Virtual Simulation Model of the New Boeing Sheffield Facility

In October 2018, The Boeing Company opened their first production facility in Europe. Located in Sheffield in the United Kingdom, the factory will become an Industry 4.0 flagship facility for Boeing; with robust IT infrastructure and a fully connected virtual simulation model working between its digital and physical systems—a “digital twin” factory. With the vision of developing a digital twin factory, the Boeing Information Technology and Data Analytics team collaborated with the University of Sheffield Advanced Management Research Centre’s (AMRC) Manufacturing Intelligence (MI) team led by Dr Ruby Hughes to set out a strategic plan to simulate the current factory concept, de-risk the introduction of new technologies, monitor factory performance in real-time, and feedback optimal decisions back to the physical environment based on the latest factory situation data. This chapter presents the key elements within the first stage of the strategy plan—simulate—and discusses the approach of linking the simulation model to physical systems to achieve the creation of a digital twin factory.