A Smart Factory Architecture Based on Industry 4.0 Technologies: Open-Source Software Implementation

The Smart Factory has been a concept studied during the last decade that has not been standardized yet; for this reason, the academy and industry have developed a wide variety of new architectures that describe the integration of elements for digitization and interconnection. The present research aims to introduce a new architecture proposal for migrating traditional (automation) to smart (digitization) factories, implemented through open-source software. The proposed architecture is integrated, for the first time, by the interconnection of six main elements: cyber-physical systems, edge computing, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, data analytics, and cybersecurity; the research describes in detail their definitions, sub-elements, the interconnection between elements, and the minimum requirements for implementation. The test of the proposed smart factory was done through a scale smart factory pilot testing for a pick and place process, where the assembly of wood pieces from the geometric Tangram's puzzle was required; for this reason, the pilot testing includes a six-degree-of-freedom robot arm, a conveyor, a vision system, and a storage area. The case study conducted in this research allowed the assembly of four puzzles (fish, house, rocket, and swan) that were assembled with four different batches of pieces. The implementation allowed testing flexibility and adaptability. The final assembly reports included the status of assembly, the number of pieces assembled, the number of pieces stored, the assembly sequence, and the assembly time. Similarly, the development of the SCADA system allowed asset control as well as asset monitoring. The KPIs of the assembly process measured productivity (OTD) and time tracking (ATCT and TA) of the 16 tests, founding that the interconnection and digitization of the scale manufacturing cell were fully integrated and allowed repeatability; the proposed SF architecture represents an alternative for the small and medium automated factories to achieve interconnection and digitization, and it is ready to be tested in a more complex scenario.