A framework to classify Industry 4.0 technologies across production and product development

Abstract

Industry 4.0 is a diffuse term describing a wide range of technologies to connect systems and regulate processes based on information generation and analysis. Existing definitions and models to describe functions and properties of Industry 4.0 technologies often focus on production systems and therefore do not provide a framework to describe technologies covering the whole product generation process.We introduce a framework to describe and classify Industry 4.0 technologies, affecting both - production and product development. The proposed framework is intended to serve as a basis of a structured and unified description of existing technologies as well as to distinguish the impacted activities within the product generation process. The basic idea is to couple existing models of cyber-physical production systems with established descriptions of central product development process activities to create a framework describing Industry 4.0 technologies within production and product development.