System architectures for Industrie 4.0 applications

Industrie 4.0 principles demand increasing flexibility and modularity for automated production systems. Current system architectures provide an isolated view of specific applications and use cases, but lack a global, more generic approach. Based on the specific architectures of two EU projects and one German Industrie 4.0 project, a generic system architecture is proposed. This system architecture features the strengths of the three isolated proposals, such as cross-enterprise data sharing, service orchestration, and real-time capabilities, and can be applied to a wide field of applications. Future research should be directed towards considering the applicability of the architecture to other equal applications.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Towards a Domain-Specific Approach Enabling Tool-Supported Model-Based Systems Engineering of Complex Industrial Internet-of-Things Applications

Contemporary manufacturing systems are undergoing a major change promoted by emerging technologies such as Cyber-physical Systems (CPS) or the Internet of Things (IoT). This trend, nowadays widely known by the term “Industry 4.0”, leads to a new kind of automated production. However, the rising number of dynamically interconnected elements in industrial production lines results in such a system being transformed into a complex System of Systems (SoS). Due to the increasing complexity and the challenges accompanied by this change, conventional engineering methods using generic principles reach their limits when developing this type of systems. With varying approaches only trying to find a solution for small-scaled areas of this problem statement, the need for a holistic methodology becomes more and more obvious. Having recognized this issue, one of the most promising approaches has been introduced with the Reference Architecture Model Industry 4.0 (RAMI 4.0). However, in the current point of view, this domain-specific architecture framework is missing specifications to address all aspects of such a critical infrastructure. Thus, this paper introduces a comprehensive modeling approach utilizing methods applied in Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) and including domain-specific particularities as well as architectural concepts with the goal to enable mutual engineering of current and future industrial systems. The resulting artifacts, a domain-specific language (DSL), an architecture definition and a development process, are thereby consolidated in a ready to use software framework, whose applicability was evaluated by a real-world case study

Multi-disciplinary engineering for cyber-physical production systems: data models and software solutions for handling complex engineering projects

This book discusses challenges and solutions for the required information processing and management within the context of multi-disciplinary engineering of production systems. The authors consider methods, architectures, and technologies applicable in use cases according to the viewpoints of product engineering and production system engineering, and regarding the triangle of (1) product to be produced by a (2) production process executed on (3) a production system resource. With this book industrial production systems engineering researchers will get a better understanding of the challenges and requirements of multi-disciplinary engineering that will guide them in future research and development activities. Engineers and managers from engineering domains will be able to get a better understanding of the benefits and limitations of applicable methods, architectures, and technologies for selected use cases. IT researchers will be enabled to identify research issues related to the development of new methods, architectures, and technologies for multi-disciplinary engineering, pushing forward the current state of the art

Integrating mechatronic thinking and multi-agent approaches

The paper introduces a concept for the combination of mechatronic unit and multi-agent system approaches. It highlights how combining both approaches to a new kind of integrated system architecture may enforce the dissemination and reusability of methods and automatisms developed for one specific system architecture to other similar ones. Additionally it will show how this integrated architecture leads to a better exchange of Automation architectures in general. Thus, all systems compliant with the described architecture may benefit from methods and automatism applicable for a broad range of systems. The suitability of this integration approach is verified by using the example of a washing machine production line