On the development of a component model for the realization of Industry 4.0

Abstract

The fourth industrial revolution promotes Industrial Cyber Physical Systems (ICPS) as the key to achieve smart, efficient, flexible and self-organizing production plants. In a shop floor there are heterogeneous physical and logical assets that form the ICPS. But without proper communication and composition techniques the integration of these assets in ICPS is compromised. Component Based Software Engineering (CBSE) is a discipline of growing relevance for ICPS because integration and composition issues have been extensively researched in the software domain. Under the Reference Architecture for Industry 4.0 (RAMI 4.0), the Industry 4.0 Component Model inherits aspects of CBSE to specify how several industrial plant assets can form an ICPS. The technological aspects for physical assets digitalization and integration have been explored, but the I4.0 Component model lacks proposals and use cases for dealing with industrial software components. In this work we discuss the development of the Smart Component Model as a proposal for integration of software components in ICPS. Furthermore, we focus on how prediction and monitoring applications could be converted in I4.0 Components and integrated in ICPS. To sustain our proposals, we describe a real industrial case study where these developments are being applied.