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Smart Factories are designed by Universities [e.g. 7, 1] and Research Institutes (e.g. IPA, IFF, IOSB, IFF, DFKI). Also, automotive companies are developing their ‘own’ Smart Factories [e.g. 3, 6]. The focus is on manufacturing processes, technical equipment, and control of technical processes but not on business and order processes [4, 5]. To run a Smart Factory also a concept for a “Digital Order Twin” (DOT) is needed to ensure that for each final product the right components are available in the right quantity at the right time and at the right place, especially if the product is configurated by a customer or dealer. But existing IT-Systems for Enterprise-Resource-Planning (ERPS), Material-Requirement-Planning (MRP) and Manufacturing Execution (MES) are not able to exploit the huge amount of acquired data ‘in-time’, because they are separated IT-Modules which are connected by batch-oriented interfaces only, the concept and algorithm base on the “Water-Fall-Model” without recursion to a preceding IT-System or IT-Module. In an autonomously controlled Smart Factory the right components must be referenced to each single final product instantly and in a more flexible way than the concept of pearl chain can do, instead of a unique DOT uses instantly data of RFID, QR-Code, Smart Devices and Cyber-Physical Objects and can interact in time with Systems and Modules.

ARENA2036 is a joint research campus incorporating production assets from different industrial and academic partners. To allow the implementation of cross-partner value streams and workflows, a common middleware for online date exchange and asset operation is mandatory. We implemented a generic and lightweight middleware which follows the concept of Asset Administration Shells as specified by the Platform I4.0. However, to allow for easy adaption and setup by a diverse range of partners we simplified modeling requirements and complexity of the actual data exchange. The result is a specification for the assets’ self-descriptions in form of submodels (For many people, the term “submodel" implies the existence of a “model", which does not exist here. In order to have a consistent terminology with the standard of the Platform I4.0, we will use the term “submodel" here. For the future, we propose the term “aspect model" instead.) and a convention on how to map this onto MQTT. Additionally, we integrated means for online discovery and state monitoring of all connected assets.

A central success factor for the digitalization of production processes is the provision of a consistent database across domains and life cycles. The current situation in the automotive industry is characterized by a multitude of engineering tools with diverse, proprietary data formats, which require complex conversion processes and show dramatic deficits in the consistency and accessibility of the data. In recent years, graph-based design languages have been refined and their range of application expanded to an extent that they represent an interesting approach to addressing these problems. The focus of this paper is on the automated generation of assembly processes and assembly resources (e.g. type-related production equipment such as clamping devices) using the example of automotive body parts (front flap and B-pillar). Within the presented engineering framework of automated production planning, clamping concepts and assembly cells (with automated wiring) are generated using graph-based design languages. Based on the manufacturing concept, a joining sequence and fastener planning is carried out, from which a product-specific clamping and fixing concept is derived. The central advantage of this procedure is, in addition to the high degree of automation, the possibility of providing a consistent database. This database allows the automatic derivation for the various specialized engineering tools.

This paper describes a case study for the use of the TRIZ Flow Analysis for an established technical system. The analytical method was used in a loose connection with the Functional Analysis and Trends of Engineering System Evolution (TESE) to create a work aid to facilitate the usage in the everyday development environment.

This paper presents a middle data layer that is designed and implemented based on the ANSI/ISA-95 industrial standard. The proposed middle data layer extracts key information on manufacturing operations from the control systems as well as the business systems. The proposed model enhances interoperability in Industry 4.0 by using a standardized and formalized data structure. We expand the above idea into three directions. Firstly, we analyze all the layers of the traditional automation hierarchy model of ISA-95 to get an overview of objects and activities that are needed for building a middle data layer and re-structure the traditional hierarchy levels by introducing the ISA-95 based middle data layer. Secondly, we design the data architectures by categorizing the data source and explain the formalized and standardized data models. Finally, we use a Smart Manual Station of a production setup to show how to apply the proposed ISA-95 middle data layer to the real world case. The results indicate that the middle data layer enhances the interoperability of manufacturing systems and creates a universal standardized data structures for systems integration for factory automation.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) has become one of the most successful applications of blockchain and smart contracts. The DeFi ecosystem enables a wide range of crypto-financial activities, while the underlying smart contracts often contain bugs, with many vulnerabilities arising from the unforeseen consequences of composing DeFi protocols together. In this paper, we propose a formal process-algebraic technique that models DeFi protocols in a compositional manner to allow for efficient property verification. We also conduct a case study to demonstrate the proposed approach in analyzing the composition of two interacting DeFi protocols, namely, Curve and Compound. Finally, we discuss how the proposed modeling and verification approach can be used to analyze financial and security properties of interest.

Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) were proposed in the mid-1980s to provide a means for control of complex distributed systems. Although the topic received significant attention from the research community, which resulted in many methodologies and theoretical concepts, industrial practitioners’ adoption remained low. A wave of innovations referred to as Industry 4.0 brought new technologies focused on easier integration of heterogeneous systems. Semantic technologies were recognized as a suitable tool for the axiomatic information modelling of production systems, and the OPC-UA communication standard brought a means of secure communication and principles of object-oriented information modelling to the layer of process control. In this paper, a new MAS Platform - Cluster 4.0 Integration Platform is introduced. It utilizes (1) semantics to explicitly describe products, production, and resources for their easier integration and exploitation and (2) OPC-UA to connect software agents to physical machines.

Modularity, adaptability and integration of new technologies like Human-Robot Cooperation (HRC) help in facing the major challenges posed by the increased product variants with shortened life cycles and fluctuating market conditions of the automotive industry. However, utilizing them requires strong software support and complicates the already demanding planning and implementation of an assembly system. The strong dependency on software creates a new void in the planning and implementation processes. Usually, the programmer, not the process owner, fills this void based on his knowledge. This results in frequent and resource-intensive adaptations during commissioning due to implicit knowledge and requirements during the development process. This paper presents a lean approach for implementing an adaptable assembly system. Our approach combines an abstract process description, a virtual model of assembly system and a standardized control system which enables the realization of an assembly system. Our modeling technique helps a process owner to develop robust assembly systems. Also, it enables the design of a process and supports in obtaining the corresponding boilerplate code needed to execute the process on standard hardware utilized by the industry. This is demonstrated and tested by means of a HRC underbody assembly process in vehicle assembly under realistic conditions in a demonstrator factory.

TRIZ is currently not frequently used for the creation of Digital Business Models. The author has created an approach inspired by the 40 Inventive Principles, which summarizes the 40 most successful digital business models. This approach has already been used successfully in workshops. It also uses a matrix called the contradiction solver to overcome business contradictions. The different principles are not 1 to 1 translations of the inventive principles as they have a different basis.

For the distribution of consumer and industrial goods, every company is obliged to provide assembly instructions. For the consumer goods market, for example, the German Civil Code defines that defective assembly instructions must be declared as a material defect. However, the creation of comprehensible and defect-free assembly instructions is still a very time-consuming manual process, which must be determined in an extremely time-consuming procedure. Nonetheless, assembly instructions are more than just obligatory documents. They are also required in places where they are not prescribed. For example, assembly instructions are needed in production to pass on assembly knowledge to the assembly operators. Here, it often turns out that this knowledge is either not available or can only be used to a limited extent.

(a) Situation faced: The introduction of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) in the manufacturing domain has led to new concepts of how things like machines can interact. In contrast to explicit connections among machines, computing resources, and UIs (humans)—that is, semi-hard-coded connections of components through a service bus—providing a context for how things are connected can foster maintainability and comprehension and advance the notion of a loosely coupled system. (b) Action taken: This chapter presents a four-step integration approach that equips small and medium-sized companies with a defined evolution toward flexible and reliable digitalization and automation using the BPM technology centurio.work. A process-based framework, centurio.work uses BPMN notation to orchestrate and control manufacturing use cases. The four-step integration approach presented here is demonstrated on a real-world scenario at EVVA that realizes the interactions among a lathe, a robot, and a loading station, which is a common scenario for the manufacturing industry. (c) Results achieved: We deployed process models from a testbed, the pilot factory of the Technical University of Vienna (TU), to the production cell of EVVA. Because of the similarity of the equipment—the pilot factory and EVVA have a lathe and a robot—nearly all of the pilot factory’s existing templates could be reused, but this approach increased the start-up time for orchestrating the production cell. However, interfaces for each component of the cell were defined and implemented in such a way that the components can be orchestrated, and the stepwise integration approach facilitated parallel development of the functionality with no interruption in production. (d) Lessons learned: The most complex step was defining the interface for orchestrating the equipment, especially realizing stateless interfaces with atomic methods that allow safe use in modeling environments. The manufacturing domain has several standards that address the same topic, so no general design rules are available. On the modeling side, we had to improve only the processes that are responsible for tasks on the machine level, that is, changing a variable that represents the current state. The top-level processes were kept the same.

Functional Analysis is a key tool in TRIZ. As elements components that have a rest mass and technical fields are accepted elements. Software per se and parameters are not allowed. Nowadays Big Data, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and software are getting more and more importance in technical system as elements that change parameters of other components and fields. We have suggested at TRIZfest 2019 to introduce Big Data as a resource. In the intense discussion this idea was rejected and suggested to think about introducing Big Data (AI & Software) as a field to function analysis. Simon Litvin suggested to allow software as a field. This paper will emphasis on this idea and present examples how this could look like.

Digitalization offers new opportunities to improve the quality of planning, adaptation and optimization of assembly processes. The approach presented in this paper allows for the (re-)planning of the assembly process with alternative assembly paths. Since usually multiple valid assembly sequences exist for one and the same product, an automated assembly path analysis is realized for the identification of a time-optimal sequence. The implementation is realized using a combination of Petri nets and graph-based design languages. This framework allows an easy integration of the assembly planning process into the digital design process and the automatic evaluation of possible assembly sequences.

In product development projects, companies try to meet more individual customer requirements by increasing the number of product variants. The product variants are no longer solely created physically, but also through different configurations of software, digital services and platforms. This extension of a physical system is called cyber-physical system (CPS). The development towards ‘System of Systems’ creates products, which fulfil required functions through the interaction of systems. The combination of physical and virtual objects makes cyber-physical systems significantly more complex than purely mechatronic products. The overall goal is to improve the cost-benefit ratio of cyber-physical systems. Therefore, system complexity is examined, in order to improve the design of CPS. In this paper a first step towards this goal is presented, the analysis and synthesis of description features of cyber-physical systems, which are capable to describe any CPS in a standardized logic and include all relevant dimensions that cause complexity.

This chapter explains the essential characteristics of architectures using the structures of cities as an example and relates them to product architectures. The limits of decentralized decisions are shown. Architecture drivers are identified and the necessity of conscious architectural design is explained.

Due to rising product and process complexity, assistance systems for humans are increasingly used in both the planning and execution of assembly activities or as support systems for reworking. However, developments available so far usually act as isolated solutions. Therefore a continuous dataflow between top and shop floor is not given. This article presents a comprehensive assistance system consisting of a virtual planning environment and various smart devices at an assembly workstation. In the virtual environment, the feasibility of initially created product condition graphs will be validated and a training of the repair scope to be carried out will be done. As a result, a process plan is derived from the virtual environment and transferred to an assisted workstation for reworking. The repair on the real product is carried out using the created process plan so that a continuous data flow is available. Thus the system supports the persons involved in the product analysis and work plan creation up to the execution of repair activities during rework.

This work deals with redesigning business process models, e.g., in BPMN, based on cost-based optimization techniques that were initially proposed for data analytics workflows. More specifically, it discusses execution cost and cycle time improvements through treating business processes in the same way as data-centric workflows. The presented solutions are cost-based, i.e., they employ quantitative metadata and cost models. The advantage of this approach is that business processes can benefit from recent advances in data-intensive workflow optimization similarly to the manner they nowadays benefit from additional data analytics areas, e.g., in the area of process mining. Concrete use cases are presented that are capable of demonstrating that even in small, more conservative cases, the benefits are significant. The contribution of this work is to show how to automatically optimize the model structure of a given process in terms of the ordering of tasks and how to perform resource allocation under contradicting objectives. Finally, the work identifies open issues in developing end-to-end business process redesign solutions with regards to the case studies considered.

The following chapter presents a new method, including an innovative Modularization Decision Dashboard (MDD) as well as the corresponding process to prepare the MDD and to guide trough the decision process. Decisions in the context of product structures are systematically supported by means of the presented process model. This four-phase process model ensures that all relevant aspects and all decision-relevant KPIs are taken into account. The core of the method is a dashboard that visualizes all decision-relevant aspects. The description is both generic and based on a practical industry example. In addition to the description of the objectives of the method, the target group of the method is described. Besides general information about the study design, the elaborations include the implementation of the method into established approaches of modular product family design.

We report our research progress on interactive evolutionary computation (IEC). Following description of IEC features, we present our research on IEC user modeling, acceleration of IEC search, several IEC frameworks, evolutionary multi-objective optimization with IEC, and IEC for human science. IEC research is categorized into three fields in general; major part of IEC papers is IEC application-oriented research; almost all the others are research that aims to reduce IEC user fatigue; and very little work researches the use of IEC for human science. In particular, IEC is a data analysis and processing method and tool for the discovery of human psychological and physiological knowledge. We include several of our IEC application-oriented research projects in this paper, and focus on two other research directions, i.e., IEC algorithm research to reduce user fatigue, and IEC for human science research.

In this chapter, the mechanisms used in the M&E component of RC4CPS approach to carry out the required tasks are described. The M&E component and its architecture were briefly introduced in Chapter 5. For clearness of information presentation in this chapter, I reintroduce the M&E component in Figure 7.1.

Blockchain technology provides basic building blocks to support the execution of collaborative business processes involving mutually untrusted parties in a decentralized environment. Several research proposals have demonstrated the feasibility of designing blockchain-based collaborative business processes using a high-level notation, such as the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), and thereon automatically generating the code artifacts required to execute these processes on a blockchain platform. In this paper, we present the conceptual foundations of model-driven approaches for blockchain-based collaborative process execution and we compare two concrete approaches, namely Caterpillar and Lorikeet.

Innovating maintenance is crucial for the competitiveness of the European manufacturing, pressured to increase flexibility and efficiency while reducing costs. Initiatives related to Industrie 4.0 have been showing the potential of using advanced/pervasive sensing, big data analytics and cloud-based services. In this paper, we present the edge part of our solution for self-healing manufacturing to early-predict equipment condition and make optimized recommendations for adjustments and maintenance to ensure normal operations. The intelligent edge is advanced, affordable and easily integrated, cyber-physical solution for predicting maintenance of machine tools in varying manufacturing environments, by using new connectivity, sensors and big data analytics methods. The proposed solution is capable to integrate information from many different sources, by including structured, semi-structured and unstructured data. The key innovation is in IoTization through dynamic, multi-modal, smart data gathering and integration based on the semantic technologies.

Properties of business processes are investigated in Chapter 6. After investigating the role of data in business processes, the discussion is extended to data objects that contain behaviour. In particular, the relationships between object lifecycles and business processes are investigated, introducing the notion of object lifecycle conformance. In the second part of that chapter, soundness criteria are discussed, ranging from classical soundness to advanced concepts like relaxed soundness and lazy soundness. An overview of the relationships between the soundness criteria complete this chapter.

The chapter integrates all previous chapters into a method for systematic WIS development. The reader is taken through steps for application domain description, architecture design, requirements analysis, and system specification with the co-design method. In doing so the chapter links the co-design method with strategic aspects, storyboarding, web interaction types and screenography, and it enhances the method by concrete steps to be applied during the WIS development process.

The chapter introduces the co-design framework for the design and development of web information systems. Starting from a discussion of general aspects in conceptual modelling and design, their specificity for web information systems is investigated. This leads to a general characterisation by six decisive aspects: intention, usage, content, functionality, context and presentation. This is followed by the presentation of the abstraction layer model for web information system development emphasising different layers of abstraction and the dimensions of focus (global vs. local aspects) and modus (static vs. dynamic aspects). The strategic, business, conceptual, presentation and implementation layers layers, respectively, provide views on a web information system on different levels of abstraction emphasising in general, what the system is about, how users are intended to use the system, how the system can be modelled in an integrated way, how presentation can be tailored, and finally how the whole development process is to be organised.

BPM architectures are in the centre of Chapter 7, starting from the WfMC Architecture and proceeding towards service oriented architectures and architectures for flexible workflow management. In particular, an architecture that allows to dynamically modify running workflow instances based on an object-oriented approach is introduced. Web services and their composition are sketched, describing the core concepts of the XML-based service composition language WS-BPEL. Advanced service composition based on semantic concepts are sketched, and case handling is introduced as a technique for flexible process enactment based on data dependencies rather than process structures.

This chapter contains techniques for planning the process architecture. For this purpose, market segments are created from four elements of the business model. For the most important market segment, its customer segment is described by uniform criteria. The customer process with the most important requirements is developed on this basis in order to derive the appropriate process architecture.

Multi-agent systems (MAS) are an active research area of system engineering to deal with the complexity of distributed systems. Due to the complexity of business-intelligence (BI) generation in a distributed environment, the adaptation of such system is diverse due to integrated MAS and distributed data mining (DDM) technologies. Bringing these two frameworks together in the content of BI-systems poses challenges during the analysis, design, and test in the development life-cycle. The development processes of such complex systems demand a comprehensive methodology to systematically guide and support developers through the various stages of BI-system life-cycles. In the context of agent-based system engineering, several agent-oriented methodologies exist. Deploying the most suitable methodology is another challenge for developers. In this paper, we develop an exemplar of MAS-based BI-system called BI-MAS with comprehensive designing steps as a running case. For demonstrating the new approach, first we consider an evaluation process to find suitable agent-oriented methodologies. Second, we apply the selected methodologies in analyzing and designing concepts for BI-MAS life-cycles. Finally, we demonstrate a new approach of verification and validation processes for BI-MAS life-cycles.

Illustrates the usage of Abstract State Machines (ASMs) in the area of business process modeling (BPM). A commercially used web service modeling pattern (Virtual Provider) is defined. A BPM-specific class of ASM net diagrams is introduced and shown to support IBM’s Guard-State-Milestone approach and the central communication concept of the Subject-Oriented BPM method. The focus is on showing how ASM refinements offer a seamless integratation of data-oriented (textual) and control-flow oriented (graphical) modeling means.

The design and integration of robotic-based automation solutions is a common problem for robotic component providers and especially for their consumers. In this work, a standardized robot configurator is introduced, based on a modular system architecture and best-practice solutions. Starting with a minimum viable prototype providing an intuitive web-based configurator, customized robot applications can easily be planned, visualized, simulated and finally realized. The presented robotic configurator is based on microservice architecture, which is a modern, scalable and complexity-reducing solution for the overall system. This paper demonstrates how an exemplary configuration process could be handled to get an impression about the prospective use of pre-configured robotic solutions.

In the previous chapters, we learned how to create conceptual process models and use them for documentation and analysis purposes. Because of their purpose, these models are intentionally abstract in nature, i.e., they do not provide technical implementation details. This means that conceptual process models must be systematically reworked into executable process models to be interpreted and automatically executed by a software system, such as a BPMS. In this chapter, we propose a five-step method to incrementally transform a conceptual process model into an executable one, using the BPMN language. As part of this method, we also show how to make use of two other standards complementary to BPMN: CMMN and DMN.

We propose a formal model of Bitcoin transactions, which is sufficiently abstract to enable formal reasoning, and at the same time is concrete enough to serve as an alternative documentation to Bitcoin. We use our model to formally prove some well-formedness properties of the Bitcoin blockchain, for instance that each transaction can only be spent once. We release an open-source tool through which programmers can write transactions in our abstract model, and compile them into standard Bitcoin transactions.

Software systems give computer science its practical potency. Physical library systems, banking systems, and management systems and structures existed before the advent of the computer. Libraries have always issued books, and banks have always taken our money. But, with the advent of the computer, these systems have been modeled in software. Indeed, the latter models are not just computational models of existing physical systems, but have been digitally enhanced and enriched.

When software does not work, does not conform to its speci_cation, it is said to be incorrect; it is said to contain mistakes or bugs. Some instances are infamous. Mistakes in the software controlling the radiation therapy machine Therac-25 had fatal consequences, mistakes in the guidance system software of Ariane 5 caused it to crash, and a mistake in AT&T’s software caused computer crashes.

In every factory environment, errors and maintenance situations may occur. They must be handled quickly and accurately. This article describes a semantic application for automatically retrieving technical documentation for fixing such errors and presenting them to factory personnel. For this, machine raw data is collected and semantically enriched using Complex Event Processing (CEP). Semantic events are mapped to technical documentation via an ontology. Particular focus is drawn on the user experience of the semantic application.

Modern medical image processing employs an ever widening array of tools on an ever larger pool of data. Development of the tools takes place on a variety of different platforms, determined by external circumstances, such as the availability of necessary functionality as libraries forcing the use of a specific programming language or interdependencies of third party tools requiring specific versions of specific operating systems. This problem itself is not unique to medical imaging[1] and solutions such as Docker have proven themselves useful in a variety of use cases.

This chapter is dedicated to project Time management. It begins with the visual representations of Gantt charts and network diagrams. Then all the network techniques are presented: CPM, PERT, GERT, VERT, with examples and exercises.

Human-robot collaboration (HRC) has the potential to increase the degree of automation, and thus productivity, throughout many industries. However, complex safety considerations and a lack of appropriate planning tools still prohibit a more widespread application. In this paper, the use of virtual commissioning (VC), an established tool for the validation of common automated systems, for the validation of HRC-systems is proposed. For this, the structure of a traditional VC environment is combined with a digital human model (DHM). To ensure adequate behavioral fidelity, a real-time overlay of human action and the virtual automated system, using motion capture technology, is imperative. This also requires the live visualization of the simulation environment via virtual reality (VR). The structure of such a simulation system is presented and evaluated. Furthermore, the cost and benefit for this new method is contrasted.

The era of digitalization, that is already present, will significantly influence and change the today’s enterprise in various ways. The way humans interact with their environment, the services that customers expect, the increasing speed of new competitive products and technologies that will emerge, or the changing product portfolio a customer perceives as comfortable are just some examples that illustrate the influence of digitalization. Customers will expect connected services combined with the existing tangible products to increase the perceived convenience. The expectations from the environment towards existing businesses will continuously change faster than ever before that forces companies for rapid actions, continuous adaptations and fast new product releases to remain competitive. The fundamental consequence is, that the business environment, the service industries in particular, must strive towards intelligent and autonomous enterprises in order to fulfill these requirements. New technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robotics, quantum computing or autonomous agents, will be the distinguishing features to survive in the future. A business that is most affected by this disruptive change is the automotive industry. This preface will illustrate the current situation for the automotive industry, the business areas that are most affected by digitalization, the new technologies that are required, the new orientation of the traditional business units and the benefits that will result from this disruptive change.

Erratum to: M. van Sinderen et al. (Eds.) Enterprise Interoperability DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-33068-1

The Medical Imaging Interaction Toolkit (MITK) is a powerful tool for image processing and application development with a long history [1, 2]. It provides an easy-to-use superbuild for a variety of development scenarios and a host of customization options. This very exibility can be intimidating to new users and even more experienced users might miss out on new developments due to the sheer size of the code base. In this tutorial we will give an overview on MITK, theunderlying concepts and the usage of the MITK Workbench. Afterwards we will show the attendees how to start their own software development with MITK and what pitfalls to look out for. Due to time constraints this will be in the form of a development demonstration, instead of a hands-on session. This will be followed by an introduction into more advanced usage scenarios, intended to provide a customized Workbench for special work ows or to conform to branding requirements. We will close with newly finished and ongoing developments and the new opportunities which arise based on them.