Towards a Model-Based Development Methodology for Evolvable Production Systems

Evolvable production system (EPS) is one of the most promising emerging paradigms among the next generation of production systems dealing with challenges such as market unpredictability, high product variance and increasing automation costs. One of the major challenges faced by EPS for its wider industrial realization is the harmonization of its existing research activities such as the ontology and reference architecture with the agent-based control, dynamic skill-configuration methodology and self-organization algorithms while also considering the aspects of operation management and business models. In addition, the integration with existing industrial standards, targeting aspects like functional safety, system integrity, etc. is also required. This paper addresses the challenge by providing an extendible DSM ( Domain Specific Modeling) based support for modeling an EPS. The work is a basis for a model-based and architecture-centric methodology applicable throughout the development life-cycle of an EPS.