Continuous maintenance and the future – Foundations and technological challenges

High value and long life products require continuous maintenance throughout their life cycle to achieve required performance with optimum through-life cost. This paper presents foundations and technologies required to offer the maintenance service. Component and system level degradation science, assessment and modelling along with life cycle ‘big data’ analytics are the two most important knowledge and skill base required for the continuous maintenance. Advanced computing and visualisation technologies will improve efficiency of the maintenance and reduce through-life cost of the product. Future of continuous maintenance within the Industry 4.0 context also identifies the role of IoT, standards and cyber security

Increase the adoption of Agent-based Cyber-Physical Production Systems through the Design of Minimally Invasive Solutions

During the last few years, many approaches were proposed to offer companies the ability to have dynamic and flexible production systems. One of the conventional ap-proaches to solving this problem is the implementation of cyber-physical production sys-tems using multi-agent distributed systems. Although these systems can deal with several challenges faced by companies in this area, they have not been accepted and used in real cases. In this way, the primary objective of the proposed work is to understand the chal-lenges usually found in the adoption of these solutions and to develop a strategy to in-crease their acceptance and implementation. Thus, the document focuses on the design and development of cyber-physical produc-tion systems based on agent approaches, requiring minimal changes in the existing pro-duction systems. This approach aims of reducing the impact and the alterations needed to adopt those new cyber-physical production systems. Clarifying the subject, the author presents a definition of a minimal invasive agent-based cyber-physical production system and, the functional requirements that the designers and developers must respect to imple-ment the new software. From these functional requirements derived a list of design princi-ples that must be fulfilled to design and develop a system with these characteristics. Subsequently, to evaluate solutions that aim to be minimally invasive, an evaluation model based on a fuzzy inference system is proposed, which rank the approaches accord-ing to each of the design principles and globally. In this way, the proposed work presents the functional requirements, design principles and evaluation model of minimally invasive cyber-physical production systems, to increase the adoption of such systems

Status and Future of Manufacturing Execution Systems

This paper proposes a taxonomy for characterizing manufacturing execution systems and discusses how they can benefit from the recent Developments of Industry 4.0. The study is based on a literature review. The taxonomy contributes to theory and practice by providing a framework for benchmarking of manufacturing execution systems. The taxonomy can be utilized in the selection or design process of the manufacturing execution systems. Outlining the further opportunities provided by Industry 4.0 technologies, the paper also provides directions for future improvements of manufacturing execution systems.acceptedVersio

Status and Future of Manufacturing Execution Systems

This paper proposes a taxonomy for characterizing manufacturing execution systems and discusses how they can benefit from the recent Developments of Industry 4.0. The study is based on a literature review. The taxonomy contributes to theory and practice by providing a framework for benchmarking of manufacturing execution systems. The taxonomy can be utilized in the selection or design process of the manufacturing execution systems. Outlining the further opportunities provided by Industry 4.0 technologies, the paper also provides directions for future improvements of manufacturing execution systems.acceptedVersio

Analysis and evaluation of multi-agent systems for digital production planning and control

Industrial manufacturing companies have different IT control functions that can be represented with a so-called hierarchical automation pyramid. While these conventional software systems especially support the mass production with consistent demand, the future project “Industry 4.0” focuses on customer-oriented and adaptable production processes. In order to move from conventional production systems to a factory of the future, the control levels must be redistributed. With the help of cyber-physical production systems, an interoperable architecture must be, implemented which removes the hierarchical connection of the former control levels. The accompanied digitalisation of industrial companies makes the transition to modular production possible. At the same time, the requirements for production planning and control are increasing, which can be solved with approaches such as multi-agent systems (MASs). These software solutions are autonomous and intelligent objects with a distinct collaborative ability. There are different modelling methods, communication and interaction structures, as well as different development frameworks for these new systems. Since multi-agent systems have not yet been established as an industrial standard due to their high complexity, they are usually only tested in simulations. In this bachelor thesis, a detailed literature review on the topic of MASs in the field of production planning and control is presented. In addition, selected multi-agent approaches are evaluated and compared using specific classification criteria. In addition, the applicability of using these systems in digital and modular production is assessed