Reference Architecture Model Industrie Research Articles

A Model for Predictive Maintenance Based on Asset Administration Shell.

Maintenance is one of the most important aspects in industrial and production environments. Predictive maintenance is an approach that aims to schedule maintenance tasks based on historical data in order to avoid machine failures and reduce the costs due to unnecessary maintenance actions. Approaches for the implementation of a maintenance solution often differ depending on the kind of data to be analyzed and on the techniques and models adopted for the failure forecasts and for maintenance decision-making. Nowadays, Industry 4.0 introduces a flexible and adaptable manufacturing concept to satisfy a market requiring an increasing demand for customization. The adoption of vendor-specific solutions for predictive maintenance and the heterogeneity of technologies adopted in the brownfield for the condition monitoring of machinery reduce the flexibility and interoperability required by Industry 4.0. In this paper a novel approach for the definition of a generic and technology-independent model for predictive maintenance is presented. Such model leverages on the concept of the Reference Architecture Model for Industry (RAMI) 4.0 Asset Administration Shell, as a means to achieve interoperability between different devices and to implement generic functionalities for predictive maintenance.

NDE Perception and Emerging Reality: NDE 4.0 Value Extraction

The industrial revolution is divided into three phases by historians: The invention of the steam engine (mechanization), electricity (mass production) and the microelectric revolution (automation). There was a similar development in non-destructive evaluation: tools such as lenses or stethoscopes allowed the human senses to be sharpened, the conversion of waves makes the invisible visible and thus offers a "look" into the components and finally automation, digitization and reconstruction. During the entire industrial development NDE was decisively responsible for the quality and thus for the success of the manufactured goods. Industry is now talking about a fourth revolution: The informatization, digitization and networking of industrial production. As always, NDE will be critical to the success of this fourth revolution by providing the database needed for feedback in a networked production environment. For NDE, this will lead to change. The test results must be made available to a networked production environment in such a way that they can be evaluated for feedback loops, the testability must be considered in the design and the reliability of the test statements will become increasingly important. This publication presents first an orientation to NDE 4.0, including the development of Industry and NDE, a definition of its revolutions, a collection of several current-day challenges of NDE, and a discussion whether and how those can be solved with NDE 4.0. Second this publication presents concepts on how NDE can be integrated into Industry 4.0 landscapes: The Reference Architecture Model Industry 4.0 (RAMI 4.0) shows the complete Industry 4.0 space and allows every Industry 4.0 standard and interface to be located. The Industry 4.0 Asset Administration Shell (AAS) implements the digital twin and is the interface between Industry 4.0 communication and the physical device. The ...

Insights into Mapping Solutions Based on OPC UA Information Model Applied to the Industry 4.0 Asset Administration Shell

In the context of Industry 4.0, lot of effort is being put to achieve interoperability among industrial applications. As the definition and adoption of communication standards are of paramount importance for the realization of interoperability, during the last few years different organizations have developed reference architectures to align standards in the context of the fourth industrial revolution. One of the main examples is the reference architecture model for Industry 4.0, which defines the asset administration shell as the corner stone of the interoperability between applications managing manufacturing systems. Inside Industry 4.0 there is also so much interest behind the standard open platform communications unified architecture (OPC UA), which is listed as the one recommendation for realizing the communication layer of the reference architecture model. The contribution of this paper is to give some insights behind modelling techniques that should be adopted during the definition of OPC UA Information Model exposing information of the very recent metamodel defined for the asset administration shell. All the general rationales and solutions here provided are compared with the current OPC UA-based existing representation of asset administration shell provided by literature. Specifically, differences will be pointed out giving to the reader advantages and disadvantages behind each solution.

Human Machine Interfaces Based on Open Source Web-Platform and OPC UA

Cyber-physical Production Systems (CPPS) are key enabling technologies for the Industry 4.0. Currently, factories have automation made by Programmable Logic Control (PLC) architectures and now are faced to reuse these devices to implement CPPS with a low-cost. The Reference Architecture Model Industrie 4.0 (RAMI4.0) standardized OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) as the sole recommendation for the implementation of a communication layer. The aim of this research work is to show a proposal for a web platform for the creation of Human Machine Interfaces (HMI) using low-cost devices for the integration of information from the shop floor using the OPC UA protocol and reusing automation based on PLC. The results of this integration show an important contribution to enhance PLC architectures interoperability, allowing integration with web applications, CPPS, etc. The main difference between the solutions available is that the user may have no knowledge of the OPC UA standard and can use this kind of industrial application.

Smart Appliances and RAMI 4.0: Management and Servitization of Ice Cream Machines

The widespread adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT) is profoundly changing manufacturing. Several Internet-of-Things (IoT) and industry 4.0 solutions deployed in production environments have pushed for standardization efforts, most notably reference architecture model industrie 4.0 (RAMI 4.0), typically focusing on smart factory environments. However, the ICT evolution is also enabling novel smart appliance scenarios, where relatively cheap machines, connected and integrated, are deployed outside the typical industrial environment with a wide range of stakeholders involved. The paper reports about a real world use case composed of more than 12000 ice cream machines connected worldwide and shows how, anticipating the state of the art, the underlying design of the ICT platform presents many interesting similarities with RAMI 4.0. The integration of appliances in a smart value chain enables to develop novel services for different stakeholders, ranging from ice cream manufacturer and maintenance technicians to ice cream shop owners and final consumers. The important synergies with RAMI 4.0 and the extensive on-the-field validation make the proposed solution a compelling reference application, from which to draw useful and generally applicable guidelines for the development of future Industry 4.0 smart appliance platforms.

Adapting an agile manufacturing concept to the reference architecture model industry 4.0: A survey and case study

Abstract Industry 4.0 architecture has been studied in a large number of publications in the fields of Industrial Internet of Things, Cyber Physical Production Systems, Enterprise Architectures, Enterprise Integration and Cloud Manufacturing. A large number of architectures have been proposed, but none of them has been adopted by a large number of research groups. Two major Industry 4.0 reference architectures have been developed by industry-driven initiatives, namely the German Industry 4.0 and the US-led Industrial Internet Consortium. These are the Reference Architecture Model Industry 4.0 and Industrial Internet Reference Architecture, which are being standardized by the International Electrotechnical Commission and the Object Management Group, respectively. The first research goal of this article is to survey the literature on Industry 4.0 architectures in a factory context and assess awareness and compatibility with Reference Architecture Model Industry 4.0 and Industrial Internet Reference Architecture. The second research goal is to adapt a previously proposed advanced manufacturing concept to Reference Architecture Model Industry 4.0. With respect to the first research goal, it was discovered that only a minority of researchers were aware of the said reference architectures and that in general authors offered no discussion about the compatibility of their proposals with any internationally standardized reference architecture for Industry 4.0. With respect to the second research goal, it was discovered that Reference Architecture Model Industry 4.0 was mature with respect to communication and information sharing in the scope of the connected world, that further standardization enabling interoperability of different vendors’ technology is still under development and that technology standardization enabling executable business processes between networked enterprises was lacking.

Cloud Computing, Big Data and the Industry 4.0 Reference Architectures

The Industry 4.0 promotes the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in manufacturing processes to obtain customized products satisfying demanding needs of new consumers. The Industry 4.0 approach transforms the traditional pyramid model of automation to a network model of interconnected services, combining operational technology (OT) with Information Technology (IT). This new model allows the creation of ecosystems enabling more flexible production processes through connecting systems and sharing data. In this context, cloud computing and big data are critical technologies for leveraging the approach. Thus, this paper analyzes cloud computing and big data under the lenses of two leading reference architectures for implementing Industry 4.0: 1) the Industrial Internet Reference Architecture (IIRA), and 2) the Reference Architecture Model Industrie 4.0 (RAMI 4.0). A main contribution of this paper is to present a comparative analysis of IIRA and RAMI 4.0, discussing needs, benefits, and challenges of applying cloud computing and big data in the Industry 4.0.

Combining Use Case Methodology and Architecture Models: A Standardized Description Methodology for Complex Systems

The European and International energy policy targets energy efficiency improvement and CO2reduction. Therefore, renewables are key players within our future energy supply system. In order to ensure security of energy supply and to avoid load peaks, highly interconnected power grids, also known as smart grids, have to deal with irregularities of phenomena such as sunlight, wind, tides and intelligently control these dynamic changes. Such a smart grid is denoted as a complex system. That is characterized by a large quantity of heterogeneous actors, collaborating within a dynamic and highly interconnected network. This results in big challenges in the steps planning, realizing and expanding such a system. These steps need to be based on a standardized description process to cope with the aforementioned challenges. In this paper, we combine the Smart Grid Architecture Model (SGAM) with the Use Case Methodology for describing processes in complex systems. Our new UC-SGAM Methodology exploits the benefits of both approaches and can also be applied to the Reference Architecture Model Industry 4.0 (RAMI4.0). The developed methodology is examined on two overload scenarios of the smart grid. It strongly enhances comparability and simplifies the visualization of complex use cases.

An architecture based on RAMI 4.0 to discover equipment to process operations required by products

Abstract The fourth industrial revolution, also called Industry 4.0, is a new industrial age that have been gaining force and new followers around the world. The Industry 4.0 can be understood as the implementation of the smart factory to provide smart products and services that meet the consumer individual needs. Given its increasing acceptance and repercussion, a reference architecture model for Industry 4.0 (RAMI 4.0) was developed based on vertical integration, horizontal integration and end-to-end engineering. However, RAMI 4.0 initiative requires efforts in different aspects to reach the level of practical implementation. In this sense, this paper aims to present a layered architecture based on RAMI 4.0 to discover equipment to process operations according to the product requirements. The architecture must provide components for a communication between machines and products, and a service that offer a mechanism similar to the domain name system (DNS) to search the equipment to process the operation. In this architecture the equipment are storage in a structure organized hierarchically to assist the search service. The functionalities of the proposed architecture are conceptually modeled using production flow schema (PFS) and their dynamic behaviors are verified and validated by Petri net (PN) models. The architecture is applied in a modular production system to evaluate RAMI 4.0 as a guide for the development of architectures for Industry 4.0.

Requirements for a Human-Centered Condition Monitoring in Modular Production Environments

This paper highlights the requirements for modular production environments regarding the semantic description of individual cyber-physical production modules (CPPM). With a focus on small and medium sized enterprises (SME), the need for a human-centered approach regarding human machine interaction has been derived. Semantic approaches to access machine data of modular, vendor-independent modules is taken into consideration, showing the need for an asset administration shell (AAS) according to the reference architecture model industry 4.0 (RAMI 4.0). In this context, current and previous work regarding RAMI 4.0 and the AAS have been screened. With the help of the asset administration shell, machines are able to make their data accessible for the human worker, who is the expert on the shopfloor in SME and can then monitor the heterogeneous production environment. This paper finishes with an outlook on future work regarding the details of the AAS, the required data for the case of condition monitoring as part of a possible edge device strategy and the function of the human in the future production environment.

Local Cloud Internet of Things Automation: Technology and Business Model Features of Distributed Internet of Things Automation Solutions

The hype concerning digitalization is increasing the demand for new generations of automation systems. Concepts like Reference Architecture Model Industry 4.0 (RAMI 4.0) give us models but do not tell us how to facilitate actual implementations. This article discusses the transition from legacy automation technology as defined by ISA-95 to highly distributed Internet of Things (IoT)- and system of systems (SoS)- based automation systems that fully utilize Internet technologies, thus enabling the implementation of Industry 4.0 and RAMI 4.0 models. Distributed IoT automation systems have a number of general requirements concerning real-time performance, security, engineering cost, scalability, and interoperability. Meeting these requirements is necessary to enable possibilities for a realworld implementation of IoT automation. A key concept is local automation clouds. The discussion is based on a particular example of such an automation integration platform, the Arrowhead Framework.

M2DDM – A Maturity Model for Data-Driven Manufacturing

To stay competitive in a global market, companies strive to adjust their IT architectures to the characteristics of Industrie 4.0. This means the adaptation of a data-driven manufacturing model, which includes the horizontal and vertical integration of the value chain and the management of data across the whole product life cycle. Currently companies face two major problems in this transformation of their IT architectures: 1) There are multiple reference architectures for Industrie 4.0, whose suitability has not been evaluated in a straightforward way. 2) There are no maturity models to objectively assess data-driven IT architectures. In this work we address these problems by providing an overview of Industrie 4.0 features in multiple reference architectures and developing a maturity model for IT architectures for data-driven manufacturing. We first give an overview of the current maturity models with aspects of data-driven manufacturing. Based on this overview we survey three reference architectures for Industrie 4.0: the Industrial Internet Reference Architecture, the Reference Architecture Model Industrie 4.0, and the Stuttgart IT Architecture for Manufacturing. We analyze and assess each approach and define maturity levels for data-driven manufacturing to guide companies in the adaption process of Industrie 4.0, as well as criteria for meeting these levels.

Semantic interoperability in IoT-based automation infrastructures

Abstract The paper analyses and compares the different approaches to achieve semantic interoperability of the most influential IoT reference architectures, namely the Industrial Internet Reference Architecture, Reference Architecture Model Industrie 4.0, ISO/IEC Internet of Things Reference Architecture, the Internet of Things – Architecture (IoT-A) and oneM2M functional architecture.

A Systematic Approach to OPC UA Information Model Design

Current trends in manufacturing focus on the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). The physical world and its virtual representation are increasingly converging, which leads to Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS) in the manufacturing environment. CPPS synergize conventional production technology as well as ICT, allowing machines and products to exchange information, trigger actions and control other components autonomously. Therefore, seamless communication between physical objects of the shop floor and various computer systems is required. The Reference Architecture Model Industrie 4.0 (RAMI4.0) provided by the Plattform Industrie 4.0 specifies requirements for CPPS consisting of Industrie 4.0-components. In such systems, a major goal is to enable communication of I4.0 components among each other via industrial networks. For this purpose, RAMI4.0 suggests that each component has a virtual representation and uses Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) based communication with I4.0-semantics. This paper describes a systematic approach to OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) information model for representing the static and dynamic behavior of manufacturing systems. Moreover, the approach is generic in the sense that it can be used to define information models for multiple target technologies, such as OPC UA, MTConnect and others. It even allows to reuse large parts of the generated models for similar manufacturing utilities and various target technologies. Therefore, we first present a concept for system analysis and design by using the Unified Modeling Language (UML), which is widely accepted for interdisciplinary work. The information gathered is then transformed to OPC UA information models which serves as target technology in this paper. The purpose of this approach is to simplify the process of defining virtual representations of manufacturing systems. Applying the presented concept allows transformation of classic manufacturing systems into CPPS with SOA-based communication and semantically rich virtual representations of individual components. It is therefore well suited to meet the requirements specified by RAMI4.0.