Cyber-Physical Production System Self-Description-Based Data Access Layer

Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS) are Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), which are applied in manufacturing environments to carry out production related tasks, thus turning them into smart manufacturing environments. They are the evolution of combined regular manufacturing equipment, embedded computing devices and distributed computing functionality, which has been sparked by technical advances in information and communication technology (ICT) and progressively networked production. One of the properties of CPS is the ability to be composed of other CPS and the ability to encapsulate so-called self-x capabilities. Their networked nature enables access to large amounts of data, which can be used to extract information and knowledge about machines, processes, and the manufacturing environment. This paper discusses approaches how data access, storage, and information extraction is currently being handled. We propose how these approaches can be extended and how an information-oriented system and infrastructure for CPPS can be constructed to create a Cyber-Physical Data Access Layer which is based on the self-description capability of CPPS components.