After the dataset is obtained, the TWMLR-based RPT prediction method is used to find a
model for predicting the NVD processing time.

Table 1

A fragment of dataset.

No. x1 x2 x3 Occurrence time Y

1 0.0966 0.2613 -0.3939 1 31
2 0.1282 0.2883 -0.4365 1 28
… … … … … …
19 0.2826 0.2072 -0.4835 2 36
… … … … 2 …
43 0.2843 0.3243 -0.5608 3 28
… … … .. 3 …
69 -0.4533 -0.8018 1.3783 4 10
… … … … 4 …
100 -0.1637 -0.1712 0.2378 4 18

When constructing a TWMLR model for predicting the processing time of a specific case,
only the cases whose occurrence time before the case are used, for example, when forecasting
the 60th case, only previous 59 cases are used. As a result, the time weights need to be re-
calculated, and the prediction model need to be updated when analysing different cases.
Equation (17) presents the TWMLR model learned from the whole dataset.
Y = 21.3439 + 23.3184 x1 + 13.6224 x2 + 9.7926 x3 (17)
To demonstrate the effectiveness of TWMLR, the raw MLR method which do not give the
samples time-related weights is used for comparison. The obtained model is as follows
Y = 23.4634 + 31.3636 x1 + 21.6269 x2 + 15.2050 x3 (18)
Fig. 6 shows the prediction results of the two different models. Fig. 6(a) shows the
comparison between real value and the two predictions. It can be found that most of the
predictions from TWMLR which considers time-weight of cases are more approximate to the
real values than the non-time-weighted method (raw MLR method). Fig. 6(b) shows the
residual error of the two different prediction models. It can be found that the proposed
method performs worse for the first several cases, and the prediction accuracy increases with
time passed by. For the latest several cases, the proposed method performs good enough than
non-time-weighted method. Based on these analyse, it can be concluded that the TWMLR-
based prediction gives more accurate prediction than raw MLR method, and with time passed
by, the prediction becomes more and more reliable.

Fig. 6. Prediction result of remaining processing time

7.3. Proactive material handling method

After the RPT of all the current WIPs in the shop-floor is forecasted, the proactive material
handling method can be involved. Firstly, a set of logistics tasks are created based on the RPT
prediction information. Secondly, a limited number of tasks are extracted, for example, a set
of top 20 logistics tasks are selected in Table 2. It can be seen that the selected tasks consist
of four important attributes, i.e., release time from last machine, use time of next machine,
from and to location of predicted tasks, occupation energy consumption, and idle energy
consumption. Then, the smart trolleys that will be available before the last task releases are
filtered, as shown in Table 3. Two main kinds of information are given, i.e., available time
and available location.
Table 2
Future material delivery tasks.
Task ID 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Release time 0 0 33 0 25 9 16 22 27 0
Use time 10 38 / 34 / / 23 27 / 28
From Location 17,20 34,50 34,10 66,70 66,90 83,30 50,30 50,10 17,90 34,50
To Location 34,60 17,40 34,70 34,10 66,70 66,70 50,60 50,30 50,60 17,90
Occupation energy 21 17 19 20 15 8 19 12 17 13
consumption
Idle energy 28 17 22 20 15 18 29 22 21 20
consumption
Task ID 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Release time 8 21 0 24 0 24 16 0 13 5
Use time / 29 26 / 17 / 25 6 / 10
From Location 17,50 17,10 34,50 50,30 66,70 83,70 83,50 66,70 66,10 83,10
To Location 34,70 17,50 34,30 34,50 83,50 34,50 83,90 83,10 66,50 83,30
Occupation energy 12 9 15 9 19 12 16 13 10 12
consumption
Idle energy 12 19 15 11 13 12 23 18 17 15
consumption

Table 3

Future status of smart trolleys.

Task ID 1 2 3 4 5 6
Available time 4 1 0 1 1 0
Available location 90, 20 66,40 17,40 83,60 50,60 17,20

Based on the two datasets, an optimal allocation for material handling can be found using
the NSGA-II algorithm. The maximum number of iterations is set as 400. The results are
shown in Fig. 7. Fig. 7(a) shows the Pareto front of the optimization which presents the
relationship between the distance of smart trolleys and energy consumption. From the Pareto
front, it can be seen that the solution could lead to a lower distance with larger energy
consumption when a higher weight is assigned to trolley distance. In contrast, if a higher
weight is assigned to energy consumption, the solution could have a lower energy
consumption with a higher distance. As a result, the managers need to make a balance
between logistics distance and energy consumption according to their actual requirements.
When the default output set is used, the Gantt chart of the optimal schedule is shown in Fig.
7(b). The horizontal axis gives the time and vertical axis refers to the task ID. The numbers
embedded in the coloured bars of Fig. 7(b) presents the assigned trolley for each task. After
an allocation decision is obtained, the information about the tasks can be transferred to each
trolley, and the trolley will deliver the materials at the specific time points.
 Fig. 7. Optimal allocation results of the proposed case

To illustrate the efficiency of the proactive material handling strategy, the passive material
handling strategy is simulated to give a comparison. In the passive material handling strategy,
the material handling tasks can only be released to the system after the WIPs are processed,
and only the idle smart trolleys can be assigned to move the WIPs. The NSGA-II algorithm is
used to solve the problem of the passive material handling and the Euler distance method is
used to give a default result too. The comparison results of the two strategies are shown in
Table 4. From the comparison, it can be found that the proactive material handling method
can largely reduce the total energy consumption (52.7%) and distance of trolleys (66.7%)
simultaneously.
Table 4

Comparison between CPS-PMH and passive material handling.

Solution Distance of trolleys Energy consumption

CPS-PMH 549 1509
Passive material handling 1649.25 3188

7.4. Prototype system for CPS-PMH

In this section, a prototype system is developed to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed
CPS-PMH. Three main functions are fulfilled in the system, namely shop-floor digital twin,
dynamic prediction and proactive material handling. Fig. 8 gives the main screens of three
main parts.
 Fig. 8. Screens of prototype system for CPS-PMH
Fig. 8(a) shows the screen for shop-floor digital twin. The overall layout is displayed on
the main area. The real-time KPI information at each machine (including order ID, worker ID,
and progress) can be shown through a pop-up window by clicking the machine icons.
Fig. 8(b) presents the screen for dynamic prediction of RPT of WIPs. After a machine is
selected, the information about the real-time status, KPI prediction, production history and
operation instruction at the machine level can be shown in the right part of the screen. The
real-time status can be shown from three domains, i.e., element domain, behaviour domain,
and rule domain. The KPI prediction information consists of three kinds of KPIs, i.e.,
remaining processing time, cost and workload. For the RPT prediction, the remaining
processing time, processed time, estimated finish time and total processing time will be
shown in a table. Besides, the total production progress and NVD production progress will be
shown in figures.
Fig. 8(c) gives the workflow of the predictive material handling, which includes three main
steps: 1) create a candidate logistics tasks set. 2) select available trolley set. 3) find optimal
material handling allocation. After an optimal allocation is obtained, it will be displayed as a
Gantt chart, and the detailed logistics routing for each trolley can be created accordingly.
Finally, the assigned tasks for each trolley will be conveyed to the corresponding trolley
timely.

8. Conclusion

In order to cope with frequent changes and disturbances, many companies applying advanced
CPS technologies to keep high-level production traceability and controllability about its
shop-floor. However, most of the shop-floors still use passive material handling strategies,
which lead to excessively long occupation or idle time of machines. This situation is more
serious on the shop-floor that have a central material storage area and limited buffers for each
machine. To address this issue, a proactive material handling method for CPS enabled shop-
floor is proposed in this paper. The main contributions of this work include 1) an overall
architecture of a proactive material handling method for CPS-enabled shop-floor. 2) a shop-
floor digital twin model which can simulate real-life production in a virtual environment and
obtain the production KPIs easily. 3) an innovative combination of time series technology
and multiple linear regression method (i.e., TWMLR) in the prediction of remaining
processing time. 4) a proactive material handling strategy which can consider both real-time
and future status of smart trolleys and WIPs at the same time.
The proposed CPS-PMH and its key technologies provide an opportunity to improve shop-
floor production fluency and efficiency. It is of great significance in the following aspects.
Firstly, by establishing a shop-floor digital twin model, the physical shop-floor can be
mirrored as a dynamic autonomous system, the output of production decisions can be easily
simulated and checked. As a result, individualized manufacturing demands can be met
without costly and long-term analysis, which is meaningful for the current mass-
individualization production paradigm. Secondly, in the aspects of return on investment
(ROI), with the cost reduction of smart sensing devices and the significant promotion of
computational ability, the proposed CPS-PMH can be fulfilled with rather low investment,
while the return in energy saving and production efficiency is large. Thirdly, the optimization
and comparison results of proactive material handling strategy show that making decisions in
advance can largely reduce the energy consumption and logistics distance in shop-floor,
which is of referential significance for other production decision-making aspects such as
machine maintenance, schedule adjustment, etc.
 There are three main challenges waiting to be solved. The first challenge is to build a high-
accurate and comprehensive digital-twin model for a physical shop-floor which consists of a
large amount of dynamic resources. The second challenge is how to incorporate the proposed
CPS-PMH with other enterprise information systems (EISs) (such as advanced planning
system, MRP, etc.) so that more feasible and optimal production and logistics schedule can
be made. The third challenge is how to combine the more comprehensive big data analytics
that could provide a more accurate prediction of production KPIs so that more robust decision
support can be achieved. Consequently, future research is necessary to focus mainly on the
construction of complex digital twin model, the integration of CPS-PMH with advanced EISs,
and the deep fusion of production KPIs prediction algorithms with big data analytics.

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the financial supports of National Science Foundation
of China (51675441), the National Key Research and Development Program of China
(2018YFB1703402), and the 111 Project Grant (B13044).

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