Smart Factory - A Step towards the Next Generation of Manufacturing

1 1, 2 1, 2
Dominik Lucke , Carmen Constantinescu , Engelbert Westkämper
1
Institut für Industrielle Fertigung und Fabrikbetrieb, IFF - Universität Stuttgart, Germany
2
Fraunhofer-Institut für Produktionstechnik und Automatisierung, IPA - Stuttgart, Germany

Abstract
The Stuttgart Model of adaptive, transformable and virtual factories, already implemented in German basic
research performed at the Universität Stuttgart has been extended with a new perspective, the so-called
“Smart Factory”. The Smart Factory approach is a new dimension of multi-scale manufacturing by using the
state-of-the-art ubiquitous/pervasive computing technologies and tools. The Smart Factory represents a
context-sensitive manufacturing environment that can handle turbulences in real-time production using
decentralized information and communication structures for an optimum management of production
processes. This paper presents our research steps and future work in giving reality to the envisioned Smart
Factory at the Universität Stuttgart.

Keywords:
Smart Factory; Real-time Factory; Ubiquitous computing

1 PROBLEM STATEMENT heterogeneous subsystems providing all required resources,

In recent years manufacturing engineering experienced a
dramatic change through different parallel running
developments. The globalisation and the wish to produce
highly customized products lead to a higher proliferation of
variants, shorter product life cycles and closer enterprise
networks. The short planning horizons and product life cycles
induce the decrease of batch sizes and do therefore require a
high dimension of manufacturing flexibility. In order to make
the right management decisions, real-time information and
the direct realisation of the decisions are indispensable.
Dynamical changes in the factory, caused through internal or
external turbulences like a machine breakdown or an order
fluctuation in the market, can often not be taken into account
and therefore lead to false decisions on different planning
levels. Due to complex interactions of the different functions
and departments of the factory and their task-oriented specific
data formats, the causes of the dynamic changes
exponentiate themselves and their consequences for the
factory as well. Thus, high flexibility demands are posed to
the manufacturing resources, their planning and control [1].
The management control of the complex processes inside
and outside of the factory is even today performed through
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Manufacturing
Execution Systems (MES) and applications. The increased
market turbulences and therefore increased flexibility of
manufacturing require complex manufacturing sequences,
which are difficult to realise with the today’s solutions.
Outdated information in the different information systems are
leading directly to problems in planning and production.
The information management is responsible for the allocation
of the job and process specific information like NC programs
or machine properties, however the material management is
responsible for the supply of components. Tool and device
systems are additional mobile manufacturing resources to
conduct a manufacturing process. The coordination of many
materials and information at the work place is necessary to
ensure a constant resource load. To achieve this
synchronization, many different specialized software systems
and applications are used, like resource management
systems, MES or ERP systems. Any failure in a subsystem
would result in a significant reduction of the productivity of the
whole system. While a MES plans and controls the
manufacturing level, the ERP level plans and controls the
synchronization of the subsidiary planning entities. Even the
smallest difference between the real and digital saved data,
e.g. initiated by a malfunction, leads to planning
discrepancies and a miscalculation of the optimal working
point.
A parallel development was enabled by the integration of
electronic components like microchips or sensors into objects
due to their decline of price. This development enables a
decentralized control in a more economical way.
2 SMART FACTORY: DEFINITION, CHALLENGES AND
ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES
The design and development of the Smart Factory require as
a first step the definition of the concept. Mark Weiser’s vision
of the smart environment describes a physical world, which is
closely and invisibly interwoven with sensors, actuators,
displays and computer elements, which are seamlessly
embedded into daily life objects. They are connected with
each other by a network [2]. The Mark Weiser’s approach of
smart environments is transferred to manufacturing issues.
After the development of digital and virtual factories next step
in evolution of factories is the fusion of physical and virtual
world [3] under a so-called Smart Factory.
2.1 Definition
The basic research in the field of Smart Factory at Institute of
Industrial Manufacturing and Management (IFF) is performed
within the Center of Excellence Nexus (SFB 627) [4]. This
interdisciplinary research is funded by the German Research

The 41st CIRP Conference on Manufacturing Systems, 2008

115
D. Lucke, C. Constantinescu and E. Westkämper

Foundation (DFG). The so-called Smart Factory is defined as Status knowledge:

a Factory that context-aware assists people and machines in
execution of their tasks. This is achieved by systems working
in background, so-called Calm-systems and context-aware
applications. In our case, context-aware means that the
systems can take into consideration context information like
the position and status of an object. These systems
accomplish their tasks based on information coming from
physical and virtual world. Information of the physical world is
e.g. position or condition of a tool, in contrast to information of
the virtual world like electronic documents, drawings and
simulation models. These systems are working on different
levels of the factory, like context-aware information systems
in the shop floor (workers cockpit) or advanced manufacturing
execution systems that can act context-aware for the shop
floor manager. Calm systems are referring in this context the
hardware of a Smart Factory. The main difference between
calm and other types of systems is the ability to communicate
and interact with its environment.
2.2 Challenges
The Smart Factory concept enables the real-time collection,
distribution and access of manufacturing relevant information
anytime and anywhere. The Smart Factory represents a real-
time, context-sensitive manufacturing environment that can
handle turbulences in production using decentralized
information and communication structures for an optimum
management of production processes. Premises for further
assistance than today are the horizontal and vertical
integration of information systems, the assignment of material
and flow of information within an enterprise. For acting
context-aware, the applications in the Smart factory have to
answer the following three questions, from those deriving
more challenges:
1. How is an object identified? ÎIdentification phase
The assistance systems in a Smart Factory have to know the
status or situation of the objects in order to provide users the
context-aware information.
Update of smart management systems:
Current object information like the status or location has to be
communicated to the systems of the Smart Factory. As an
example the highly dynamical data like the position of an
object should be updated every 10 to 30 seconds [3].
Support for different queries:
Assistance systems in the Smart Factory have to support
different kinds of queries [3]. We can differentiate into object-
based, location-based/spatial, temporal and combinations of
the previous types of queries.
Integration of heterogeneous information:
The integration challenge of different systems in an enterprise
is caused by different information models, interfaces and data
formats. In order to provide other systems easy accessible
information, different systems have to be integrated into a
common synchronizing platform.
Real-time characterized reaction:
For supporting people and machines information has to be
provided within seconds. This challenge addresses mainly
communications technologies and database management.
2.3 Enabling Technologies
The implementation of the Smart Factory is enabled by
several technologies, in the following shortly presented
(Figure 1). An application of the Smart Factory consists of a
Calm-system (referring more to hardware components) and a
context-aware application (referring more to software
components).

2. Where is an object located into the factory? ÎPositioning

phase

3. What is the situation or status of an object? ÎStatus

Positioning
knowledge
Technologies
These and further challenges are shortly presented:

Identification:
The Identification of objects, as one of the basic challenges in
a factory, assigns information of the virtual world like process
steps to real world objects. Therefore suitable identification
methods, tags, sensors, sensor readers and communication
facilities have to be found and chosen, specific to their task in
a rough industrial environment.

Localization: Figure 1: Smart Factory.

For improving the processes and reducing idle times within
the Smart Factory the localization is required to have an
actual knowledge about the position of the objects like tools
or materials. Depending on the purpose, the accuracy of a
positioning system has to be a range within 0,15m - 1m.
Furthermore a positioning system used in a manufacturing
environment has to work on a large scale and has to be
robust against environmental influences, electromagnetic
fields, noise of dust, etc. [3].
Embedded Systems:
To provide small computing power for decentralized
intelligent functions, microcontrollers have been developed in
the last few years. They are optimized to low energy
consumption for working in mobile devices. Today a wide
range of “easy-to-use” microcontrollers are on the market with
different computing power ranges, like the AVR or Pic
microcontroller or the Xscale processors families.

116