A Migration Methodology for Factories Digital Transformation

Abstract

Over the last years, several technologies and control systems have been developed towards the decentralization of automation control architectures for cyber-physical production systems. Nevertheless, only few of these technologies are already in use. To support their adoption in brownfield production sites migration strategies and business case evaluations are necessary. This paper presents a migration approach and a business case evaluation methodology tailored to the migration of legacy automation systems towards the Industry 4.0 paradigm. The proposed approach aims to evaluate opportunities and mitigate the risks of migration from technical, operational, human and business perspectives. The methodology follows an iterative approach starting from the definition of the current situation of the factory and the identification of business goals aiming at evaluating a set of possible migration paths and selecting the optimal one according to a cost-benefit analysis. The paper concludes with an exemplary application of the methodology in a real industrial environment, developed within the FAR-EDGE European Project.