Cyber-Physical Systems Based Smart Manufacturing of Disinfectants: A Need, and Solution Driven by COVID-19 Pandemic

Cyber-physical systems and Industry-4.0 have made smart manufacturing possible. The multi-national companies were able to quickly adapt and cope with changing times, but the micro small-scale enterprises (m-SMEs) were at crossroads to adopt new technology due to extensive costs involved. This gap of no existing solutions for micro-SMEs is the result of literature survey for this work. Then the COVID-19 pandemic made it extremely difficult for micro-SMEs to survive. This paper implements a smart manufacturing solution for production facility at one such micro-SME. Pre-pandemic, their facility had enough production to satisfy the demand, but pandemic overwhelmed their production with rapid rise in demand. The main goal for this study is to make the micro-SME cope this unprecedented rise in demand. The production facility was upgraded, and smart features were incorporated based on cyber-physical production systems framework to predict demand and transform a manual manufacturing into smart manufacturing. With more than one product being produced, optimum production was achieved avoiding over/underproduction for different products given the limited storage capacity available with the micro-SMEs.