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The growing importance of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) in industry results in a large demand for CPS talent and know-how. The mission of academia is to address the needs of industry for CPS engineers and to develop a curriculum to fill the existing gaps in the qualification of the CPS workforce. This curriculum for a Master of Industrial Informatics has to take into account the particular needs of local industry in order to prepare human-forces capable to work and live with Industrial CPS (ICPS) and Industry 4.0-compliant environments. This paper introduces the ICPS field with emphasis in technological solutions and presents a Binational (Germany-Argentina) Master's Program in Industrial Informatics, mapped into the RAMI 4.0 specification, developed in conjunction between Universidad Tecnológica Nacional - Facultad Regional Santa Fe (Argentina) and University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer (Germany) for teaching Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPS) in both countries.
The eight papers in this special section focus on the topic of industrial software agents. These papers cover some of the key aspects in the area of software agents and their industrial applicability, which covers technologies, design, development, deployment, maintenance, and experimentation with agent-based systems.
Hyperautomation is a promising but sparingly implemented concept in intelligent manufacturing. One of the reasons for the suboptimal adoption of hyperautomation is the large gap between current theoretical frameworks and practical methodologies and tools that can be applied in a real industrial production scenario. This situation has become much more complicated in high-tech enterprises, which face a particular set of issues in terms of innovation, cost-effectiveness, and supply chain management in today’s globalized environment. This manuscript provides a new conceptual business framework and technological background for achieving sustainable hyperautomation in the manufacturing of linear electromechanical actuators (LEMA), a key component of several cyberphysical actuators. A set of digital tools and innovative concepts, such as intra-enterprise 3-level factory and definitive designs based on unified solutions, which enable mass customization and offer up to 1000 variants of the LEMAs, are introduced to achieve synergistic interaction between different business functions and provide significant cost and technological advantages. To make manufacturing more customizable, a modular design approach is used, and simultaneously, to facilitate mass production, the focus is given on roller screw transmission modules, representing approximately three-fourths of the added value of LEMA. Furthermore, the concept of synergetic forward integration is proposed and explained using an example of robotic resistance spot welding. This framework involves a closed loop of industrial mature digital tools that enables autonomous product design and manufacturing via Responsive R&D (Research and Development) and feedback-driven dynamic interactions with the market and production system. These steps allow intelligent and automatic decision making throughout the digitally connected systems within the company and out of the company through a digital networked connected intra-enterprise world inside the supply chain with minimal human intervention.
The world is increasingly interconnected, and this can also be seen in industry, where an ecosystem of digitalized assets, and humans with appropriate digital interfaces, constantly interact with each other. Digital transformation efforts in the industry rely on Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems that are driven by service-based cooperation among humans and digitalized industrial assets. This implies a radical paradigm change in their engineering and operation, which is focused on the symbiosis of digitalized assets and humans that cohabit a collaboration-driven industrial ecosystem. This work discusses how a digital transformation can effectively be achieved in an industrial ecosystem via a digitalization process performed along the three dimensions of the Reference Architecture Model for Industry 4.0, facilitated by the specification, development and implementation of an Asset Administration Shell. The discussion focus is put on humans and how the digitally transformed industrial environments empower her/his capabilities and interactions. It is also critically pointed out how one should go beyond technology and consider additional aspects. Therefore, it is argued that human-centred efforts in Industry 4.0 (I4.0) should be seen in the larger context of sustainability and circular economy in order to properly consider the interplay of the involved socio-technical dimensions.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘Towards symbiotic autonomous systems’.
Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) have attracted increasing attention in recent years due to their promise for substantial and long-term benefits to society, economy, environment, and citizens. In addition, the rapid advances in computing, communication, and storage technologies have resulted in a revolution in the information communication technology domain and domination in the industry context. The utilization of CPSs in industrial settings has led to industrial cyber-physical systems (ICPSs), which, in conjunction with the information-driven interactions, enables large-scale cooperation in industrial facilities and among all the stakeholders of the value chain. Hence, the research on ICPSs is essential, especially with respect to the engineering of such systems for industrial applications. This article presents an overview of recent developments in ICPSs. We first introduce the architecture of ICPSs. Then, we review the developments of ICPSs in relevant research domains. Finally, this article concludes by presenting some potential future research directions on ICPSs.
Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are increasingly used in manufacturing, transportation, health, and other industries. To develop these complex interdisciplinary systems, highly qualified CPS engineers are required who possess sound engineering knowledge and excellent transferable skills. Academic institutions offer a range of modules and curricula to teach CPS engineering. However, the literature reports a gap between expectations of industry and competencies of CPS graduates. To close this gap, this paper introduces and describes a holistic educational framework (T-CHAT) for teaching CPS engineering at the module level. To evaluate this framework, two use cases were analysed by conducting self-perception surveys and semi-structured interviews with students. Descriptive statistics and t-tests were calculated for the survey data. Interviews were coded and analysed using a General Inductive Approach. The analysis results were discussed by the comparison of the T-CHAT implementations in these two use cases.
One major result of the Industrial Digitalization is the access to a large set of digitalized data and information, i.e. Big Data. The market of analytic tools offers a huge variety of algorithms and software to exploit big datasets. Implementing their advantages into one approach brings better results and empower possibilities for process analysis. Its application in the manufacturing industry requires a high level of effort and remains to be challenging due to product complexity, human-centric processes, and data quality. In this manuscript, the authors combine process mining and value streams methods for analyzing the data from the information management system, applying the approach to the data delivered by one specific manufacturing system. The manufacturing process to be examined is the process of assembling gas meters in the manufacture. This specific and important part of the whole supply-chain process was taken as suitable for the study due to almost full-automated line with data about each process activity of the value-stream in the information system. The paper applies process mining algorithms in discovering a descriptive process model that plays the main role as a basis for further analysis. At the same time, modern techniques of the bottleneck analysis are described, and two new comprehensible methods of bottlenecks detection (TimeLag and Confidence intervals methods), as well as their advantages, will be discussed. Achieved results can be subsequently used for other sources of big data and industrial-compliant Information Management Systems.
Industrial cyber-physical systems (ICPS) forge the core of real-world digitalized and networked industrial infrastructures. Building a curriculum for ICPS-oriented professionals generates teaching and learning challenges in a multidisciplinary and cultural engineering setting. In this chapter, the authors describe a bachelor-level curriculum offered at the University of Warwick (UK) and a masters-level curriculum implemented at the University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer (Germany). Aiming to bridge the gap between the realization of Industry 4.0 and educational organizations, the Warwick Manufacturing Group at the University of Warwick developed a degree apprenticeship in Digital Technology Solutions, providing specialization in three pathways (software engineering, data analysis and network engineering) in a four-year program. The key enabling technologies and key enabling features of the Master Industrial Informatics with Specialization in industrial cyber-physical systems are first a study body composed of two major graduate programs and, second, the use of a Digital Factory for learning digitalization through hands-on practical training.
This chapter introduces the main conceptual foundations of multi-agent systems and holonic systems and presents the framing of industrial agents as an instantiation of such technological paradigms to face industrial requirements such as, for example, those posed by industrial cyber-physical systems (ICPS). It addresses the alignment of industrial agents with RAMI 4.0. The chapter also addresses the use of industrial agents to realize ICPS, to concretely enhance the functionalities provided by the asset administration shells (AAS). Holonic paradigm translates the Köstler's observations and Herbert Simon's theories into a set of appropriate concepts for distributed control systems. Along with the holonics principles, an industrial agent usually has an associated physical hardware counterpart, which increases the deployment complexity. On the one side, the AAS is designed to be available for both non-intelligent and intelligent digitalized assets, which is also a digital basis for autonomous components and systems.