On a containerized approach for the dynamic planning and control of a cyber - physical production system

The increased complexity of modern production systems requires sophisticated system control approaches to maintain high levels of flexibility. Furthermore, the request for customized production with the introduction of heterogeneous production resources, increases the diversity of manufacturing systems making their reconfiguration complex and time consuming. In this paper, an end-to-end approach for reconfigurable cyber-physical production systems is discussed, enabled by container technologies. The presented approach enhances flexibility in a cyber-physical production system (CPPS) through the dynamic reconfiguration of the automation system and the production schedule, based on occurring events. High-level management of manufacturing operations is performed on a centralized node while the data processing and execution control is handled at the network edge. Runtime events are generated at the edge and in smart connected devices via means of a variant of IEC61499 function blocks. Software containers manage the deployment and low-level orchestration of FBs at the edge devices. All aspects of the proposed solution have been implemented on a software framework and applied in a small scale CPPS coming from the automotive industry.