Digital Transformation in Practice : Learning from IIC Deployments
Operational impact : The application of the standards allows plug-and-work for new machines and devices , ease of configuration and adaption of the production process . Plug-and-work refers to the insertion of a machine or device into a production system and its automatic configuration in the operational software , similar to a USB device in a PC . The plug and work architecture of the Smart Factory Web testbed is explained in Heymann et al 5 .
Customer experience impact : ease of integration of best-of-class applications from multiple suppliers . The flexibility and cost-effectiveness of modern IT becomes available to the OT arena , thus adding the digital world experience to OT . A simple , but compelling illustration is the display of current production data on the factory manager ’ s smart phone .
Business model impacts : Smart Factory Web offers new opportunities for finding manufacturers with matching capabilities and offering services in an entire supply chain . This increases market visibility , especially for small to medium-sized companies . Easy selection and IT integration of assets enables cost-effective production even of small lot sizes .
Business : Smart Factory Web is a blueprint platform to create an ecosystem of competing and cooperating players in a manufacturing supply chain . The platform has a technology-independent open architecture based upon international standards . This enables both manufacturing as a service ( MaaS ) on a web platform as in Figure 1 , and a federation of marketplaces with welldefined interfaces in an industrial ecosystem 6 . For example , the Negotiation Automation Platform ( NAP ) led by NEC can search Smart Factory Web for registered assets to initiate a negotiation between candidate suppliers of manufacturing and logistics services .
The negotiation process considers terms and conditions ( such as price , quantity , available production capacity and schedule ) in a multi-party environment with both competition and cooperation . AI methods support the solution of this multi-constraint , multi-objective optimization problem . Most products depend on a complex supply chain for their components . A supply chain can be evaluated and adapted more easily by involving new alternative partners to respond to risks . Smart Factory Web incorporates a search function for complete supply chains by considering the input and output products of individual factory assets , their capabilities and
5
Heymann , S .; Stojanovic , L .; Watson , K .; Nam , S .; Song , B .; Gschossmann , H .; Schriegel , S .; Jasperneite , J . Cloud-based Plug and Work Architecture of the IIC Testbed Smart Factory Web . 2018 IEEE 23rd International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation ( ETFA ), 2018 , pp . 187-194 , doi : 10.1109 / ETFA . 2018.8502645 .
https :// ieeexplore . ieee . org / document / 8502645
6
Usländer , T .; Schöppenthau , F .; Schnebel , B .; Heymann , S .; Stojanovic , L .; Watson , K .; Nam , S .; Morinaga , S . Smart Factory Web — A Blueprint Architecture for Open Marketplaces for Industrial Production . Appl . Sci . 2021 , 11 , 6585 .
https :// doi . org / 10.3390 / app11146585
54 November 2021