From Model to Implementation: Engineering of flexible Production Systems with RAMI 4.0.

As promoted by the term ”Industry 4.0”, so-called Cyber-physical Systems (CPS) offer new automation possibilities in industrial manufacturing, which results in constantly increasing complexity. To help during the engineering phase of such systems by facilitating structurization and ensuring traceability throughout all components. The Reference Architecture Model Industrie 4.0 (RAMI 4.0) has been introduced for each stakeholder. This three-dimensional reference model offers viewpoints and panes for addressing single aspects of the system and the industrial system. However, although RAMI 4.0 is widely discussed and offers practical guidelines for developing industrial system architectures, it is still challenging to implement existing systems based on the model due to missing formalization. Thus, this paper proposes an approach for developing existing manufacturing systems based on previously described architectures. A unique feature is the formalization of the RAMI 4.0 Integration and Asset Layer to provide suitable models for transforming the logical system architecture and the actual implementation. This is done by deriving viewpoints based on ISO 42010 and integrating model-based methodologies for developing system architectures into the mentioned layers. The proposed approach is finally evaluated with the help of a real-world case study, the Siemens industrial plant model.