Standards Development

Scope

This document specifies a unified reference model for smart manufacturing (URMSM). This model comprises a set of common modelling elements, their associations and criteria. This model will be used in a multi-model approach to establish a reference model that is sufficient for understanding significant relationships among entities involved in smart manufacturing, responsive to new manufacturing opportunities and challenges, and supports the development of standards and other specifications.

The reference model established in this document accommodates consistent, coherent, compatible specializations for relevant aspects of manufacturing systems consisting of equipment, products, and services, within the domain of manufacturing.

Purpose

The purpose of the unified reference model for smart manufacturing (URMSM) is twofold: 1) provide a reference-base to enable better understanding of the significant relationships among entities and practices involved in smart manufacturing; and 2) support an identification of and an approach for the development of standards and other specifications that support smart manufacturing.

The URMSM specifies ways to examine aspects of manufacturing with appropriate abstraction, including their constituent activities, established or proposed processes, available resources, pertinent information, and relationships among aspects. Starting from a URMSM, more specific reference models and models for realizable manufacturing operations can be derived in a systematic manner. A URMSM provides a framework for the preparation of interoperability as well as guidance for architecture derivation and system design.

The objectives of the URMSM for smart manufacturing system development are:

· Support to identify the scope of smart manufacturing systems;

· Support to configure smart manufacturing systems as open eco-systems by combining multiple sub-systems;

· Support to optimize processes in smart manufacturing covering full value-chains;

· Support to develop smart manufacturing systems utilizing existing standards;

· Support of standardized interfaces between the product and the production systems at all phases of life cycle.

The URMSM defines a set of common architectural elements useful in the smart manufacturing domain and the important relationships among those elements useful for deriving a practical design in order to fulfil a defined purpose within that domain

A reference model provides insight into the aspects of a system to consider when developing a new system or modifying an existing system and may provide mechanisms for conducting that development or modification. The URMSM can be used by smart manufacturing systems developers and users to support the development process, and by smart manufacturing standard developers to assure coherence and compatibility in the developed body of standards. The URMSM identifies those aspects of manufacturing and intelligence to apply when developing a smart manufacturing model for a particular industrial enterprise. The URMSM goes beyond the representational features of aspects to enable thorough examination of content available through the use of the models to address issues arising in the course of smart manufacturing initiatives.

Expectations regarding the outcome of a satisfactory URMSM are:

· enabling the examination of value within a value creation network;

· enabling a range of appropriate libraries such as use-cases, interface definitions, models for semantics, information and data, and international standards as modelled views relative to modelling purposes for particular smart manufacturing situations;

· representation as a multi-dimensional space composed from axes, which can vary in number to accommodate particular modelling purposes, for various collections of aspects such as aspects of production, aspects of product, aspects of smart technology, and their relationships over their respective life cycles; assurance that information is open and consistently structured using standards for information, data and modelling languages, without ambiguous meaning, by applying semantic models, procedures and techniques;

· easy to use for the creation of tailored smart manufacturing models that address a stakeholder’s particular concerns.

Using a family of models approach where many purpose appropriate models can be derived from the same overarching paradigm, the URMSM qualifies methodologies for examining the impact of smart technologies in the context of smart manufacturing initiatives and enables identification of many of the concerns practitioners must address as they implement smart manufacturing programs. Moreover, the URMSM becomes a set of rules regarding the construction of representational frameworks for smart manufacturing, guidelines for implementing those rules, suggestions or examples of existing or potential representations that result from applying the rules, and guidelines for capturing the modelling elements necessary for decision-making in a smart manufacturing context.

Justification

This document is the second response to a joint resolution of ISO TMB and IEC SMB regarding the need to address the emerging variety of smart manufacturing models.

With advancing ICT development, information is now available in a fundamentally new way that enables solutions based on new forms of digital information and communication, which move industry towards perceiving digital information as capital for exploitation across traditional boundaries. For the digital content to reach its full potential, it must be informative, timely, and trustworthy, securely managed and possess documented quality, which in turn requires agreements on standardized and semantically well-defined ways to represent and safely share digital content while avoiding isolated islands of information or security leaks.

The vision of smart manufacturing has products embedded as a part of the automation solution, and technologically advanced devices capable of computational work and autonomous decisionmaking.

Self-improving, adaptive decision support systems interact with humans in the sociotechnical interoperation between all the stakeholders and resources involved in product design, manufacturing and operation. Outcomes of processes are measured, analysed and used to predict and adjust plans; reality is reflected in digital models that learn based on outcome; and manufacturing resources are intelligent and communicate securely with each other and products in the process. Further, the availability and combination of information create new services and ecosystems for collaboration. [SOURCE: IEC White paper Factory of the future https://www.iec.ch/whitepaper/futurefactory/].

A smart manufacturing system is a complex system of systems, where many collaborating, competing and possibly conflicting systems are connected in federated and/or integrated ways. The system development and maintenance activities are also complex and require appropriate standardized interfaces and harmonized business processes to reduce and manage that complexity.

Modelling provides systematic methods supporting the whole life cycle of system development, usage and retirement, allowing all the smart manufacturing benefits while mitigating the complexity. Modelling is a very effective approach to systematize system development and operation activities by use of advanced information technology. Reference models in particular provide a common basis for the development of individual systems and enable their interpretation as a whole system by reuse of the common characteristic of the individual systems. A smart manufacturing system functions as an ecosystem with numerous subsystems added or removed dynamically, leading to many possible system representations and reference models, each intended for a set of configurations and purposes.

As shown in the first response to the ISO and IEC resolutions, Technical Report: “A metamodelling analysis approach to smart manufacturing reference models” [1], the numerous efforts around the world clearly indicate a diversity of existing reference models related to manufacturing. Since no single model can encompass all possible issues within an expansive domain like smart manufacturing, each model has an intended purpose that we must recognize and to the extent possible, accommodate in a URMSM. No generalized reference architecture supports design and development of smart manufacturing systems in a consistent and coherent manner that facilitates interoperability nor guides development of smart manufacturing standards in such a way as to ensure that the information needed to support smart manufacturing systems is available when and where needed, in a usable format.

Therefore both the need and opportunity to harmonize across existing models in order to achieve a unifying and general understanding of smart manufacturing systems will benefit all practitioners, whether they are already involved in smart manufacturing initiatives or become involved in the future. Clarification and standardization of URMSM at various abstraction levels are necessary to improve development processes efficiency by reusing constituent assets in system development and operations. URMSM can also be used as a guide for effective use of existing standards, and finding gaps for missing standards. As shown in Figure 1 below, a URMSM is a unifying model applicable across many domains of practice. Such a reference model can be specialized to create a URMSM for a particular domain as often occurs prior to URMSM use in creating a smart manufacturing model for a particular application. The URMSM can also be used to create very purpose specific smart manufacturing models, again by specializing the URMSM first to create a reference model for the particular purpose and then using that specialization. Instantiation of the elements of a specialized smart manufacturing model results in an implementable model for a particular smart manufacturing initiative.

One difficulty is that technology by itself is insufficient. Technology innovation enables processes to be more effective and efficient as they adapt to the opportunities technology brings and to changing market conditions. Therefore we need to consider smart technology in the context of many different aspects of manufacturing systems, the products they produce and their utility to today's and future commerce.

A family of models approach as expressed in the TR: A meta-modelling analysis approach to smart manufacturing reference models, characterizes the basic structure for a family of the URMSM. The overarching representational form has dimensions for smart technology, manufacturing and product. This representation is the most general expression of the smart manufacturing domain but lacks the specificity necessary to serve as a reference for the many situations encountered in smart manufacturing initiatives. The representation has no coordinate positions on its axes because so many choices exist and all of those choices have to do with the purpose for which any particular URMSM representation exists. Therefore the focus of the URMSM is on the ways in which representations should be structured by coherent dimensional semantic constraints and used to examine interactions where aspects of manufacturing coincide. Referring again to the TR: A meta-modelling analysis approach to smart manufacturing reference models, many of the contributions depict dimensions related to hierarchical structures, life cycle considerations (another form of hierarchy), and layers (within a business, yet another form of hierarchy). These dimensions all contain information from perspectives of different hierarchic management activities and resource allocation schema. However, the UK study, Smart Products Through-Life: Research Roadmap, clearly indicates that the interdependencies among advanced technologies, i.e. technology emerging from the use of intelligent processes and resources, is distinctly non-hierarchical and highly interactive among technologies. The real benefit provided by examining the relationships between the aspects of manufacturing, product and smart technology in the context of a framework for smart manufacturing relies upon the semantic models of the intersecting dimensional aspects. When a URMSM is composed of two or more coherent dimensions of manufacturing, where coherence is achieved by articulating semantic models relating the aspects of manufacturing, product, and smart technology respectively, then practitioners can evaluate relationships beyond the simple intersections of constituent aspects from different dimensions by following the semantic connections to other aspects and thus examine a broader and perhaps more consequential context. However, particular smart technologies, e.g. additive manufacturing using electron beam melting or direct metal laser melting, should not be identified in the URMSM because they create a more brittle structure prone to breakage under evolving manufacturing conditions, i.e. a new kind of additive technique emerges. The URMSM must accommodate smart technologies without committing to any particular technology in the same way in which it accommodates the various phases of product and production life cycles or layers of administration or nesting of physical facilities. A URMSM needs to accommodate: 1) advanced manufacturing technology enabled by intelligent processes and resources; 2) new and novel applications discovered and emerging from the deployment of those new technologies; 3) emerging organizational knowledge and skill set capabilities necessary to utilize 1) and 2); 4) change management practices to realize uptake of 1), 2), and 3). FORM 4 – New Work Item Proposal Version 02/2019 The purpose of the unified reference model for smart manufacturing (URMSM) is twofold: 1) provide a reference-base to enable better understanding of the significant relationships among entities and practices involved in smart manufacturing; and 2) support an identification of and an approach for the development of standards and other specifications that support smart manufacturing. The URMSM specifies ways to examine aspects of manufacturing with appropriate abstraction, including their constituent activities, established or proposed processes, available resources, pertinent information, and relationships among aspects. Starting from a URMSM, more specific reference models and models for realizable manufacturing operations can be derived in a systematic manner. A URMSM provides a framework for the preparation of interoperability as well as guidance for architecture derivation and system design. The objectives of the URMSM for smart manufacturing system development are: · Support to identify the scope of smart manufacturing systems; · Support to configure smart manufacturing systems as open eco-systems by combining multiple sub-systems; · Support to optimize processes in smart manufacturing covering full value-chains; · Support to develop smart manufacturing systems utilizing existing standards; · Support of standardized interfaces between the product and the production systems at all phases of life cycle. The URMSM defines a set of common architectural elements useful in the smart manufacturing domain and the important relationships among those elements useful for deriving a practical design in order to fulfil a defined purpose within that domain A reference model provides insight into the aspects of a system to consider when developing a new system or modifying an existing system and may provide mechanisms for conducting that development or modification. The URMSM can be used by smart manufacturing systems developers and users to support the development process, and by smart manufacturing standard developers to assure coherence and compatibility in the developed body of standards. The URMSM identifies those aspects of manufacturing and intelligence to apply when developing a smart manufacturing model for a particular industrial enterprise. The URMSM goes beyond the representational features of aspects to enable thorough examination of content available through the use of the models to address issues arising in the course of smart manufacturing initiatives.

Expectations regarding the outcome of a satisfactory URMSM are:

· enabling the examination of value within a value creation network;

· enabling a range of appropriate libraries such as use-cases, interface definitions, models for semantics, information and data, and international standards as modelled views relative to modelling purposes for particular smart manufacturing situations;

· representation as a multi-dimensional space composed from axes, which can vary in number to accommodate particular modelling purposes, for various collections of aspects such as aspects of production, aspects of product, aspects of smart technology, and their relationships over their respective life cycles; assurance that information is open and consistently structured using standards for information, data and modelling languages, without ambiguous meaning, by applying semantic models, procedures and techniques;

· easy to use for the creation of tailored smart manufacturing models that address a stakeholder’s particular concerns.

Using a family of models approach where many purpose appropriate models can be derived from the same overarching paradigm, the URMSM qualifies methodologies for examining the impact of smart technologies in the context of smart manufacturing initiatives and enables identification of many of the concerns practitioners must address as they implement smart manufacturing programs. Moreover, the URMSM becomes a set of rules regarding the construction of representational frameworks for smart manufacturing, guidelines for implementing those rules, suggestions or examples of existing or potential representations that result from applying the rules, and guidelines for capturing the modelling elements necessary for decision-making in a smart manufacturing context.

Justification

This document is the second response to a joint resolution of ISO TMB and IEC SMB regarding the need to address the emerging variety of smart manufacturing models. With advancing ICT development, information is now available in a fundamentally new way that enables solutions based on new forms of digital information and communication, which move industry towards perceiving digital information as capital for exploitation across traditional boundaries. For the digital content to reach its full potential, it must be informative, timely, and trustworthy, securely managed and possess documented quality, which in turn requires agreements on standardized and semantically well-defined ways to represent and safely share digital content while avoiding isolated islands of information or security leaks. The vision of smart manufacturing has products embedded as a part of the automation solution, and technologically advanced devices capable of computational work and autonomous decisionmaking.

Self-improving, adaptive decision support systems interact with humans in the sociotechnical interoperation between all the stakeholders and resources involved in product design, manufacturing and operation. Outcomes of processes are measured, analysed and used to predict and adjust plans; reality is reflected in digital models that learn based on outcome; and manufacturing resources are intelligent and communicate securely with each other and products in the process. Further, the availability and combination of information create new services and ecosystems for collaboration. [SOURCE: IEC White paper Factory of the future https://www.iec.ch/whitepaper/futurefactory/].

A smart manufacturing system is a complex system of systems, where many collaborating, competing and possibly conflicting systems are connected in federated and/or integrated ways. The system development and maintenance activities are also complex and require appropriate standardized interfaces and harmonized business processes to reduce and manage that complexity.

Modelling provides systematic methods supporting the whole life cycle of system development, usage and retirement, allowing all the smart manufacturing benefits while mitigating the complexity. Modelling is a very effective approach to systematize system development and operation activities by use of advanced information technology. Reference models in particular provide a common basis for the development of individual systems and enable their interpretation as a whole system by reuse of the common characteristic of the individual systems. A smart manufacturing system functions as an ecosystem with numerous subsystems added or removed dynamically, leading to many possible system representations and reference models, each intended for a set of configurations and purposes.

As shown in the first response to the ISO and IEC resolutions, Technical Report: “A metamodelling analysis approach to smart manufacturing reference models” [1], the numerous efforts around the world clearly indicate a diversity of existing reference models related to manufacturing. Since no single model can encompass all possible issues within an expansive domain like smart manufacturing, each model has an intended purpose that we must recognize and to the extent possible, accommodate in a URMSM. No generalized reference architecture supports design and development of smart manufacturing systems in a consistent and coherent manner that facilitates interoperability nor guides development of smart manufacturing standards in such a way as to ensure that the information needed to support smart manufacturing systems is available when and where needed, in a usable format.

Therefore both the need and opportunity to harmonize across existing models in order to achieve a unifying and general understanding of smart manufacturing systems will benefit all practitioners, whether they are already involved in smart manufacturing initiatives or become involved in the future. Clarification and standardization of URMSM at various abstraction levels are necessary to improve development processes efficiency by reusing constituent assets in system development and operations. URMSM can also be used as a guide for effective use of existing standards, and finding gaps for missing standards. As shown in Figure 1 below, a URMSM is a unifying model applicable across many domains of practice. Such a reference model can be specialized to create a URMSM for a particular domain as often occurs prior to URMSM use in creating a smart manufacturing model for a particular application. The URMSM can also be used to create very purpose specific smart manufacturing models, again by specializing the URMSM first to create a reference model for the particular purpose and then using that specialization. Instantiation of the elements of a specialized smart manufacturing model results in an implementable model for a particular smart manufacturing initiative.

One difficulty is that technology by itself is insufficient. Technology innovation enables processes to be more effective and efficient as they adapt to the opportunities technology brings and to changing market conditions. Therefore we need to consider smart technology in the context of many different aspects of manufacturing systems, the products they produce and their utility to today's and future commerce.

A family of models approach as expressed in the TR: A meta-modelling analysis approach to smart manufacturing reference models, characterizes the basic structure for a family of the URMSM. The overarching representational form has dimensions for smart technology, manufacturing and product. This representation is the most general expression of the smart manufacturing domain but lacks the specificity necessary to serve as a reference for the many situations encountered in smart manufacturing initiatives. The representation has no coordinate positions on its axes because so many choices exist and all of those choices have to do with the purpose for which any particular URMSM representation exists. Therefore the focus of the URMSM is on the ways in which representations should be structured by coherent dimensional semantic constraints and used to examine interactions where aspects of manufacturing coincide. Referring again to the TR: A meta-modelling analysis approach to smart manufacturing reference models, many of the contributions depict dimensions related to hierarchical structures, life cycle considerations (another form of hierarchy), and layers (within a business, yet another form of hierarchy). These dimensions all contain information from perspectives of different hierarchic management activities and resource allocation schema. However, the UK study, Smart Products Through-Life: Research Roadmap, clearly indicates that the interdependencies among advanced technologies, i.e. technology emerging from the use of intelligent processes and resources, is distinctly non-hierarchical and highly interactive among technologies. The real benefit provided by examining the relationships between the aspects of manufacturing, product and smart technology in the context of a framework for smart manufacturing relies upon the semantic models of the intersecting dimensional aspects. When a URMSM is composed of two or more coherent dimensions of manufacturing, where coherence is achieved by articulating semantic models relating the aspects of manufacturing, product, and smart technology respectively, then practitioners can evaluate relationships beyond the simple intersections of constituent aspects from different dimensions by following the semantic connections to other aspects and thus examine a broader and perhaps more consequential context. However, particular smart technologies, e.g. additive manufacturing using electron beam melting or direct metal laser melting, should not be identified in the URMSM because they create a more brittle structure prone to breakage under evolving manufacturing conditions, i.e. a new kind of additive technique emerges. The URMSM must accommodate smart technologies without committing to any particular technology in the same way in which it accommodates the various phases of product and production life cycles or layers of administration or nesting of physical facilities.

A URMSM needs to accommodate:

1) advanced manufacturing technology enabled by intelligent processes and resources;

2) new and novel applications discovered and emerging from the deployment of those new technologies;

3) emerging organizational knowledge and skill set capabilities necessary to utilize 1) and 2);

4) change management practices to realize uptakeof 1), 2), and 3).