“Virtual Manufacturing” is one of the most attractive techniques in the field of manufacturing. In order to make a Virtual Shop Floor (VSF) as a first step to build Virtual Manufacturing Systems, Open System Architecture for Virtual Shop floor (OSAViS) is presented. OSAViS is an architecture to make the VSF as a set of various modules and execute a distributed and parallel simulation of shop floors. In this paper, a data management method, a synchronization process, and a communication mechanism in OSAViS are described. These subjects are important to simulate shop floors on a distributed and parallel environment. Based on OSAViS, a pilot system named Open-VirtualWorks is being developed so as to evaluate the validity of OSAViS. The current system can simulate behaviors of automated guided vehicles on a shop floor. By modeling and simulating with this system, a validation of the data management method, synchronization, and the communication mechanism is done, and the effectiveness of OSAViS is shown.
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