Reactive business processes for factory automation

Modern enterprises operate on a global scale and depend on complex business processes. Business continuity needs to be guaranteed, while changes at the shop floor should happen on-the-fly without stopping the production process. Unfortunately, the existing business processes found in most enterprises are not modular enough, nor they have dynamic support from the device level. However, as the number of sophisticated networked embedded devices in the shop-floor increases, SOA concepts can now be pushed down and provide a better collaboration between the business systems and the production line. This leads to highly dynamic systems that can adapt and optimize their behavior to achieve their goals. The work presented here shows directions to achieve this dynamism by means of simulation, state identification and close coupling of real world and business systems.