Cloud-Based Production Collaboration (CBPC)

Task and objective

Manufacturing companies are faced with the challenge of meeting the growing demand for customized products while at the same time shortening development cycles. Production systems need to operate at near-optimum capacity if they are to be profitable. At the same time, all information must be available in the event of disruptions to ensure flexible adaptation.
The cloud and cloud-based IoT (Internet of Things) platforms make it possible to gather together information from production across different locations and even across different companies and evaluate it for the purpose of planning and adapting production processes. The objective of the CBPC project group is to evaluate the potential of the cloud and possible solutions for cloud-based collaboration in production. The project partners benefit from the knowledge gained by other companies regarding IT infrastructures on the shop floor, process flows, security aspects and the data structures required for production.

Focus and concrete results 2023

First of all, collaboration scenarios in production were developed and prioritized. Individual interviews with the companies were conducted to evaluate the experience they have had with regard to challenges and success factors in the context of implementing cloud-based solutions. A summary of the findings will be published at the end of 2023 in the recommendation entitled "CBPC - Challenges and Lessons Learned for Successful Implementations" and will be available in prostep ivip's media library. Individual aspects include business understanding, data understanding, data preparation, data modeling, evaluation and deployment.

Organizational and technical challenges 2023

One of the project group's key findings was that it is important to know precisely which production data is being collected and for which purpose as otherwise the volume of data will quickly become overwhelming. One difficulty is connecting older machines and systems to cloud-based platforms. It is possible that these are licensed for the production process and cannot simply be replaced. When new IT systems are integrated, thought must also be given to the fact that they could be legacy systems tomorrow.

Planning for the current year 2024

The members decided that CBPC will end its independent project work at the end of 2023 and will join the CDT group in 2024, where the production aspects will be incorporated into the corresponding use cases and scenarios.

This is what the project coordinator says:

"Collaboration within the group went very well. Despite the fact that we were unfortunately only able to conduct remote sessions, we will be publishing the recommendation, with its many findings, at the end of the year."

This is what the project manager says:

"The CBPC project was valuable in 2023 as we were able to discuss the experienced gained in different industries and different perspectives (OEM/supplier/academia)."