Outcomes, Insights and Best Practices from IIC Testbeds: Smart Factory Web Testbed
knowledge to KETI, who are now conducting
similar training sessions for Korean
companies. Another example of customer
engagement is consultancy work on how to
design factories of the future and how to set
them up to include new emerging
technologies.
The results of Phase 3 are also summarized
in the paper Cloud-based Plug and Work
Architecture of IIC Testbed Smart Factory
Web from the 2019 IEEE 23 rd International
Conference on Emerging Technologies and
Factory Automation (EFTA) 2 .
Because the focus for Phase 4 is on
collaborating to achieve the necessary
software engineering to integrate factories
together, the engineers of the various
factories and assets in the factories are
needed to provide data and semantics of
their assets in a way that can be integrated
into a cloud—Smart Factory Web or Azure.
This area represents a challenge because
there are so many new technologies arising,
and it is difficult for anyone to assess
whether these technologies will have a real
impact and can be relied upon for the next
fifteen years. In addition, the testbed must
be able to transfer these technologies to
client applications, help set up the necessary
software environments and concepts, and
take a multitude of steps to implement the
Smart Factory Web or aspects of the Smart
Factory Web in the clients’ own workflows.
It is crucial to increase the level of
understanding and skills about certain
technologies—trust in those technologies
needs to be established so that there is a
sufficient level of proven experimentation
and best practices on how to apply the
technologies. This level of trust is necessary
before using these technologies in critical
manufacturing applications where large
production costs, and employee well-being,
is at stake.
There has been a notable level of interest in
the Smart Factory Web Testbed coming from
the industry, resulting in several types of
customer engagement. Fraunhofer is
currently working to form advanced,
leading-edge models and move them into
the industry. To enable this entrance into the
field, the Smart Factory Web Testbed has
had ongoing discussions with industrial
companies to transfer research and
development results from the experimental
environment. This would entail setting up a
type of Smart Factory Web for the
production environment.
In addition, Fraunhofer is transferring
general knowledge and training as part of its
mission, and the Testbed has already
conducted a number of training exercises on
OPC UA and AutomationML for the industry.
The Testbed has also transferred this
One of the major lessons learned from the
Testbed is that open interfaces based on
standards are essential to realizing a system
architecture that can be adapted to changing
requirements and technologies with a
22
Heymann, S.; Stojanovic, L.; Watson, K.; Nam, S.; Song, B.; Gschossmann, H.; Schriegel, S.: "Cloud-based Plug and Work
architecture of IIC Testbed Smart Factory Web". Proceedings of 2018 IEEE 23rd International Conference on Emerging
Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA), Torino, Italy, September 4th to 7th, 2018
- 29 -
March 2019