Production harmonizEd Reconfiguration of Flexible Robots  and Machinery

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Publications

Petri nets methodology for the design and control of migration processes towards industry 4.0

Publication . Cachada, Ana; Pires, Flávia; Barbosa, José; Leitão, Paulo; Cala, Ambra

The fourth industrial revolution, commonly known as Industry 4.0, germinated in Germany as an industrial program of the government to reinvigorate the manufacturing sector. Nowadays, this change in the industrial paradigm has reached a global scale and is proposing to transform the traditional factories into more competitive, efficient and productive industries. In order to accomplish this goal it is necessary to establish methodologies to migrate from the traditional systems to innovative systems, namely those applying the Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS) concepts. This paper proposes a methodology based on the Petri nets formalism for the modelling, analysis, validation and simulation of the migration process during the design phase and the control and monitoring of such processes during the implementation phase.

2018Conference paper

Restricted access

From key business factors to KPIs within a reconfigurable and flexible cyber-physical system

Publication . Boschi, Filippo; Zanetti, Cristiano; Tavola, Giacomo; Taisch, Marco; Leitão, Paulo; Barbosa, José; Pereira, Arnaldo

In a global market characterized by strong competition and quickly changing boundary conditions, flexible and reconfigurable production systems can rapidly react to both endogenous and exogenous drivers. To this extent, it is necessary to define a new production system model, which can combine the most significant key business factors (KBFs), in order to meet the specified objectives and the relevant KPIs and to control the system. The model can be used within a cyber-physical system, to properly support the different functions and take the right decisions through simulation ICT tools. This research task is part of PERFoRM (Production harmonizEd Reconfiguration of Flexible Robots and Machinery), a European funded project, which aims at developing an innovative manufacturing system based on a new agile concept introducing the implementation of methods, methodologies and strategies for transforming existing production systems into plug-and-produce production ones based on Cyber-Physical Systems technologies. In particular, this paper aims at describing the relationships among the KBFs (Key Business Factors), namely the drivers of the production system, and the relevant KPIs. The model has been validated through an industrial use case, in order to gain important information about constraints and opportunities for improvement in other contexts.

2017Conference paper

Open access

Petri nets approach for designing the migration process towards industrial cyber-physical production systems

Publication . Cachada, Ana; Pires, Flávia; Barbosa, José; Leitão, Paulo

Presently, many industries are facing strong challenges related to the demand of customized and high-quality products. These pressures lead to internal company's conflicts where current production systems have a rigid structure, forcing the company into a organization stall when a fast product change is required. Therefore, the need to smoothly migrate traditional systems into more feature-rich and cost-effective systems, namely Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS), became a highly discussed topic. PERFoRM project focuses the conceptual transformation of existing production systems towards plug\&produce ones to achieve flexible and reconfigurable manufacturing environments. In particular, the smooth migration process is considered crucial to effectively transpose existing production systems into truly CPPS. This paper describes the use of Petri nets to design the migration process under the PERFoRM perspective, taking advantage of its inherent capabilities to design, analyze, simulate and validate such complex processes.

2017Conference paper

Open access

Engineering of next generation cyber-physical automation system architectures

Publication . Foehr, Matthias; Vollmar, Jan; Calà, Ambra; Leitão, Paulo; Karnouskos, Stamatis; Colombo, Armando W.

Cyber-Physical-Systems (CPS) enable flexible and reconfigurable realization of automation system architectures, utilizing distributed control architectures with non-hierarchical modules linked together through different communication systems. Several control system architectures have been developed and validated in the past years by research groups. However, there is still a lack of implementation in industry. The intention of this work is to provide a summary of current alternative control system architectures that could be applied in industrial automation domain as well as a review of their commonalities. The aim is to point out the differences between the traditional centralized and hierarchical architectures to discussed ones, which rely on decentralized decision-making and control. Challenges and impacts that industries and engineers face in the process of adopting decentralized control architectures are discussed, analysing the obstacles for industrial acceptance and the new necessary interdisciplinary engineering skills. Finally, an outlook of possible mitigation and migration actions required to implement the decentralized control architectures is addressed.

2017Book part

Open access

Migration from traditional towards cyber-physical production systems

Publication . Cala, Ambra; Luder, Arndt; Cachada, Ana; Pires, Flávia; Barbosa, José; Leitão, Paulo; Gepp, Michael

Nowadays, many organizations intend to convert their existing production systems towards ones that are characterized by adaptability, openness, flexibility and modularity. This requires a redesign of existing information processing systems especially related to control, leading possibly to cyber-physical production systems (CPPS). However, the implementation of new control technologies will have a direct impact on the normal operational status of production while engineers will also face several challenges and obstacles in adopting intelligent automation systems. New step-wise migration strategies are required to holistically support industries in their journey towards CPPS taking into account technical, economic and social aspects. This paper discusses the migration state-of-the-art strategies, analyzing them and providing a first attempt to define a migration approach for innovative production systems.

2017Conference paper

Open access