D7.3: Report on Automation platform architecture

This deliverable lays the foundation for Factory-Ecomation automation platform, the backbone on which the whole project innovative architecture is built. Innovative concepts about the distribution of computational resources and the management of optimizing control algorithms are introduced, together with a novel approach to the design of a hierarchical and self-similar architecture. The requirements that the project has defined for the specification of this new automation platform derive from the current market situation, with the manufacturing sectors that must now take much more into account phenomena like: rising product variety; product individualization; volatile markets; increasing relevance of value networks; shortening product life cycles. Focusing on the optimization of economic and environmental sustainability performance, Factory-Ecomation automation platform has therefore a main high-level technological objective conceived to enable: - Seamless reconfiguration of manufacturing systems; - Knowledge sharing between "social machines", where intelligence distributed among heterogeneous equipment; - Optimization of manufacturing performance; - Faster verification and validation (V&V) of the automation architecture. - Dissipation of "borders" between the elements of the factory value chain. Building on the existing approach of distributed automation, open communication and automation standards interoperability, Factory-Ecomation automation platform architecture therefore seeks to switch the research focus from incremental local improvements within separated research disciplines towards a systemic and holistic re-engineering of the founding concepts of industrial automation. This is achieved by considering four complementary aspects, which are coherently described in the corresponding sections of this deliverable: - In section-3, the most theoretical and innovative concepts of Factory-Ecomation are explained, introducing the idea of hierarchical and self-similar automation architecture to support the evolution of the shop floors towards the paradigm enabled by Cyber-Physical systems. This is allowed thanks to the introduction of the concepts of manufacturing systems virtual avatar. - In section-4, this theoretical approach is effectively implemented in an automation platform development environment, built on the basis of nxtControl solution but introducing the elements of innovation required to support Factory-Ecomation envisioned paradigm. - Section-5, on the other hand, explain how the backbone of the automation platform is then effectively "filled" with intelligent algorithms, governing the real-time behaviour of the shop floor manufacturing assets through predictive techniques. - Finally, section-6 introduced the fundamental support of virtual commissioning to increase the effectiveness of the overall solutions, allowing to verify and optimized the performance of a system automation through the adoption of discrete event simulation tools.