An approach to support Industry 4.0 adoption in SMEs using a core-metamodel

Abstract Despite the recent growing interest in the “factory smartness”, still there are only few small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that adopt effective Industry 4.0 (I4.0) solutions. The main reasons can be related to the lack of formalized processes, lack of ICT knowledgeas well as low-cost commercial systems.To cope with these issues, this work focuses on the development and the application of an approach to provide SMEs with a multi-purpose, modular, knowledge-based system: the main aim is to provide a modular and extensible system that can be incrementally implemented without requiring huge initial investments.This system is based on a core design-knowledge meta-model. From this core meta-model, multi-purposes modules can be built: in this paper, we present modules for the traceability support, the AR-powered assembly support, the machine-to-machine control and the data analysis support.