Virtual manufacturing and its impact on concurrent engineering

Summary form only given as follows. The goal of this work is to investigate the effect of virtual reality technology on the manufacturing mode. Concurrent engineering tools increase concurrency of multidisciplinary design by integrating various enabling technologies such as computer-aided design, computer-aided manufacturing, group decision support systems, expert systems and communication networks. But in the virtual reality technology boom, virtual prototyping is the substitute of computer models for physical products, process, and systems. Virtual prototypes can model products or processes, up to a complete factory, at several levels of abstraction