Nowadays, the market for information and communication technologies used for IOT-applications grows daily. Since companies need technologies to transform their business processes corresponding to the digital revolution, they need to know which technologies are available, and fit the best for their use case. Their inertial issue is the lacking overview of technologies suitable to connect their production or logistics. Hence, this paper presents a methodology to select technologies (and combinations) based on their functions. It differentiates between information and communication technologies, digital technologies and connecting technologies by the physical function and its role in a cyber-physical system. Depending on the use case, the applicability of every technology varies. Due to that reason, the paper illustrates a ranked qualification of the technologies for typical use cases, focussing tracking and tracing issues in the intralogistics of producing companies. The evaluation is performed upon a literature research, a market study to identify suitable technologies, and various expert interviews to assess the applicability of the technologies.
This paper addresses the challenge of modelling individual cyber-physical systems (CPS) for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in manufacturing industries. CPS are key technology building blocks for the implementation of Industrie 4.0. Especially for SMEs the increase of production efficiency and reduction of manufacturing costs through CPS offer potential to maintain their competitiveness and innovation capacity. Although SMEs perceive the potential of CPS, they often lack financial and human resources to acquire the necessary CPS-competencies as well as an overview of all the currently available technological solutions. To overcome this issue a matching platform will offer SMEs support in finding suitable CPS-components by letting them express their functional and technical requirements. The matching logic is based on a set of morphologies that encompasses the functional and requirement spectrum of CPS-components. The matching algorithm analyses the input for congruence of requirements and available technologies and suggests suitable technology combinations. This paper describes the methodology of the matching platform, and introduces the research work to define and to develop the technology morphologies. The presented results facilitate the selection and configuration of CPS for SMEs.
Cyberphysische Systeme von kleinen und mittleren Unternehmen für kleine und mittlere Unternehmen
(2017)
Bisherige Ergebnisse der Plattformentwicklung beziehen sich auf die Referenzanwendungsfälle der Konsortialpartner des zugrundeliegenden Forschungsprojekts. Um mit dem CPS-Matchmaker eine mögl ichst große Anzahl von Anwendungsfällen und Technologien akkurat abzubilden, gilt es im nächsten Schritt, die Zuordnungen von Technologiemerkmalen zu den Anforderungen vollständig zu realisieren sowie den Fragenkatalog unter Hinzunahme weiterer Anwendungsfälle auszubauen. Des Weiteren sollen neben technischen Merkmalen ebenfalls wirtschaftliche Fragestellungen, wie beispielsweise das vom Werkzeugmaschinenlabor WZL der RWTH Aachen entwickelte Return-on-
Investment-Modell zur Betrachtung der Wirtschaftlichkeit des Technologieeinsatzes, in die Bewertung der Matchingqualität einer Technologie zu einem Anwendungsfall einbezogen werden.
Ein erster Demonstrator wurde dieses Jahr auf der 8. Aachener Informationsmanagement-Tagung im November 2017 vorgestellt. Dieser veranschaulicht das Funktionsprinzip der Plattform. Die Fertigstellung der Plattform soll zum Projektende Mitte 2019 erfolgen.