Information and control in cyber-physical production systems

Computation and communication have become cheap and near-ubiquitous. In the domain of manufacturing automation, this led to the development of Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS). Traditionally, the control infrastructure of manufacturing systems ensured the correct execution of predetermined processes. In CPPS, detailed knowledge about the system dynamics and the current runtime state allow more flexible control approaches to adapt the system behavior to changing tasks and conditions. In this work, we discuss principles for driving CPPS consisting of many heterogeneous components. For this, we identify the four fundamental approaches for information modeling and control of CPPS, as well as their consequences concerning the system design and operation.