Industry 4.0 demonstrator: COMBED

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The paper discusses the manufacturing procedures and modes that will be employed in smart factories in the course of the next stage of technology development within the 4th Industrial Revolution. The manufacturing modes integrate the principles of Industry 4.0 (I4.0), presented through specifications by German, French, and Italian standardization committees. At present, the individual aspects of the entire system, which comprises technological means, functions, services, management structures, and requirements on manufacturing components and products in factories of the future, are being standardized. In our research, this I4.0-based mode of production is demonstrated on a virtual testbed. Compared to the costly physical testbeds, whose application is limited physically as well as in terms of funding and time, the virtual approach allows showing the I4.0 manufacturing principles effectively and cheaply. For this purpose, we employ two versions of the COMBED, a virtual testbed; in this context, the principles are exposed as facilitating consistent production management decentralization via standardized Asset Administration Shell (AAS) digital twins in both the individual manufacturing components and the actual product. The paper is complemented with viderecordings that expose the model functions of a smart factory producing simple plastic models of various cars by using robots, automated machines and stores, 3D printers, and other manufacturing components equipped with standardized digital twins (AASs).