Evaluation of migration scenarios towards cyber-physical production systems using SysML

Over the last decades several technologies have been developed towards the distributed automation architecture for Smart Factories, however, these technologies have not been yet implemented in industry. Manufacturers are quite conservative in adopting new technologies because the vast majority of existing infrastructures already have constraints in place related to their investment capabilities and to the integration of new technologies with their legacy systems and processes. To overcome this conservatism, migration strategies and decision-making approaches are required to support industry in adopting the next generation of smart production systems step by step, taking into account not only the technical aspects, but also integrating organizational and economical issues. One essential part of these approaches is the comparative evaluation of migration options. Based on model-based systems engineering (MBSE), this paper proposes an approach that supports the evaluation of possible migration scenarios towards cyber-physical production systems (CPPS) by using the System Modeling Language (SysML).