Abstract
In the Industry 4.0 era, manufacturers strive to remain competitive by using advanced technologies such as collaborative robots, automated guided vehicles, augmented reality support and smart devices. However, only if these technological advancements are integrated into their system context in a seamless way, they can deliver their full potential to a manufacturing organization. This integration requires a system architecture as a blueprint for positioning and interconnection of the technologies. For this purpose, the HORSE framework, resulting from the HORSE EU H2020 project, has been developed to act as a reference architecture of a cyber-physical system to integrate various Industry 4.0 technologies and support hybrid manufacturing processes, i.e., processes in which human and robotic workers collaborate. The architecture has been created using design science research, based on well-known software engineering frameworks, established manufacturing domain standards and practical industry requirements. The value of a reference architecture is mainly established by application in practice. For this purpose, this paper presents the application and evaluation of the HORSE framework in 10 manufacturing plants across Europe, each with its own characteristics. Through the physical deployment and demonstration, the framework proved its goal to be basis for the well-structured design of an operational smart manufacturing cyber-physical system that provides horizontal, cross-functional management of manufacturing processes and vertical control of heterogeneous technologies in work cells. We report on valuable insights on the difficulties to realize such systems in specific situations. The experiences form the basis for improved adoption, further improvement and extension of the framework. In sum, this paper shows how a reference architecture framework supports the structured application of Industry 4.0 technologies in manufacturing environments that so far have relied on more traditional digital technology.
Highlights
Markets for many product categories are becoming increasingly dynamic
We present how the design of a Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) following the reference architecture and its technical realization were applied in realworld industry scenarios to solve practical challenges in production
Focusing on the execution phase, we illustrate in Fig. 18 the main communication flows of the scenario
Summary
Markets for many product categories are becoming increasingly dynamic. The electronics and automotive markets are typical examples. This development implies that manufacturers have to become increasingly flexible in their operations. Customers demand more tailor-made products, with shorter delivery times. Manufacturing processes have become more complex to satisfy this demand and en terprises have to be reactive to stay competitive. The Industry 4.0 de velopments with advanced robotics, Internet-of-Things (IoT), Cyber-. Physical Systems (CPS) (the reader can refer to Appendix A for a list of abbreviations), and Cloud Computing promise significant gains in production efficiency, manufacturing flexibility and product custom ization [1]. The realization in industrial practice, though, of these de velopments is not an easy task, as it faces many challenges [2,3,4]
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