Dynamic Rerouting of Cyber-Physical Production Systems in Response to Disruptions Based on SDC Framework

The world is in the midst of a new industrial revolution driven by Smart Manufacturing (SM). Though this new paradigm promises increased flexibility, product customization, improved quality, efficient energy consumption, and improved productivity, SM systems are more susceptible to small faults that could cascade into major failures or even cyber-attacks that enter the plant. Flexibility and reactivity/proactivity represent important means to enhance SM systems' reliability, efficiency, and robust response to faults. Within this context, this paper focuses on dynamic rerouting of parts in response to a fault or attack that can change the system's behavior. The method is based on the use of our recently proposed Software-Defined Control (SDC) framework [1], which consolidates data from the different levels of the automation pyramid to provide a global view of the entire SM system. To solve the rerouting problem, a rerouting application accesses the global view of the system through a set of digital twins hosted in the SDC central controller, and provides new route alternatives to a decision maker that prioritizes these routes based on an optimization function. The new route alternatives are then sent to the operator as reconfiguration recommendations to be deployed to the plant floor. The proposition is illustrated using a small manufacturing system example.