Semantic models and processes for information gathering and interactive workflow execution in dencentralized production environments

More information than needed is available in today's IT-based production environments, while the right information is often hidden or unreachable for humans thanks information overload. The solution of this becomes even more important where rapid reconfiguration and virtual/network enterprises must lead to a decentralized system structure and information architecture. While the machines become increasingly "intelligent" with more powerful processors it has become possible to not only program them mainly via remote control but to deliver detailed status information and sensor data. To date, most of this generated information is wasted in the archives of the machines, only read in case of upcoming machine failures. New approaches like decentralized peer-to-peer production network s provide new possibilities to exploit this information in a context-oriented manner and take a step beyond Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES). Production Cockpits are able to assemble collected data filtered on several layers and to decide which data are important enough to be presented to the user. This paper presents an approach for collecting and aggregating the data using semantic information as well as semantically enriched interactive processes for execution - supporting the concept of process execution in decentralized environments.