Reference architecture and maturity levels for cyber-physical systems in the mechanical engineering industry

Abstract

Nowadays mechanical engineering products change from mechatronic systems to Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). CPS are connected, embedded systems which directly record physical data using sensors and affect physical processes using actuators. They evaluate and save recorded data, use globally available services and interact with operators via multimodal human-machine-interfaces. In context of industrial production CPS change production processes radically. Due to the change of technical systems, equipment suppliers, especially companies of the mechanical engineering industry, face the challenges of a rising complexity and a nearly unmanageable amount of new solutions based on information and communication technology. The contribution at hand provides a reference architecture and maturity levels for CPS. The reference architecture serves as an universal blueprint to structure CPS and to visualize all components and relationships. Two sets of CPS maturity levels help companies to assess the status quo, to determine the target state and to define concrete actions for improving their systems

Maturity Models in the Age of Industry 4.0 – Do the Available Models Correspond to the Needs of Business Practice?

“…Particularly striking is the small number of applications. In our sample, only five scientific models ( [14], [21], [23], [35], [41]) have been applied in practice. The picture is only slightly better for the models of the consulting firms.…”

Development of an Industry 4.0 maturity model for the delivery process in supply chains

“…The first group of authors concentrates on IT architecture and/or capabilities, specifically with regard to the IoT (Katsma et al , 2011; Weber et al , 2017; Jæger and Halse, 2017). The second group that consists of only one contribution (Westermann et al , 2016) focuses specifically on CPS. The third group pursues a broader perspective.…”

“…Some do not even provide a full description of the maturity stages (Schumacher et al , 2016). Other models provide at least partial information and briefly describe the characteristics for each maturity stage and dimension (Westermann et al , 2016; Klötzer and Pflaum, 2017).…”

Planning of Smart Services Based on a Reference Architecture

“…The integration of physical and virtual systems is expressed by the term Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) (Broy et al, 2012). The reference architecture for CPS of Westermann et al (2016) will serve as basis to an own architecture for smart services. The further development of the capabilities of technical systems leads to different perspectives, which are shown in Figure 3.…”