What were the challenges to be solved and what specific benefits were achieved?

Facingrapidly increasing complexity and variety of variants in today's industrial production, the access to information about the own production processes and production equipment as well as the interconnectedness with partners and customers, are becomingessential competitive factorsof the future. Today this access is not always guaranteed. Lacking interoperability of software systems, implied or undefined information models and missing filter mechanisms to extract relevant knowledge from the available flood of information are essential obstacles tosmooth and seamless media information processing.

“In the SmartF-IT project, we are developing the next generation of intelligent IT systems that can manage complexity inplanning, operation, maintenance, and fault management of cyber-physical production systems in networked Smart Factories. This includes practical testing of these innovative IT systems in production environments through specific implementation projects at two factories of our partnersBosch Rexroth and Miele, as well as a new production line at BMW,” explained Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Wahlster, CEO and head of Intelligent User Interfaces at DFKI. “This allows us to develop and test the migration strategies for variant-rich production in INDUSTRIE 4.0under realistic conditions in multiadaptive factories. The spectrum of interest ranges from assembly lines for hydraulic control components to electrical kitchen appliances to special engines for automobiles.”

How can the Industrie 4.0 approach be described?

IT systems form the engine of innovation for Industrie 4.0. By combining them with production techniques cyber-physical production systems(CPPS) are created tosupport production companies in meeting changing qualitative and quantitative market demands, individual customer requirements and diversity of variants in the production of small lot sizes in real time with a maximum quality at low costs as future “smart factories”.

What could be achieved?

A control component for the transport of work pieces is assembled ina multi-lane Industrie 4.0 production line. Therebyworkers, plant operators, and team leaders are assisted in the execution of specific tasks like assembly planning, integrated dynamic detailed planning of the production processes, employee scheduling, fault management, quality assurance and workplace adaptations by specific assistance systems and IT tools in a variety of different industrial application scenarios. SmartF-IT plans the flexible use of production resources,includingthe automated production assistant APAS, a lightweight robot from Bosch.

What measures have been taken to achieve the solution?

SmartF-IT examines two typical applications of new technologies: the migration of an existing production as well as the redesign and subsequent operation of a production line to be established. Three scenarios from industrial practice validate in the hybrid adaptable working environments of a CPPS the developed methods for establishing controllable multiadaptivity. The close collaboration of representatives from industry and academia ensures that the desired results and solutions meet both the immediate industrial needs, and that generic models, methods and tools emerge that can be used and utilized beyond their individual capacities by also being incorporated,for example, into the national “Plattform Industrie 4.0″.

What can others learn from it?

The condensed best practice recommendations from the addressed integrative use cases of migration and re-planning on the one hand and human-centric as well as cyber-physical system approach on the other hand are also having formative influence on the further development of cyber-physical production systems for controlling complexity in a new family of multi-adaptive agile factories.