Abstract

Current changes of traditional products towards intelligent, connected smart products require a fundamental adaption and enhancement of traditional Product Lifecycle Management approaches. In our previous activities we showed that lifecycle management approaches lack suitable methods and IT tools for smart products especially during their use phase. In particular the reconfiguration in the use phase has been addressed, as the characteristic properties of smart products enable a tremendous potential. As an approach virtual product twins were introduced in our previous activities in order to manage both virtual product models as well as product usage data across all engineering domains including environmental data. This contribution describes the core enabler, such as the reconfiguration lifecycle and virtual product twins for the reconfiguration of smart products during their use phase including the necessity of designing the architecture of reconfiguration options. The scope is the introduction of a methodological approach, which allows the identification of context-specific reconfiguration options.

Highlights

  • In general it can be distinguished between two types of reconfiguration: type-specific reconfigurations such as common software updates and context-specific reconfigurations like smart services generated individually for each product instance

  • Smart products enable a huge potential for reconfiguration scenarios during their use phase

  • One main driver are their multidisciplinary properties, which reflect their vast amount of multidisciplinary components. This contribution pointed out the main enabler for the reconfiguration of smart products during their use phase, concrete the reconfiguration lifecycle, virtual product twins and the design of reconfiguration option architectures

Read more

Summary

Introduction

In general it can be distinguished between two types of reconfiguration: type-specific reconfigurations such as common software updates and context-specific reconfigurations like smart services generated individually for each product instance. The paper at hand addresses the context-specific reconfiguration, where every product instance, based on a permanent, individual management across all engineering domains, is confronted with the question, which reconfiguration option can be individually offered Approaching this challenge, the normative standard ISO 10007 introduced a configuration management model including the definition of configuration units (CU). An approach for a model-based, consistent management of control unit configurations by using function blocks is defined by the IEC 61499 standard It focuses rather on the architecture of distributed agile manufacturing systems and does not consider the whole lifecycle of a smart product [6]. The necessary design of the reconfiguration options architectures has not been in the scope of research activities so far, which is why these issues will be addressed

Enabling the reconfiguration lifecycle of smart products
The reconfiguration lifecycle of smart products
Virtual Product Twins
Design methodology for reconfiguration options in the scope of contextspecific smart product reconfiguration
Architecture of the methodological approach
Components of the methodological approach
Summary and future challenges
Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call