Towards flexible production systems engineering according to RAMI 4.0 by utilizing PPR notation

Industrial manufacturing is becoming increasingly complex due to the need to produce individual products with dynamic production processes. This means new methods for engineering flexible production systems, the interconnection between production system, process, and product, need to occur, as contemporary methods are reaching their limits. While varying approaches try to address this problem on a small-scale, the need for holistic methodologies becomes obvious. Thus, this paper proposes a holistic solution by aligning the concepts of the Product, Process, and Resource (PPR) notation for engineering industrial systems according to the Reference Architecture Model Industrie 4.0 (RAMI 4.0). By doing so, each other’s disadvantages are counteracted. In more detail, RAMI 4.0 is missing a concrete modeling notation allowing it to be practically applied in systems engineering. At the same time, PPR reaches its limits regarding large-scale modeling systems across multiple domains or granularity levels. The result of this work, an applicable PPR modeling notation for engineering complex production systems, could strongly contribute to future Model-based Systems Engineering (MBSE) within this area, as a ready-to-use methodology the so-called RAMI Toolbox provides them. Using the agile design science research methodology (ADSRM), the outcome is evaluated based on a real-world case study.