Potentials of Future Internet technologies for Digital Factories

The current market situation demands manufacturers increase the flexibility, adaptability and efficiency of their production processes, from product design to manufacturing, and taking the entire product lifecycle into consideration. Digital Factories present a vision of future manufacturing in which digital continuity through production processes facilitates these requirements. This paper investigates how Future Internet technology may be applied and extended in order to fulfil the requirements of Digital Factories and contribute in a significant way to this paradigm shift in manufacturing. The authors present two Digital Factories use cases from which they derive requirements towards a proposed Future Internet Digital Factories architecture. A discussion of the results and an outlook to future work conclude the paper.