Realising next-generation web service-driven industrial systems

Abstract

Business continuity and agility form the core modus operandi of modern global enterprises. Complex business processes performed in highly distributed production systems need to be efficiently integrated with the shop floor, which needs to be able to fully respond to dynamic adaptations and sophisticated interactions with the enterprise systems in a timely manner. As the new generation of industrial devices coming to the shop floors features greatly improved storage, computing and networking capabilities, the factory of the future transforms itself to a system of systems, where of large numbers of heterogeneous networked embedded devices dynamically exchange information, complement each other's functionality and provide new innovative capabilities that satisfy the emergent dynamic business requirements. This new breed of networked embedded devices goes beyond simple passive roles, e.g. being able to store and report information about themselves and their physical surroundings once queried, but execute complex computations and global logic locally, as well as dynamically adapt to fulfil goaldriven conditions. They communicate in an open interoperable way, form cooperative peer-to-peer networks and strongly interact with enterprise systems. This leads to highly modular, manageable and dynamic factories that will be able to adapt and optimize their behaviour to achieve the business goals pursued in a cross-layer collaborative way.

Engineering of Next Generation Cyber-Physical Automation System Architectures

“…Business continuity and agility form the core modus operandi of modern global enterprises (Karnouskos, 2009), and efforts that yield results of more efficient automation systems are well-justified. In order to achieve the pursued agility and continuity, business processes performed in highly distributed production systems need to be efficiently integrated with a sophisticated shop-floor infrastructure that is capable of responding to dynamic adaptations in a timely manner (Karnouskos, 2011).…”

“…The prevalence of CPS and the advanced capabilities they offer, mean a drastic reshaping of the future automation system architectures. The increased complexity and sophistication of involved systems, make it very hard to follow monolithic and one-size-fits-all approaches, and make the transition towards modular, dynamic, and open systems imperative Karnouskos, 2011). Over the last years, significant efforts have been realized towards service oriented architectures and systems that interact with them .…”

“…It is important to recognize that all the parts involved in future automation system architectures, will not be under the control of a single authority, and technology, and therefore, the integration, interaction and operation will need to be done via open interfaces exposed by the services (Karnouskos, 2011;Colombo et al, 2014b). Taking into consideration the goals of a CPS, as discussed in Sect.…”

“…As the different parts of such a system will evolve independently, good practices for engineering, upgrading, operating and maintaining them need to be followed. The core idea behind the amalgamating the physical and virtual (digital) worlds, is to seamlessly gather useful data and information about objects of the physical world, transform it to knowledge, and empower various industrial applications (Karnouskos, 2011;Colombo et al, 2014b). The emerging engineering systems, operating in highly sophisticated infrastructures as discussed, are expected to enable the elimination of many existing pain points, but unavoidably it will create others.…”

Cross benefits from cyber-physical systems and intelligent products for future smart industries

“…Business continuity and agility form the core modus operandi of modern global enterprises [1]. As business competition increases, significant efforts are directed to operational improvement, which introduces new demanding requirements across the enterprise.…”