Implementation and Testing of a Modular System Architecture for Generic Hybrid Production Cells in an Industrial Environment

Todays factories are multi-domain facilities where manufacturing equipment, products and processes coexist with the engineering, human interactors, and their interventions. Often these basic entities of such highly ubiquitous and complex systems are lacking common and general interfaces. With the Horizon 2020 EU Research and Innovating program, several research activities have developed concepts to transform today's production workflows for the smart factories of the future to fit agile requirements. The H2020 HyProCell project targets the design and industrial integration of interconnected hybrid production cells in the subtractive and additive manufacturing with aspects of retrofitting of legacy production machines. This work describes and enhances architectural approaches to fit industrial requirements by proposing generic principles that support the automation engineering, cell control and basic data-acquisition. It treats modular requirements, the practical implementation and the testing of a service-oriented and modular architecture in a highly heterogeneous industrial environment in conjunction with MES- and CAx-toolchains.