Instituto Politécnico do Porto. Escola Superior de Tecnologia e Gestão
Abstract
Dissertação de Mestrado em Engenharia InformáticaThe evolution of existing technologies and the creation of new ones paved the way for a new revolution
in the industrial sector. With the introduction of the existing and new technologies in the manufacturing
environment, the industry is moving towards the fourth industrial revolution, called Industry 4.0. The
fourth industrial revolution introduces many new components like 3D printing, Internet of things, artificial
intelligence, and augmented reality. The automation of the traditional manufacturing processes and the
use of smart technology are transforming industries in a more interconnected environment, where there
is more transparent information and decentralised decisions.
The arrival of Industry 4.0 introduces industries to a new environment, where their manufacturing processes
are more evolved, more agile, and with more efficiency. The principles of Industry 4.0 rely on
the interconnection of machines, devices, sensors, and people to communicate and connect. The transparency
of information guaranties that decision makers are provided with clear and correct information
to make informed decisions and the decentralisation of decisions will create the ability for machines and
systems to make decisions on their own and to perform tasks autonomously.
Industry 4.0 is making manufacturing processes more agile and efficient, but due to the fast pace of
trends and the shift from the traditional mass production philosophy towards the mass customisation,
following the Industry 4.0 guidelines might not be enough. The mass customisation paradigm was created
from the desire that customers have in owning custom made products and services, tailor made
to their needs. The idea to perform small tweaks in a product to face the needs of a consumer group,
keeping the production costs like the ones from the mass production, without losing efficiency in the
production. This paradigm poses great challenges to the industries, since they must be able to always
have the capability to answer the demands that may arise from the preparation and production of personalised
products and services. In the meantime, organisations will try to increasingly mark its position
in the market, with competition getting less relevant and with different organisations worrying less with
their performance on an individual level and worrying more about their role in a supply chain. The need
for an improved collaboration with Industry 4.0 is the motivation for the model proposed in this work.
This model, that perceives a set of organisations as entities in a network that want to interact with each
other, is divided into two parts, the knowledge representation and the reasoning and interactions. The first part relies on the Blockchain technology to securely store and manage all the organisation transactions
and data, guaranteeing the decentralisation of information and the transparency of the transactions.
Each organisation has a public and private profile were the data is stored to allow each organisation to
evaluate the others and to allow each organisation to be evaluated by the remainder of the organisations
present in the network. Furthermore, this part of the model works as a ledger of the transactions made
between the organisations, since that every time two organisations negotiate or interact in any way, the
interaction is getting recorded. The ledger is public, meaning that every organisation in the network
can view the data stored. Nevertheless, an organisation will have the possibility, in some situations, to
keep transactions private to the organisations involved. Despite the idea behind the model is to promote
transparency and collaboration, in some selected occasions organisations might want to keep transactions
private from the other participants to have some form of competitive advantage. The knowledge
representation part also wants to provide security and trust to the organisation that their data will be safe
and tamper proof.
The second part, reasoning and interactions, uses a Multi-Agent System and has the objective to help
improve decision-making. Imagining that one organisation needs a service that can be provided by two
other organisations, also present in the network, this part of the model is going to work towards helping
the organisations choose what is the best choice, given the scenario and data available. This part of the
model is also responsible to represent every organisation present in the network and when organisations
negotiate or interact, this component is also going to handle the transaction and communicate the data
to the first part of the model.A constante evolução de tecnologias atuais e a criação de novas tecnologias criou as condições necessárias para a existência de uma nova revolução industrial. Com a evolução de dispositivos móveis e com a chegada de novas tecnologias e ferramentas que começaram a ser introduzidas em ambiente industrial,
como a impressão 3D, internet das coisas, inteligência artificial, realidade aumentada, entre outros, a industria conseguiu começar a explorar novas tecnologias e automatizar os seus processos de fabrico tradicionais, movendo as industrias para a quarta revolução industrial, conhecida por Industria 4.0.
A adoção dos princípios da Indústria 4.0 levam as indústrias a evoluir os seus processos e a ter uma maior e melhor capacidade de produção, uma vez que as mesmas se vão tornar mais ágeis e introduzir melhorias nos seus ambientes de produção. Uma dessas melhorias na questão da interoperabilidade, com máquinas, sensores, dispositivos e pessoas a comunicarem entre si. A transparência da informação vai levar a uma melhor interpretação dos dados para efetuar decisões informadas, com os sistemas a recolher cada vez mais dados e informação dos diferentes pontos do processo de manufatura.
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