Gap analysis on Research and Innovation for Cyber-Physical Systems in Manufacturing

In defining the Roadmap of the Research Priorities for the adoption of CPS in manufacturing industry, it is crucial to identify the key elements preventing a fast and smooth transition from the current status to the desired one. In such complex environments characterized by many industrial sectors and processes, external factors and social/economical influences, it is important to address only the main issues to achieve the result. This paper is aiming to illustrate the results of the Gap Analysis activities carried out in the sCorPiuS (http://scorpius-project.eu/) project

Cyber-physical systems in manufacturing: Future trends and research priorities

In the last decades, the manufacturing ecosystem witnessed an unprecedented evolution of disruptive technologies forging new opportunities for manufacturing companies to cope the ever-growing market pressure. Moreover, the race to create value for the customers has been hindered by several issues that both small and large companies have been facing, such as shorter product life cycles, rapid time-to-market, product complexity, cost pressure, increased international competition, etc. In this scenario, ICT represent a crucial enabler for preserving competitiveness and fostering industry innovation. In particular, among these technologies, Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) is growing an ever-high interest of industry stakeholders, researchers, practitioners and policy makers as they are considered the key technology that will transform manufacturing industry to the next generation. Indeed, CPS is a breakthrough research area for ICT in manufacturing and represents the cornerstone for achieving the EU2020 "smart everywhere" vision. At this early development phase, there is the urgent need to set the ground for future research streams, create a common understanding and consensus, define viable migration paths and support standards definition. This paper describes the identified research challenges and the future trends that will drive to the adoption of CPS in manufacturing. The main evidences on researches challenges expected for CPS in manufacturing are outlined by the authors that have been involved in the sCorPiuS project 'European Roadmap for Cyber- Physical Systems in Manufacturing', promoted by the European Commission to define a roadmap for future CPS in manufacturing adoption research agenda

Selecting the proper methodology and tools for transitioning MES/SCADA platforms from classical environments to Service oriented

Today significant numbers of running IT platforms in manufacturing system are in the end of their life cycle so transforming from current legacy expensive environment to a new and efficiency one is a must for most of the manufacturing systems. In the other hand manufacturing and production systems are large, complicated and multi-disciplinary process systems. Therefore defining a comprehensive methodology and selecting appropriate tools to apply proper changes is a critical point. In this paper firstly the needs and requirements of MES/SCADA platforms are defined and then UML and IDEF0 are specified as proper methodologies to apply in this procedure and finally different and various tools are based on selected methodologies are introduced as suitable candidates. After studying the suggested tools VISIO and Aris because of their capabilities to support the requirements and needs are recommended to apply in this change procedure

Functional Requirements for Reconfigurable and Flexible Cyber-Physical System

A truly global market characterized by aggressive competition on a global scale and rapid changes in process technology requires creating production systems that are easy to upgrade, being able to readily integrate new technologies and new functions. In these terms, PERFoRM (Production harmonizEd Reconfiguration of Flexible Robots and Machinery) a European funded project, aims at developing an innovative manufacturing system based on a new agile concept introducing the implementation of methods and methodologies for transforming existing production systems into plug-and-produce production ones based on Cyber-Physical Systems technologies. In particular, this paper aims at describing a methodology leading to identification and deployment of general business and strategic requirements needed to implement new plug-and-produce paradigms into traditional production systems. This approach mainly based on the Requirement Engineering methodology (RE) also leads to the identification of an appropriate set of KPIs (technical and business) able to measure and to benchmark collected requirements. Four Industrial Use Cases have been analyzed, taking the CPS-5C architecture as reference model to map their AS-IS and TO-BE situations with respect to their CPS attitude, confirming the possibility to use this approach among different manufacturing sectors, for large companies, SMEs as well as for new and existing small plants

Migration towards digital manufacturing automation - An assessment approach

To fast react to changing market demands and customer requirements, Industry 4.0 envisions the digitalization of the manufacturing sector. By means of smart devices and intelligent technologies for a distributed automation control, one of the main goals of the Industry 4.0 is to enhance flexibility and reconfigurability of the production systems. In this regard, the EU H2020 FAR-EDGE project intends to support industries in their digital transformation by providing them with an open platform for factory automation based on edge computing and cyber-physical systems. Therefore, one of the key challenges is to identify adequate migration paths that take into account the digitalization process not only from a technical point of view but also considering the related operational and human impact aspects on existing production systems. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of the holistic approach developed in FAR-EDGE to define migration strategies towards digital manufacturing automation through the implementation of FAR-EDGE technology solutions

Migration towards digital manufacturing automation - An assessment approach

To fast react to changing market demands and customer requirements, Industry 4.0 envisions the digitalization of the manufacturing sector. By means of smart devices and intelligent technologies for a distributed automation control, one of the main goals of the Industry 4.0 is to enhance flexibility and reconfigurability of the production systems. In this regard, the EU H2020 FAR-EDGE project intends to support industries in their digital transformation by providing them with an open platform for factory automation based on edge computing and cyber-physical systems. Therefore, one of the key challenges is to identify adequate migration paths that take into account the digitalization process not only from a technical point of view but also considering the related operational and human impact aspects on existing production systems. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of the holistic approach developed in FAR-EDGE to define migration strategies towards digital manufacturing automation through the implementation of FAR-EDGE technology solutions

New methodology for smart manufacturing research and education: The lab approach

Different innovative technologies are nowadays emerging, pushing the research and education to think on new needs on the topic of smart manufacturing. Indeed, for research institutions and universities, it is important to address this context in the best possible way, as it represents a relevant opportunity to renew the research and educational approach: the availability of a physical environment fits with this issue, making a laboratory as a key element in order to carry out leading edge research and education activities. Different laboratory initiatives have been developed all around the world and they represent good examples of how new approaches to research on smart manufacturing are emerging. Thus, after presenting some of these initiatives, this paper focuses on the new proposal of Politecnico di Milano for the "Factory of the Future Lab" (i.e. FoFLab), promoted by the research activity of the Manufacturing Group of the Department of Economics, Management and Industrial Engineering. Research and education functions of the Laboratory are presented, as well as its physical characteristics and main design specifications

V&V assessment package instantiation in ICT-based manufacturing - Experiences from ten industrial use cases

This paper describes the instantiation process of a Verification & Validation (V&V) method developed for evaluating the implementation of Future Internet components in a multi-sectorial environment. ICT systems represent a key competitive factor for enterprises, and new application development paradigms are emerging with e.g. a modular approach based on standard, open and cloud-based components. The utilization of modules coming from different sources emphasizes the need for a sound V&V approach in order to ensure that the final solution is of quality, accords to the existing standard and at the same time addresses the original business needs. The proposed approach is based on a standard V&V methodology characterized by a structured assessment of the software quality at different levels and a reduced set of business indicators able to evaluate the business impact of the integrated solution; all of these are deployed via a configurable V&V Package based on a web interface. At the end of the paper the practical experiences and lessons learned from our work are also described