Evaluation of Industry 4.0 Applications in Production

Abstract

Industry 4.0 promises many potentials in production. Examples are a data-driven optimization of production processes of individual machines, driverless transport systems, and assistance systems. Nevertheless, companies are still hesitant to invest in Industry 4.0 applications. Studies show that one of the main reasons for that is the unclear economic benefit. In this work, we present a systematic approach for the evaluation of Industry 4.0 applications in production. The main goal of the systematic is to create transparency over the evaluation process of an investment in an Industry 4.0 application in production. The evaluation of a concrete technical solution in an existing production system is supported. As a theoretical foundation, a characterization of investments in Industry 4.0 applications is given. From that, a procedure model is derived. It puts the activities to be carried out, the tools to be used and results in a temporal context. The application of the systematic is shown on the basis of an application example.