A Methodological Approach for Integrating Physical Assets in Industry 4.0

Abstract

The paradigm of the fourth industrial revolution poses the combined use of technologies that provide companies with adaptability to face uncertain market scenarios. Different institutions have presented their reference architectures to apply principles of the fourth industrial revolution in a standardized way, being the German proposal Industry 4.0 (I4.0) the most widespread. Nowadays most companies are still in the computerization and digitalization phases prior to being able to connect to I4.0. This situation highlights the need for solutions for the integration of physical assets in I4.0. However, most of the work in this area focuses on ad-hoc solutions, or at least technology-dependent ones. This article presents a multilayer approach for integrating physical assets in I4.0. The goal is to separate the different concerns related to the integration of physical assets into abstract layers. This approach allows addressing these concerns in a generic way, regardless of the type of asset and/or the technology used, as well as efficient, since it addresses each concern separately. This approach is complemented by a methodology that provides guidelines for integrating physical assets according to the multilayer approach. The applicability of the multilayer approach and the integration methodology is put to the test by integrating a robotic arm.