Capability-Based Process Modeling and Control

Cyber physical production systems (CPPS) focus on increasing the flexibility and adaptability of industrial production systems, systems that comprise hardware such as sensors and actuators in machines as well as software controlling and integrating these machines. The requirements of customised mass production imply that control and integration software needs to be adaptable after deployment in a shop floor (factory), possibly even without interrupting production. Today, software frameworks provide support to model and execute manufacturing processes. They, however, provide little support for reuse. In this paper, we present a framework based on capabilities, which supports manufacturing process templates. These templates are bound/allocated to a specific shopfloor setup, a specific set of machines, and executed using a distributed set of process engines. This enables the reuse of manufacturing processes, as well as transmitting and executing changed processes. The framework is implemented using the Eclipse Milo implementation of OPC UA in Java. It is used to control a lab-scale modular shopfloor programmed in IEC61499 and Java.