The Workshop's theme

The theme of the SOHOMA’21 Workshop is “Convergence of factory asset and process lifecycle with product lifecycles in Cyber-Physical System - based production”.

 

Products conceived and designed to be embedded with computational and intelligent power and thus to be “smart” both in production and utilization phases are able to exchange information within and beyond the limit of the factory. These smart products are connected with factory assets and processes in the supply networks and can provide a new type of interaction, enabling collaborative demand and supply planning, traceability, and execution.

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) take advantage from the integration of Cloud-based and Service-Oriented Architecture to deploy end-to-end support along both product lifecycles (including after sales services, maintenance and upgrade along the usage cycle, a.o.) and factory lifecycle. On the factory lifecycle perspective, CPS are able to interact with all the hierarchical layers of the automation pyramid - from field level to ERP - and to empower the exchange of information across all the process and service stages, resulting in a better product-service development. This will allow the value network alignment with the customers’ changing needs and optimization from different perspectives (quality, time to market, costs, sustainability goals, etc.)

Transforming industry with intelligent end-to-end solutions and the shift to smart manufacturing has generated innovations in automation, robotics and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Introducing artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies, interoperability and secure connectivity enables real-time monitoring, control and optimization of processes, resources and systems – leading to greater productivity, increased safety and reduced costs.

The research of the SOHOMA scientific community is aligned to the actual trends and development priorities for CPS in the manufacturing and supply chain industries:

A. Future industrial systems will be conceived as Cyber-Physical Systems that use strongly coupled virtual entities (software agents, holons or virtual twins) which represent (are embedded in) physical components that sense, actuate, process, control, compute and communicate through several networks including the Internet in order to reach global goals - making products, delivering services efficiently and safely. The drivers of industrial CPSs are resource and product virtualization, and distribution of intelligence in IT systems that virtualize workloads through cloud services. MES virtualization will reduce operational costs and improve flexibility, agility, reconfigurability and maintainability of the production system.

B. The factory data streams and global MES functions will be mapped to specific workloads in the cloud, defined in terms of activity scheduling, resource assignment and behaviour forecast; the latter incorporate AI and ML capabilities.  The industrial sector is interested in deploying autonomous workloads to achieve higher productivity and better operational safety.

C. Autonomous workloads, supported by AI and other innovative technologies, are predicted to be-come the most pervasive workloads across the industrial sector.

D. Manufacturing as a Service (MaaS) - the new models of service-oriented, knowledge-based manufacturing systems optimized and reality-aware, virtualizing and encapsulating shop floor and MES workloads into cloud networked services - will also address “product design for open manufacturing”, a vision of knowledge and infrastructure sharing in cloud networked enterprises.

 

This 11^th SOHOMA edition puts the focus especially on how the core processes, systems and related software tools existing on the market - PLM, PLC, SCADA, MES, ERP - and under development - Industrial CPS and IoT- are interconnected and orchestrated in order to create a product-service centric closed loop collaboration covering the design, engineering, production and after-sales phases in the manufacturing value chain of the future.

This approach derives from the research performed in the last years in the scientific community SOHOMA, which uses recently developed key digital technologies - cloud and fog computing, digital twins, edge computing, digital control and optimization, robotics, machine vision, additive machining, Artificial Intelligence and machine learning:

• Data mining and real time analysis to design new product service systems accelerating the propagation of the servitisation, and redesigning business models for ecosystems of product-service starting from data collected during the utilization phase.
• Smart technologies and smart connectivity in factories, i.e. the digital integration of manufacturing and logistic equipment in terms of information, communication and automation technologies.
• CPS-enabled reconfiguration of automated manufacturing systems: (1) Deployment of legacy production equipment and systems; (2) Increasing autonomy and intelligence of existing machinery and robots; (3) Adaptation through context awareness and reasoning aiming at making machinery and robots aware of their surroundings; (4) Developing a multi-layered, decentralized control architectures in which resources can take autonomous decisions.
• Intelligent decision making in cloud manufacturing through big data streaming and machine learning; combining data-driven digital twins for predictive situation-awareness with model-driven digital twins simulating the reality of interest faster than real-time with software in the loop.  
• Sharing of data/information from all the supply chain’s elements to support continuous monitoring and automatic control of all the production phases while preserving security and confidentiality of data shared along the supply chain.
• The adoption of IoT and CPS as enablers of product servitisation allowing to track the product and services along the whole lifecycle and consequently enhance customers’ satisfaction.
• Service Manufacturing which includes design for open manufacturing, optimization, maintenance, supply and distribution activities, all of them being offered in the “as a Service” option. service manufacturing was proposed.
• Fostering the open manufacturing enterprise - responsive to the X-as-a Service model, where X covers design, manufacturing, supply, and distribution, and supports resource sharing and networking.

Papers presenting solutions based on these technologies for new applications in the manufacturing value chain at the confluence of information technology and automation are especially welcome. All contributions must indicate alignment with the workshop’s theme.