Decentralized Information Aggregation and Central Control in Networked Production Environments

Abstract

In production, today’s machines become increasingly intelligent. The use of embedded CPUs has become obligatory, whereas more and more machines are equipped with higher level computers. This way production machines are enabled not only to be driven via remote control but to deliver detailed status information and sensory output. To date, most of this generated information is wasted in the archives of the machines, only read in case of upcoming machine failures. New approaches like decentralized peer-to-peer production networks promise new possibilities to exploit this information and take a step beyond Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES). Production Cockpits are able to assemble collected data filtered on several layers and to decide which data are important enough to be presented to the user.