The Focus-activity Framework for Evaluating PSS Cooperation Readiness of Manufacturing Firms

For manufacturing companies venturing the first steps on the Servitization roadmap, it may be difficult to imagine how an integrated approach of Product and Service elements could support the strategic goals efficiently. If Service tasks, roles, units and organizational structure are still developing and emerging from the Product business activities, the design of Product-Service cooperation as well is promising, as the way is unclear. For these companies, it seems to be important to understand their current status of Product-Service cooperation at first, before starting to design integration activities. Therefore, this paper presents a framework which is designed to help companies identify their current status – and strategic objectives later on – at two dimensions: a) the Structural Focus of Product and Service business within the company, and b) the Cooperation Activities which are undertaken by Product and Service representatives. By the means of a case study in the Italian luxury textile sector, a first validation of the model is conducted, assessing the static and dynamic characteristics of Product and Service business with involvement of an Italian textile company

An Edge-Cloud based Reference Architecture to support cognitive solutions in Process Industry

Process Industry is one of the leading sectors of the world economy, characterized however by intense environmental impact, and very high-energy consumption. Despite a traditional low innovation pace in PI, in the recent years a strong push at worldwide level towards the dual objective of improving the efficiency of plants and the quality of products, significantly reducing the consumption of electricity and CO2 emissions has taken momentum. Digital Technologies (namely Smart Embedded Systems, IoT, Data, AI and Edge-to-Cloud Technologies) are enabling drivers for a Twin Digital-Green Transition, as well as foundations for human centric, safe, comfortable and inclusive workplaces. Currently, digital sensors in plants produce a large amount of data, which in most cases constitutes just a potential and not a real value for Process Industry, often locked-in in close proprietary systems and seldomly exploited. Digital technologies, with process modelling-simulation via digital twins, can build a bridge between the physical and the virtual worlds, bringing innovation with great efficiency and drastic reduction of waste. In accordance with the guidelines of Industrie 4.0 this work proposes a modular and scalable Reference Architecture, based on open source software, which can be implemented both in brownfield and greenfield scenarios. The ability to distribute processing between the edge, where the data have been created, and the cloud, where the greatest computational resources are available, facilitates the development of integrated digital solutions with cognitive capabilities. The reference architecture is being validated in the three pilot plants, paving the way to the development of integrated planning solutions, with scheduling and control of the plants, optimizing the efficiency and reliability of the supply chain, and balancing energy efficiency

A Cloud-Based Collaboration Platform for Model-Based Design of Cyber-Physical Systems

Businesses, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, aiming to start up in Model-Based Design (MBD) face difficult choices from a wide range of methods, notations and tools before making the significant investments in planning, procurement and training necessary to deploy new approaches successfully. In the development of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) this is exacerbated by the diversity of formalisms covering computation, physical and human processes. In this paper, we propose the use of a cloud-enabled and open collaboration platform that allows businesses to offer models, tools and other assets, and permits others to access these on a pay-per-use basis as a means of lowering barriers to the adoption of MBD technology, and to promote experimentation in a sandbox environment

Internet of Things Strategic Research Roadmap

Internet of Things (IoT) is an integrated part of Future Internet including existing and evolving Internet and network developments and could be conceptually defined as a dynamic global network infrastructure with self configuring capabilities based on standard and interoperable communication protocols where physical and virtual “things” have identities, physical attributes, and virtual personalities, use intelligent interfaces, and are seamlessly integrated into the information network

From Enterprise Interoperability to Service Innovation: European Research Activities in Future Internet Enterprise Systems

Part 1: KeynotesInternational audienceThe speech will describe the recent evolutionary paths of European research about Enterprise Interoperability. In 2006, the Enterprise Interoperability cluster of European projects coined the term ISU (Interoperability Service Utility) as the new IT infrastructure able to provide interoperability services to all SMEs, at low cost and under non-rivalry and non-discriminatory principles. This concept has been studied and developed further by the COIN flagship Integrated Project (COllaboration and INteroperability for networked enterprises), coordinated by TXT e-solutions, which started in 2008 and developed a first prototype of ISU by means of a dynamic federation of open and trusted Generic Service Delivery Platforms as well as envisaging a set of innovative business models for Enterprise Interoperability as a Service-Utility. More recently, the advent of EU 2020 Strategy and Digital Agenda for Europe confirmed the importance of having “interoperability and standards” as one of the most important pillars for a single digital market for European citizens and enterprises. This evident commoditization trend could induce readers to think that in 10 years time interoperability will not matter anymore (N. Carr “IT does not matter”) and that it will soon be absorbed by Cloud Computing and Future Internet as one of the fundamental services of a so-called Universal Business System. However, more and more eminent scientists tend now to agree that it is when a technology really becomes a utility and apparently does not matter anymore (Z. Turk calls it sedimentation) that innovation could find the most fertile and promising ground to develop and grow. Based on the sound and solid base of Future Internet core platform and enterprise interoperability utility infrastructure, a new project, MSEE (Manufacturing SErvice Ecosystem), coordinated by TXT and started in October 2011, is now trying to explore how the commoditization and openness of IT could become an enabler for service innovation in the manufacturing industry, allowing virtual factories and enterprises to adopt a value co-creation and service dominant logic instead of a traditional perspective of producing and selling just physical goods. It is thanks to Enterprise Modelling and Interoperability as an integrated part of a Universal Business System that a milling machine industry could sell “holes per minute” or that an aircraft engine industry could sell “flying hours” or that a traditional car manufacturer could sell “mobility kilometers”. As a future perspective, the speech will also address the key question whether technical-service-business innovation, implemented for instance by the Factories of the Future and the MSEE project, could be sufficient for European manufacturing industry to overcome the current economic crisis or, instead, a re-thinking of skills and competencies of employees is needed in order to implement and take up the changes imposed by innovation. In this perspective, a new research initiative, coordinated by TXT and called TELL ME (Technology Enhanced Learning Livinglab for Manufacturing Environments), is going to be launched in November 2012 with the aim of implementing human-centric manufacturing and innovative methods and solutions for blue collar workers lifelong training, via open innovation and participative creativity Living Labs

The D-BEST based Digital Innovation Hub Customer Journeys Analysis Method: A Pilot Case

Part 12: Pathways and Tools for Digital Innovation HubsInternational audienceDigital Innovation Hubs (DIHs) are ecosystems sustaining European enterprises to overcome innovation hurdles and push Europe as a world leading innovator in the Fourth Industrial Revolution context.They operate as a one-stop-shop, characterized by four main functionalities, i.e., test before invest, support to find investments, innovation ecosystem and networking, skills and training. These functionalities are addressed through the delivery of a set of services, grouped in the five macro-classes of services of the Data-driven Business-Ecosystem-Skills-Technology (D-BEST) model, a reference model able to configure the service portfolios of DIHs and to model collaborative networks in the I4.0 era. The model has been used in the DIH4CPS project toclassify the extant service portfolios of the DIHs belonging to the network, to detect which new services should be provided in the future by the network of DIHs, and to identify opportunities for collaboration among DIHs fostering the creation of a pan-European DIH. However, to support an easier codification of such dynamics directly involving companies in the innovative DIHs ecosystems, a Customer Journey(CJ) analysis method has still to be built. This paper presents the D-BEST-based CJ analysis method, identifying typical digital transformation processes for the two main categories of customers of a DIH, Technology Users and Technology Providers

Defining the Roadmap towards Industry 4.0: The 6Ps Maturity Model for Manufacturing SMEs

In the contest of Manufacturing Industry, in order to keep competitiveness and adapt to the current trends of the market that range from the need for new Business Models up to the capability to turn their processes according to the incoming trends, Industry 4.0 is now considered a major opportunity for enhancing such transformation. However, before adapting these technologies to achieve the mentioned goals, manufacturing firms achieve specific requirements that characterize a digital transformation process. This step turns out to be particularly challenging for manufacturing SMEs which might have a biased view on both their current level of digitalization and/or lack of a clear view of the desired performances to achieve to accomplish their objectives. Hence, a clear and coherent digital transformation roadmap results crucial to move toward a smart manufacturing. In light of this, the paper presents the 6Ps maturity model (MM), developed within the MIDIH project, that aims at supporting manufacturing SMEs in the development of their roadmap towards Digitalized Manufacturing 4.0. The 6Ps maturity model is based on 6 main socio-business and technical dimensions (i.e., Product-Services, Processes, Platform, People, Partnership, Performance), 36 Industry 4.0-related areas and a 5-levels scale of digital maturity (DM). It enables a comprehensive assessment of SMEs’ status-quo, the identification of the desired future maturity level and the subsequent creation of a customized migration roadmap. The model has been developed from a review of extant literature and a comparison of current MMs according to the 31 most common areas of coverage. The 6Ps MM has been tested and validate

The ECOLEAD ICT-Infrastructure for Collaborative Networked Organizations”, in Network-Centric Collaboration and Supporting Frameworks,

This paper presents a distributed and open ICT infrastructure that is being developed in the ECOLEAD IST IP project to help members of Collaborative Networks in doing businesses and collaborations more efficiently. ICT-I design relies on the service oriented architecture paradigm, and it is implemented with web-services. ICT-I services are to be used on demand and pay-per-use models. It is flexible to support an easy entrance of new services and the withdrawn of others. So far the type of organizations envisaged by the proposed ICT-I are the ones members of virtual breeding environments, virtual organizations and professional virtual communities. This paper details the ICT-I requirements, its architecture and services. A small description of a first ICT-I prototype is given in the end