A Migration Methodology for Factories Digital Transformation

Abstract

Over the last years, several technologies and control systems have been developed towards the decentralization of automation control architectures for cyber-physical production systems. Nevertheless, only few of these technologies are already in use. To support their adoption in brownfield production sites migration strategies and business case evaluations are necessary. This paper presents a migration approach and a business case evaluation methodology tailored to the migration of legacy automation systems towards the Industry 4.0 paradigm. The proposed approach aims to evaluate opportunities and mitigate the risks of migration from technical, operational, human and business perspectives. The methodology follows an iterative approach starting from the definition of the current situation of the factory and the identification of business goals aiming at evaluating a set of possible migration paths and selecting the optimal one according to a cost-benefit analysis. The paper concludes with an exemplary application of the methodology in a real industrial environment, developed within the FAR-EDGE European Project.

Retrofitting-Based Development of Brownfield Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0 Solutions

“…An integrated Information Technology (IT) infrastructure is required to cast the administration upon the system [60]. This foundation is the prerequisite condition for enterprises to foresee their business at the strategic level: Business planning and logistics, defined by the fourth retrofitting layer [61]. Retrofitting focuses not only on the physical asset but also on the broader picture of the business operation itself.…”

“…For the Strategy and Organization criteria, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis can be deployed in this stage to define the change in business competitiveness and the whole value chain, as proposed in Ref. [61], thus clarifying the desired impact of the project. A model of micro and macro perspectives for sustainable manufacturing is mentioned in Ref.…”

“…Other requirements can be gathered by interview or questionnaire as proposed in Ref. [66], or workshop with involved personnel in the manufacturing process [61]. By doing this step, the team can define the transformation priority order and starting point of the project steps.…”

“…In Ref. [61], the authors suggested using the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for cost evaluation, then use other economics indexes such as Net Present Value, Profitability Index, Internal Rate of Return, Discounted Payback Period to compare different solutions, as well as to measure the level of achieved success.…”