IIC Journal of Innovation 10th Edition | Page 25

Outcomes, Insights and Best Practices from IIC Testbeds: Smart Factory Web Testbed
analytics. It reduces Information Technology
(IT) system integration and installation costs,
allowing for faster engineering and ramp-up
time of components, machines, plants and IT
systems—improving upon the utilization of
equipment, as well. The core functionality is
to describe the capabilities of factory assets
in a standardized way, to find assets with the
necessary capabilities and to access status
data about these assets so that they may be
included in the overall order management.
Figure 1: Smart Factory Web as a Marketplace for Manufacturing
& Work assets in a factory, flexible
engineering, configuration of factory
integration into Smart Factory Web and the
Microsoft © Azure® platform, and the
description of assets in AutomationML.
The Testbed is directed mainly towards
small-lot size environments rather than large
manufacturers because companies working
with larger line orders usually have their own
supply chain management system and do
not need to be as flexible and responsive due
to the size of the orders. For smaller scale
production, there are many more examples
of where a moderate or smaller number of a
particular part is to be produced, and
machine capabilities need to be configured
for this particular order.
The Testbed’s primary use cases involve
manufacturers who seek to find a factory to
produce certain parts. The manufacturer
accesses the Smart Factory Web to find a
factory with the right capabilities, and a
potential target factory is identified. After
negotiating with the target factory about
delivery route, schedules, price and so on, an
order can be placed. The target factory may
need to adapt its production to meet the
requested product specifications, and it
To accomplish its goal, there are several
areas of experimentation in the Smart
Factory Web Testbed, including the
engineering of automation systems for Plug
- 21 -
March 2019