Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT
Conventional production systems often prove to be too inflexible for a large number of variants or even the complete individualization of products. Changing quality requirements, but also highly individualized products, demand a lot from process control. Flexible and adaptable control of automated processes and process sequences in complex and highly individualized production environments is required.
Together with partners from industry and research, Fraunhofer IPT is developing concepts and software solutions for the flexible networking and control of such production systems: rigid process chains are being replaced by freely interlinked processes, resulting in production systems capable of transformation from the store floor to the enterprise level.
To this end, Fraunhofer IPT translates scientific approaches of Industry 4.0 and IIoT into marketable software products – from service-oriented machine connectivity through communication standards (e.g. I4.0 management shell, OPC-UA and MQTTw) for control and data integration to the integration of artificial intelligence for efficient production control (e.g. scheduling, process parameter optimization or decision support).
The high degree of networking of the individual systems and devices, end-to-end data acquisition, and the seamless integration of measurement technology into process control make the newly created complexity in automated production individually and flexibly manageable. This creates a basis for systems that are able to adapt and optimize themselves independently. Sustainability and IT security also play an important role in concept and software development.
So that you too can flexibly design your production processes, we offer you "COPE", an adaptive control software for the efficient automation of your production environment: COPE controls all processes and monitors plant, equipment and material usage. Resources are managed by a customizable scheduling algorithm. The software reacts flexibly to changes in quality parameters and immediately adapts process sequences to the new conditions. In addition, the software has various logging functions that ensure data consistency at process and device level. A user-friendly interface shows the user all relevant functions and data and supports evaluation.