Industry4.0 primarily focuses on the automation, integration, and optimization of processes and manufacturing lines. This often requires several solutions, and onboarding and connectivity of numerous pieces of systems and equipment.
A question we often face is: what type of industry4.o scenarios EFPF can support? Since EFPF is a federated platform, the tools and services available in the EFPF ecosystem make use of Big Data Analytics, Digital Manufacturing, Cloud computing, Internet of Things and Blockchain technologies to support a variety of applications and usage scenarios.
In this blog, we present a generic usage scenario of EFPF solutions. This scenario considers typical interactions in manufacturing supply chains to highlight different types of technology solutions that are available through the EFPF ecosystem.
Figure 1 illustrates the the example scenario of a manufacturing supply chain where multiple companies are engaged in collaborative production and supply activities.
Figure 2 describes some of the typical activities that take place between supply chain partners and the support offered by EFPF solutions towards enabling supply chain collaborations.
Figure 3 illustrates some other activities that require automation, integration and interoperability across collaborative networks or supply chains.
In scenarios like the one described above, supply chain partners typically embrace a different system/platform, which is not ideal. However, this remains the reality where the technical capabilities, digital infrastructure and skillset differs from partner to partner. EFPF acknowledges such ground realities and therefore to enable successful Industry 4.0 adoption, the EFPF ecosystem offers:
A common integration layer to support connectivity and enable integration across respective solutions
An extensible digital platform architecture
Interoperability between Industry 4.0/IIoT solutions and data models of tools and systems
End to end security at the level of integrated systems, APIs and data flows
Tight collaboration between all stakeholders in the digital manufacturing domain to unlock potential and value for all
To this end, the EFPF ecosystem represents a new paradigm wherein the manufacturing companies and their collaborators, and solution providers work together to deliver open and interoperable platforms to support collaborations and sure data exchange.
To stay up to date with the EFPF activities stay tuned with the project website and social media channels.