Classification Approach for Use Cases within a Demonstration Factory Environment

Industry 4.0 demonstration factories show live demonstrations of use cases in a realistic factory environment. Usually, the use cases displayed in such an environment are uncoordinated in terms of integrity and variance of addressed research topics. This paper presents a classification approach for use cases to contribute to a more structured planning and coordination of demonstration factories. When applying this developed approach to individual demonstration factories, the analytical steps lead to an accumulated heat map, which supports practitioners in identifying both strengths and weaknesses of the individual demonstration factory for further planning. An exemplary application of the approach was conducted by analyzing the demonstration factory of the nationally funded project Future Work Lab.