AmI-based production systems: Configuration of sequential process flow and SoA-based diagnosis

This paper presents two aspects of the application of Ambient Intelligence (AmI) along the Life-Cycle of flexible production system, the Produflexil approach, which gives a new view of what is the environment in terms of virtual and real mechatronic devices and In-Life, which uses new technologies like Service oriented Architecture (SoA) for real production systems, particularly under consideration of Control, Monitoring and Maintenance. The focus of Produflexil is a clear definition of a configuration, so that AmI technology can be applied to the design of the control software in the engineering phase and in real production systems. Modular system components are defined, that can be used for sequential process flows, which are typically used to design automation systems. The focus of In-Life is the automation architecture, therefore, a real demonstrator the NovaFlex cell was designed. It was demonstrated, that the SoA concept is another step that allows to speak about a configured production system, because typical requirements for a configurable architecture are fulfilled by mechatronic devices with web service interfaces.