Versatile IT-system architecture for smart manufacturing solutions: the example for green manufacturing

In the last decade, a rising number of opportunities for IT-based solutions in manufacturing have emerged. Often these opportunities are linked to terms like Industry 4.0, Industrial Internet of Things, Cyber-Physical Production Systems or Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing and address different fields of action to achieve improvements in manufacturing. These include increased productivity, improved energy and resource efficiency, predictive maintenance or quality management support. However, current implementations of corresponding improvement measures often lack a common structure of the underlying IT systems, so that each of the measures is often planned and implemented as a stand-alone solution. Possible consequences include redundancies within the IT infrastructure and software functions as well as high efforts for later extensions. Against this background, an approach for a system architecture to implement different IT-based support measures based on a shared versatile system has been developed in order to gain synergy potentials and foster the reuse of software functions. Furthermore, an approach for the planning and implementation is given. This includes the design of the system architecture as well as the conception and implementation of the IT-based improvement measures. An exemplary application case within a factory for pneumatic valves demonstrates the applicability of the approaches.