Johannes Pfeffer

Linked Data as Integrating Technology for Industrial Data

In a globalised world the process industry faces great challenges regarding data management. Rising demands for agility and rapid shortening of innovation cycles have lead to project-based collaborations. Highly specialised small and medium enterprises are forming so-called virtual companies to profit from each other. Today, however, industrial data structures are characterised by high heterogeneity. This complicates collaborative work and hinders the flow of data between different stakeholders from various domains. Existing solutions are much too rigid and potentially cumbersome. There still is a broad gap between the need of virtual companies to share data from mixed sources in a controlled way and the available technologies to accomplish this. Our approach to close this gap is the usage of semantic web technologies for representing industrial data in a generic way. Major advantages in comparison to traditional approaches arise from the inherent merging abilities and from the extensibility of Linked Data. Distributed information spaces from different domains can be condensed into an interlinked cloud. Existing data can be integrated either on-the-fly using appropriate adapters or by complete migration. Furthermore, operations from graph theory can be performed on the Linked Data networks to generate aggregated views. This paper discusses a set of proven web technologies for cloud-driven industrial data sharing in virtual companies and presents preliminary results.

Beyond app-chaining: Mobile app orchestration for efficient model driven software generation

Mobile apps are a success story for mobile devices, particularly in the consumer sector. Tailored to a specific task, they offer optimal usability for a defined class of devices. However, todays apps are neither designed to collaborate with complex workflows nor to support these. To overcome this limitation, we developed the concept of Mobile App Orchestration. This pragmatic model driven software generation approach makes it possible to use mobile apps even in complex industrial workflows. We demonstrate the entire development process in a use case and explain solutions and challenges of our approach. An experimental evaluation of a manually conducted orchestration with 11 participants supports our design hypothesis that the proposed approach can deliver usable mobile support systems for Virtual Factories.

An Innovative Virtual Enterprise Approach to Agile Micro and SME-Based Collaboration Networks

This paper demonstrates a lightweight and highly decentralized collaboration infrastructure approach for virtual enterprises and describes its added-value in the customer-oriented production domain. First, we will describe challenges and key requirements of an exemplary application scenario. Second, we are going to present the reference architecture and will explain the designs of enabling key concepts. Finally we highlight major improvements to the selected domain and the impact in economic, competition and social terms.

A mobile system for industrial maintenance support based on embodied interaction

This paper presents a mobile assistance system for service and maintenance personnel in industrial facilities. It provides an innovative interaction metaphor designed to fit domain specific working conditions. As a result of a strictly user-centered design process, the presented system follows the principles of Embodied Interaction. The system is evaluated using a sophisticated scenario in a typical industrial environment. The evaluation also includes a comparison with the conventional paper & pencil-based maintenance workflow. A detailed discussion addresses problems of mobile usability evaluation in industrial environments and provides appropriate solutions. The results presented in this paper demonstrate that the proposed system allows for effective and satisfactory service and maintenance. It contributes further insights for utilization and evaluation of embodied systems in industrial applications. Potential applications of this research include design guidelines for future interface configurations using embodied interactive devices.

ComVantage: Mobile Enterprise Collaboration Reference Framework and Enablers for Future Internet Information Interoperability

Future Internet Networked Enterprise Systems demand enhanced collaboration and mobility support. FI technologies are fundamental for increased service differentiation and cost optimisation in manufacturing environments. However, such ICT-based capabilities are not easy to introduce, in particular to SMEs, due to high costs and complexity. To progress in more effective development of value added services based on Web 2.0 principles within a mobile enterprise collaboration context, the complexity of collaboration in terms of information management needs to be leveraged from the end-users. Linked Data (LD) provides a universal and lightweight approach for the collaboration network. However, the elaboration of collaborative business processes based on LD still needs to be properly formulated for FI systems. The aim of this paper is to present a reference architecture for mobile enterprise collaboration based on LD interoperability. Moreover, security, semantic data lifting, business process modelling interoperability and mobile app orchestration enablers are presented to facilitate trustful and effective inter-organisational collaboration.

Towards collaborative plant control using a distributed information and interaction space

As Smart Manufacturing, Industrial Internet, Industrie 4.0, and Cyber-Physical Production System (CPPS) are becoming reality, the way process and manufacturing plants are operated has to change. Additionally, these developments - constituting the pervasive digitalisation of industry - have a profound effect on the way human workers and machines interact. This paper contrasts the current state of the art in plant control with a vision for the future. The scenario is illustrated by a realistic problem-solving process in a chemical plant. It describes an integrated industrial information and interaction space that leverages emerging technologies to enable plant operators to remain in control of future flexible modularised process plants. Our approach shows the advantages of an integrated information space which feeds interaction and collaboration using Virtual Reality (VR), novel display technologies and mobile devices.

Implementation and Operation of Collaborative Manufacturing Networks

Collaborative networks of manufacturers, suppliers and even customers are an emerging trend in global manufacturing. Higher flexibility, shorter time to market and economic as well as technological synergies create value and strengthen the market position of such virtual enterprises. The ComVantage framework already provides a sophisticated technical approach for dynamic collaborative manufacturing networks based on semantic data, mobile app orchestration, business process modelling and sophisticated access control. This article discusses the services and processes that are necessary to implement and operate a virtual enterprise using the ComVantage framework. It identifies services and service providers, and proposes an infrastructure and a tool environment for the ComVantage approach.

Formal Modelling of App-Ensembles

This chapter shows how flexible systems of user interfaces with an underlying formal model can be created by learning from the success story of apps on mobile devices and leveraging the concept of business process modelling. It is shown how these multi-app user interfaces are modelled and how they can be transformed into Petri nets in order to apply existing formal analysis methods. The created user interfaces are called App-Ensembles and resemble interactive systems comprised of self-contained apps that are connected in a purposeful manner via navigation links and data channels. A formal language for modelling these App-Ensembles is introduced (AOF-L). The graphical modelling elements are taken exclusively from BPMN 2.0 (Business Process Model and Notation). The underlying notation is formalized using an OWL 2 ontology. It is shown how App-Ensembles can be easily integrated into existing classical business process models. Two use cases illustrate the utility of App-Ensembles and the practicality of the modelling approach. This chapter demonstrates that it is useful to combine a semi-formal graphical notation with a strictly formal mathematical model. Strengths of the approach include the ability to run reasoning algorithms on the model, to query the model using languages such as SPARQL, and to perform a formal verification regarding contradictions and BPMN compliance.