Dr.-Ing.

Kuhn, Thomas

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  • Publication
    Industry 4.0 reference architectures: State of the art and future trends
    ( 2021)
    Nakagawa, Elisa Yumi
    ;
    Antonino, Pablo Oliveira
    ;
    Schnicke, Frank
    ;
    Capilla, Rafael
    ;
    Kuhn, Thomas
    ;
    Liggesmeyer, Peter
    Industry 4.0 has led to a dramatic shift in manufacturing processes, which must be accomplished by interacting end-to-end industrial systems. While Industry 4.0 is still a big challenge for many manufacturing companies, reference architectures have been increasingly adopted in different domains to guide engineers on how their systems should interoperate and be structured. Companies have made different experiences with reference architectures for Industry 4.0. However, depending on the use cases addressed, a reference architecture may be more or less suited to support the transformation of a particular company. Besides, a complete understanding of existing representative architectures does not exist. The main goal of this work is to review existing reference architectures for Industry 4.0 and analyze them concerning their suitability for supporting Industry 4.0 processes and solutions. For this, we systematically researched these architectures and thoroughly analyzed and characterized them. We also address their use and technologies/tools that could support their implementation. As a result, we found that existing architectures still have a long way to go; hence, we present the most urgent steps for the near future. We conclude that the Industry 4.0 community is right in investing in reference architectures considering the future of Industry 4.0.
  • Publication
    Continuous Systems and Software Engineering for Industry 4.0: A disruptive view
    ( 2021)
    Nakagawa, Elisa Yumi
    ;
    Antonino, Pablo Oliveira
    ;
    Schnicke, Frank
    ;
    Kuhn, Thomas
    ;
    Liggesmeyer, Peter
    Context: Industry 4.0 has substantially changed the manufacturing processes, leading to smart factories with full digitalization, intelligence, and dynamic production. The need for rigorous and continuous development of highly networked software-intensive Industry 4.0 systems entails great challenges. Hence, Industry 4.0 requires new ways to develop, operate, and evolve these systems accordingly. Objective: We introduce the view of Continuous Systems and Software Engineering for Industry 4.0 (CSSE I4.0). Method: Based on our research and industrial projects, we propose this novel view and its core elements, including continuous twinning, which is also introduced first in this paper. We also discuss the existing industrial engagement and research that could leverage this view for practical application. Results: There are still several open issues, so we highlight the most urgent perspectives for future work. Conclusions: A disruptive view on how to engineer Industry 4.0 systems must be established to pave the way for the realization of the fourth industrial revolution.
  • Publication
    Industrie-4.0-Middleware geht in die Anwendung
    ( 2021)
    Kuhn, Thomas
    In dem Forschungsprojekt ""Basissystem für die unternehmensübergreifende Produktionsunterstützung"" (kurz: BaSys überProd) arbeiten 21 Partner aus Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft an Lösungen für den Wandel hin zur digitalisierten, flexiblen Industrie-4.0-Produktion. Dabei kommt vor allem die Open-Source-Middleware Eclipse BaSyx zum Einsatz. Das Ziel: Repräsentative Anwendungsfälle in Wirtschaftsunternehmen umsetzen und das Wiederverwendungspotenzial der Lösungen für andere Kontexte herausarbeiten.
  • Publication
    A Service-Based Production Ecosystem Architecture for Industrie 4.0
    ( 2019)
    Kuhn, Thomas
    ;
    Sadikow, Siwara
    ;
    Antonino, Pablo
    Changeability is one major goal of Industrie 4.0. Existing production architectures limit changeability, because programmable logic controllers (PLC) that are responsible for the execution of real-time production steps also define the order of production steps that are executed for every product. PLC programming therefore implicitly defines the production process. Consequently, any change of a production process requires changes in PLC code, causes potential side effects due to unknown controller dependencies, and requires extensive testing. We propose a service-based architecture approach that encapsulates production steps into re-useable services. Production cells invoke services, and comparable to multi-agent systems autonomously decide about optimal service invocations based on shared information. In this article, we outline our service-based architecture concept and describe a use-case that illustrates the decentral organization of production systems and the cooperative optimization of production steps.
  • Publication
    Mode-based scheduling with fast mode-signaling - a method for efficient usage of network time slots
    ( 2014)
    Braun, Tobias
    ;
    Gotzhein, Reinhard
    ;
    Kuhn, Thomas
    Today, communication in real-time systems is based on time-triggered or event-triggered protocols, or combinations thereof. Each of these solutions has its benefits and tradeoffs regarding timeliness and bandwidth usage. In this work, we present a new method called mode-based slot scheduling with fast mode-signaling, which can substantially improve bandwidth usage in many scenarios of industrial relevance, while preserving timeliness. With mode-based slot scheduling, a well-controlled amount of dynamic contention for network time slots is possible. Fast mode-signaling is used to reach consensus on the current transmission mode with the highest preference extremely fast and reliably among all network nodes. We present the implementation of our method with TTCAN - a time-triggered protocol in the automotive domain -, and evaluation results.
  • Publication
    Qualitätsbewertung von Modellen
    ( 2013)
    Kuhn, Thomas
    ;
    Kalmar, Ralf
    ;
    Yu, Jiabin
    Mit dem Werkzeug INProVE des Fraunhofer-Institut für experimentelles Software-Engineering (IESE) in Kaiserslautern können Modelle automatisch auf Qualitätsstandards überprüft und die gemessene Qualität auch über längere Zeiträume überwacht werden. Auf diese Weise wird die Einhaltung von generellen und firmenspezifischen Modellierungsrichtlinien gefördert und spätere Fehler vermieden. Entwickler können so die Konsequenzen von Entwurfsentscheidungen direkt erkennen und bewerten.
  • Publication
    Software-Parallelisierung für Multicore-Hardware
    ( 2011)
    Kuhn, Thomas
    ;
    Barkowski, Donald
    ;
    Kalmar, Ralf
    In der Vergangenheit wurden Prozessoren aufgrund von höheren Taktraten immer leistungsfähiger. Heutzutage geschieht dies aufgrund des mit der Taktfrequenz stark steigenden Energieverbrauchs mittels Parallelisierung, dies führt zu Multicore-Prozessoren. Diese erfordern neue Programmiermodelle; das parallelisieren existierender Software ist daher eine der größten Herausforderungen der heuten Softwareentwicklung. Das Fraunhofer Institut für Experimentelles Software Engineering in Kaiserslautern beleuchtet auftretende Probleme bei der Parallelisierung von Software und stellt einen automatischen Parallelisierungsansatz für Simulink vor.
  • Publication
    Black Burst Synchronization (BBS) - A protocol for deterministic tick and time synchronization in wireless networks
    ( 2011)
    Gotzhein, Reinhard
    ;
    Kuhn, Thomas
    In this paper, we present Black Burst Synchronization (BBS), a modular protocol for multi-hop tick and time synchronization in wireless ad hoc networks, located at MAC level. For the successful operation of BBS, it is crucial that collisions of synchronization messages that are sent (almost) simultaneously by two or more nodes are non-destructive. This is achieved by collision-protected bit encodings with black bursts, periods of transmission energy of defined length on the medium, starting at determined points in time. Under reasonable assumptions, BBS provides low and bounded tick and clock offsets, guarantees a very small and constant convergence delay, has low and bounded complexity regarding computation, storage, time, and structure, and is robust against topology changes at runtime. This makes it a candidate for user level applications such as data fusion and networked control systems, and especially for system level tasks such as duty cycling and multi-hop medium slotting. To validate its predicted behavior, we have implemented and deployed BBS on MICAz motes.