Market fields structure & dynamics in industrial automation

There is a research tradition in the economics of standards which addresses standards wars, antitrust concerns or positive externalities from standards. Recent research has also dealt with the process characteristics of standardisation, de facto standard-setting consortia and intellectual property concerns in the technology specification or implementation phase. Nonetheless, there are no studies which analyse capabilities, comparative industry dynamics or incentive structures sufficiently in the context of standard-setting. In my study, I address the characteristics of collaborative research and standard-setting as a new mode of deploying assets beyond motivations well-known from R&D consortia or market alliances. On the basis of a case study of a leading user organisation in the market for industrial automation technology, but also a descriptive network analysis of cross-community affiliations, I demonstrate that there must be a paradoxical relationship between cooperation and competition. More precisely, I explain how there can be a dual relationship between value creation and value capture respecting exploration and exploitation. My case study emphasises the dynamics between knowledge stocks (knowledge alignment, narrowing and deepening) produced by collaborative standard setting and innovation; it also sheds light on an evolutional relationship between the exploration of assets and use cases and each firm's exploitation activities in the market. I derive standard-setting capabilities from an empirical analysis of membership structures, policies and incumbent firm characteristics in selected, but leading, user organisations. The results are as follows: the market for industrial automation technology is characterised by collaboration on standards, high technology influences of other industries and network effects on standards. Further, system integrators play a decisive role in value creation in the customer-specific business case. Standard-setting activities appear to be loosely coupled to the products offered on the market. Core leaders in world standards in industrial automation own a variety of assets and they are affiliated to many standard-setting communities rather than exclusively committed to a few standards. Furthermore, their R&D ratios outperform those of peripheral members and experience in standard-setting processes can be assumed. Standard-setting communities specify common core concepts as the basis for the development of each member's proprietary products, complementary technologies and industrial services. From a knowledge-based perspective, the targeted disclosure of certain knowledge can be used to achieve high innovation returns through systemic products which add proprietary features to open standards. Finally, the interplay between exploitation and exploration respecting the deployment of standard-setting capabilities linked to cooperative, pre-competitive processes leads to an evolution in common technology owned and exploited by the standard-setting community as a particular kind of innovation ecosystem. --standard-setting,innovation,industry dynamics and context,industrial automation

Engineering methods and tools for cyber–physical automation systems

Much has been published about potential benefits of the adoption of cyber–physical systems (CPSs) in manufacturing industry. However, less has been said about how such automation systems might be effectively configured and supported through their lifecycles and how application modeling, visualization, and reuse of such systems might be best achieved. It is vitally important to be able to incorporate support for engineering best practice while at the same time exploiting the potential that CPS has to offer in an automation systems setting. This paper considers the industrial context for the engineering of CPS. It reviews engineering approaches that have been proposed or adopted to date including Industry 4.0 and provides examples of engineering methods and tools that are currently available. The paper then focuses on the CPS engineering toolset being developed by the Automation Systems Group (ASG) in the Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), University of Warwick, Coventry, U.K. and explains via an industrial case study how such a component-based engineering toolset can support an integrated approach to the virtual and physical engineering of automation systems through their lifecycle via a method that enables multiple vendors' equipment to be effectively integrated and provides support for the specification, validation, and use of such systems across the supply chain, e.g., between end users and system integrators

Event-driven IT-architectures as enabler for Industry 4.0

Originating in 2011, Industry 4.0 describes the digital revolution of industry and has since become a collective term for smart, mutable and data driven factories. During the last decade systemic and methodical solutions were designed and implemented that enable corresponding data driven use cases for producers. Today's system providers offer complex data ecosystems in which data-driven use cases are built-in and implementers offer focused digitalisation projects to rapidly address quick wins. While an assessment of expectations around Industry 4.0 results in requirements within the domains of modifiability, connectivity, data and organisation for an IT-architecture, many such solutions are found to be violating essential requirements as systemic flexibility and data-availability. Not only is this a relevant matter for architectural purists, but it highlights real problems that industry is still facing while applying digitalisation measures in pursuit of Industry 4.0. While event-driven architectures go back to the design of modern operating systems, the emergence of powerful, resilient and cheap broker-technologies has risen the polarity of event-driven IT-architectures for businesses in the last decade. Although its occurrence is predominantly represented in ecommerce, finance and insurance, many prominent manufactures have since begun their transformation into an event-driven IT-architecture. Reasons for this architectural adaptation include exceptional data availability, resilience, scalability and especially data sovereignty. An assessment of event-driven IT-architecture's properties and implications reveals an excellent fit for the architectural requirements of Industry 4.0. In this work the subject of Industry 4.0 is analysed along literature to derive a collective understanding of expectations from a factory implementing Industry 4.0. Subsequently, IT-architectural requirements are derived that describe an architecture capable of satisfying these expectations. Then event-driven IT-architectures are analysed regarding their structural composition and capabilities. Finally, the fit of event-driven IT-architecture is evaluated against the architectural requirements of Industry 4.0, discussing congruence and divergence

Implementing RFID in Production Systems: A Case Study from a Confectionery Manufacturer

This paper presents a case study on the research and development of an RFID-based work-in-progress container tracking system at a confectionery manufacturer. We report on the management of the RFID project, the system design and the economic evaluation of the solution as compared to the situation before implementing RFID. We discuss the case from a practitioner\u27s view as well as from an academic view regarding the theoretical implications that can be drawn from it. The lessons learned from the project can help other companies to better anticipate the challenges they may experience and make them aware of the possible ways to cope with such challenges prior to starting an RFID implementation. Available at: https://aisel.aisnet.org/pajais/vol2/iss2/4

Cybersecurity for Manufacturers: Securing the Digitized and Connected Factory

As manufacturing becomes increasingly digitized and data-driven, manufacturers will find themselves at serious risk. Although there has yet to be a major successful cyberattack on a U.S. manufacturing operation, threats continue to rise. The complexities of multi-organizational dependencies and data-management in modern supply chains mean that vulnerabilities are multiplying. There is widespread agreement among manufacturers, government agencies, cybersecurity firms, and leading academic computer science departments that U.S. industrial firms are doing too little to address these looming challenges. Unfortunately, manufacturers in general do not see themselves to be at particular risk. This lack of recognition of the threat may represent the greatest risk of cybersecurity failure for manufacturers. Public and private stakeholders must act before a significant attack on U.S. manufacturers provides a wake-up call. Cybersecurity for the manufacturing supply chain is a particularly serious need. Manufacturing supply chains are connected, integrated, and interdependent; security of the entire supply chain depends on security at the local factory level. Increasing digitization in manufacturing— especially with the rise of Digital Manufacturing, Smart Manufacturing, the Smart Factory, and Industry 4.0, combined with broader market trends such as the Internet of Things (IoT)— exponentially increases connectedness. At the same time, the diversity of manufacturers—from large, sophisticated corporations to small job shops—creates weakest-link vulnerabilities that can be addressed most effectively by public-private partnerships. Experts consulted in the development of this report called for more holistic thinking in industrial cybersecurity: improvements to technologies, management practices, workforce training, and learning processes that span units and supply chains. Solving the emerging security challenges will require commitment to continuous improvement, as well as investments in research and development (R&D) and threat-awareness initiatives. This holistic thinking should be applied across interoperating units and supply chains.National Science Foundation, Grant No. 1552534https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/145442/1/MForesight_CybersecurityReport_Web.pd

Agnostic cloud services with kubernetes

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática e de ComputadoresA computação na nuvem é frequentemente associada a restrições de dependência de fornecedor (Vendor Lock-In), motivado pelas diferentes tecnologias e implementações proprietárias que cada fornecedor de serviços em nuvem estabelece. Estas restrições consistem na dependência de um cliente relativamente a determinado fornecedor, o que dificulta a transição para outro fornecedor. Num contributo para uma Nuvem Agnóstica, o desafio descrito neste trabalho consiste na definição de um modelo de implantação e gestão do ciclo de vida de elementos computacionais em contexto de Nuvem. Por conseguinte, o objetivo do trabalho centra-se no desenvolvimento de um modelo que desacople a implantação e a gestão de sistemas informáticos do fornecedor de Nuvem, permitindo que sejam executados de forma agnóstica em diferentes plataformas de Nuvem. Neste âmbito, recorrer-se á a contentores, enquanto solução eficiente e padronizada de implantação de serviços computacionais em diferentes infraestruturas. Adicionalmente, pretende-se que o modelo automatize a geração de ficheiros de implantação, definindo as condições de execução do(s) serviço(s). Atualmente, as plataformas de orquestração de contentores são importantes aliados das organizações, sendo responsáveis pela gestão da implantação e configuração dos sistemas informáticos formados por múltiplos contentores. Existem diversas plataformas que surgem neste contexto, capazes de monitorizar o desempenho e controlar dinamicamente as configurações dos sistemas. Um exemplo paradigmático é a plataforma Kubernetes, que emerge como um standard aberto para serviços de Nuvem,cujo componente Cloud Controller Manager contribui para a abstração de fornecedores de Nuvem. Neste sentido, é considerada uma contribuição valiosa para atingir um modelo agnóstico de Nuvem. O sistema desenvolvido é validado através da implantação de aplicações (sistemas xi xii informáticos) contentorizadas, em múltiplos fornecedores de serviços em Nuvem, públicos ou on-premises (locais). Para este efeito, o quadro Informatics System of Systems é adotado, enquanto validador, como o modelo apropriado para estruturar e organizar os artefactos tecnológicos heterogéneos que podem ser considerados.The vendor lock-in concept represents a customer’s dependency on a particular supplier or vendor, eventually becoming unable to easily migrate to a different provider. Cloud computing is frequently associated with vendor lock-in restrictions, motivated by the proprietary technological arrangements of each provider. This work proposes an agnostic cloud provider model that addresses such challenges, focusing on the establishment of a model for deploying and managing computational services in cloud environments. Concretely, it aims to enable informatics systems to be executed agnostically on multiple cloud platforms and infrastructures, thereby decoupling them from any cloud provider. Moreover, this model intends to automate servisse deployment by defining and generating the running configurations for the services.Within this context, container technology is deemed as an efficient and standard strategy for deploying computational services across cloud providers, promoting the migration of informatics systems between vendors. Additionally, container orchestration platforms, which are becoming increasingly adopted by organizations, are essential to effectively manage the life-cycle of multi-container informatics systems by monitoring their performance, and dynamically controlling their behavior. In particular, the Kubernetes platform, an emerging open standard for cloud services, is proving to be a valuable contribution on achieving service agnostic deployment, namely with its Cloud Controller Manager mechanism, helping abstracting specific cloud providers. As validation for the proposed approach, it is intended to prove the model’s adaptability to different services and technologies supplied by heterogeneous organizations through the deployment of containerized applications (informatics systems) in multiple cloud service providers, public or on-premises. For this purpose, the Informatics System of Systems framework is adopted as a validator for structuring and organize heterogeneous technology artifacts from different suppliers.N/