Eduardo Rocha Loures

Past, present and future of Industry 4.0 - a systematic literature review and research agenda proposal

Over the last few years, the fourth industrial revolution has attracted more and more attentions all around the world. In the current literature, there is still a lack of efforts to systematically review the state of the art of this new industrial revolution wave. The aim of this study is to address this gap by investigating the academic progresses in Industry 4.0. A systematic literature review was carried out to analyse the academic articles within the Industry 4.0 topic that were published online until the end of June 2016. In this paper, the obtained results from both the general data analysis of included papers (e.g. relevant journals, their subject areas and categories, conferences, keywords) and the specific data analysis corresponding to four research sub-questions are illustrated and discussed. These results not only summarise the current research activities (e.g. main research directions, applied standards, employed software and hardware), but also indicate existing deficiencies and potential research directions through proposing a research agenda. Findings of this review can be used as the basis for future research in Industry 4.0 and related topics.

Semantic annotation for knowledge explicitation in a product lifecycle management context

Investigating some existing surveys about semantic annotation researches.Collecting and classifying semantic annotation researches based on Zachman framework.Analysing those collected literatures, especially from formalization aspect.Identifying the existing drawbacks and pointing out the possible research directions. Nowadays, the need for systems interoperability in or across enterprises has become more and more ubiquitous. Many research works have been carried out in the fields of information exchange, transformation, discovery and reuse. One of the main challenges in these researches is to overcome the semantic heterogeneity between enterprise applications along the life cycle of a product. As a possible solution to assist the semantic interoperability, the semantic annotation has gained many attentions and widely used in different domains. We collect a number of literature that applied semantic annotations on different objects, and classify them according to the subject being described in an enterprise architecture framework. A detailed survey, especially from the formalization aspect, is presented to identify the existing drawbacks and to point out the possible research directions.

Modeling Business Rules for Supervisory Control of Process-Aware Information Systems

Companies are demanding more flexibility from their Process Aware Information Systems (PAIS). However, regulations and standards that impose limits to process executions are becoming increasingly important for business process management. The need for a compliance agenda and the security requisites for PAIS are pushing companies to search and to acquire new systems and technics for control and audit business processes. The aim is to avoid process execution that violates some business rules. In order to build an approach that support companies in auditing and controlling their business processes, there is a need for a formal and systematic modeling of business rules. In the present paper we have two objectives. The first one is to propose a set of business rules related to the ordering of tasks and to the involvement of a role or agent in cases. The second one is to build a supervisory control of PAIS that ensures compliance of business rules. To evaluate the correctness of our approach we applied it in two different business processes.

Dealing with routing in an automated manufacturing cell: a supervisory control theory application

Automated manufacturing cells are capable of producing different products using the same set of resources. This characteristic allows a more efficient use of resources, but makes the control of these systems more difficult and susceptible to errors. This article addresses the problem of routing control in an automated manufacturing cell that consists of three workstations, a transportation system, a feeding conveyor and a retrieving conveyor. In the modelling step, this article employs a systematisation of system and behavioural specifications modelling. This systematisation aims to minimise the impact caused by changes on system constitution and production specifications. In the synthesis step, the local modular control approach of the supervisory control theory is used to obtain the supervisors that match the specifications. In the implementation step, the systematic translation of the results obtained with the application of this theory into the application program to be implemented in the programmable logic controller that controls the cell occurs. The proposed approach in this study was tested and validated in a real manufacturing cell and the experimental results show the viability and success of this project.

An Implementation Environment for Automated Manufacturing Systems

Abstract This paper presents an implementation environment applied to reconfigurable processes in automated manufacturing systems. This environment is based on a methodology which consists of a cyclic three-stage development – modeling, synthesis and implementation – until the real system accomplishes the required specification, resulting in the project of the automated system. This kind of development allows a continuous result revision of each stage. The present paper describes the methodology and details of components of the proposed environment.

Formal Semantic Annotations for Models Interoperability in a PLM Environment

Nowadays, the need for system interoperability in or across enterprises has become more and more ubiquitous. Lots of research works have been carried out in the information exchange, transformation, discovery and reuse. One of the main challenges in these researches is to overcome the semantic heterogeneity between enterprise applications along the lifecycle of a product. As a possible solution to assist the semantic interoperability, semantic annotation has gained more and more attentions and is widely used in different domains. In this paper, based on the investigation of the context and the related works, we identify some existing drawbacks and propose a formal semantic annotation approach to support the semantics enrichment of models in a PLM environment.

Semantic Enrichment of Models to Assist Knowledge Management in a PLM Environment

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) has been considered as an essential concept for improving the product competitive ability in manufacturing enterprises. The PLM solution aims at providing a shared platform for facilitating the management of the knowledge related to any product development process in or across enterprises. However, facing with different standards, enterprise systems and stakeholders, enterprises still need to deal with interoperability issues between those collaborative information systems, encompassing their capability to find the right information during the whole Product Life Cycle (PLC). The objective of this paper is to cope with the major issue of semantic interoperability, by proposing a formalization of semantic annotations and a prototype for facilitating a coherent, complete and contextualized interoperability of knowledge between all enterprise systems and related stakeholders. An example of the instantiation of our method within a real application scenario in manufacturing domain is presented to demonstrate its applicability and use, both at the engineering and the exploitation phases.

Dealing with Constraint-Based Processes: Declare and Supervisory Control Theory

The constraint-based processes are those that do not require a procedural model that explicitly specify the execution procedure. Declarative languages are more suitable for modeling and implementing this type of process. This paper aims to present and analyze two approaches that deal with the modeling and execution of constraint-based processes. The first approach makes use of Linear Temporal Logic and software Declare as a tool for modeling constraints. The second approach is based on the Supervisory Control Theory (SCT). Both approaches presented in this paper aims to monitor and restrict execution sequences of tasks such that constraints are not violated. Despite the control logic is built based on constraints, it does not limit the user by imposing rigid control-flow structures. A discussion of the results, advantages and the main drawbacks of the two approaches are presented in this paper.

Interoperability Assessment Approaches for Enterprise and Public Administration

The need for collaboration among organizations is a reality with which systems, managers and other stakeholders must deal. But this is not an exclusive concern of private administrations, once the increasing need for information exchange among government agencies, the supply of online services to citizens, and the cost reduction of public operations and transactions demand that the government organizations must be ready to provide an adequate interface to their users. This paper presents basic concepts of Enterprise Interoperability, some assessment models and eGovernment practices, models, definitions and concepts, providing an initial analysis of their basic properties and similarities, verifying some possible gaps that may exist.

A computational control implementation environment for automated manufacturing systems

This paper presents a computational environment as a tool for supporting the implementation of control coding of an automated manufacturing system. The proposed environment considers a cyclic three-stage control development – modelling, synthesis and implementation – until the real system accomplishes the required specification, resulting in the automated and integrated manufacturing system. The research details the three stages and describes the steps executed for each one. The mathematical formalism used in this work is also presented, as a basis for control implementation. The implementation environment is proposed in order to validate the control structure of this formalism and to allow a progressive integration of control hardware and software. To submit to a test and validate the proposal environment, two experiments are performed, in two different manufacturing systems. Thus, it is demanded that the control system can be reconfigurable in a fast and reliable way.