To remain competitive in the market, manufacturing companies face the challenge of making their production lines and supply chains Industry 4.0 conform.&nbsp; This means, they need to negotiate the transition from the era of Industry 3.0 that was largely based on advances in automation, to the current era of the 4th industrial revolution, which is largely based on vertically and horizontally integrated cyber-physical systems for production engineering with cloud-based IT infrastructures and the Industrial Internet of Things as their backbone. Many SMEs seek ways to upgrade some of their legacy systems and processes to become Industry 4.0-conform in an affordable way. This way of upgrading legacy systems to newer standards and capabilities is generally known as retrofitting. &nbsp;However, retrofitting is easier said than done. &nbsp;For starters, Industry 4.0-enabling technologies are relatively new, so at present most businesses do not have sufficient inhouse expertise to understand the full range of Industry 4.0 base technologies available. Likewise, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to retrofitting legacy systems, so each company needs to devise their bespoke strategy to identify those parts of their production engineering processes that would benefit most from a software and/or hardware upgrade, along with a timeline for development, implementation, and testing, as well as a careful consideration of the anticipated return of investment and when it can be expected. Given the preceding, there is a compelling case for designing a generic decision-based framework for Industry 4.0 retrofitting of manufacturing legacy systems in SMEsThe focus of this research is on designing and building a decision-based framework (DBF) that facilitates Small-and-Medium-sized-Enterprises (SMEs) to support the decision to retrofit their legacy systems. The DBF can help SMEs comprehend the requirements for retrofitting and identifying satisfactory Industrial 4.0 solutions (cost or/and quality or/and time) to address their legacy equipment situation. The DBF comprises of three models: The first, an information model (database) designed to identify legacy systems and determine requirements (hardware or/and software or/and functional source) for Industry 4.0 solutions*. The second model is the assessment model, designed for supporting organisations to assess their capabilities, organisations goals and infrastructure to identify satisfying solutions to fit their situations accurately. Finally, the evaluation model designed to measure the potential impact and analysis return on investment (ROI) with simulation and visualisation of pre-and-post retrofit scenarios.&nbsp;

Decision-Based Framework for Retrofitting Smes Legacy Systems in the Context of Industry 4.0

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IDETC-CIE/IDETC-CIE2021/volume/85369

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