Product-Process-Resource Asset Networks as Foundation for Improving CPPS Engineering

In the engineering of Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPSs), the coordination and data exchange of Product (P), Process (P‘) and Resource (R) assets is success-critical for creating high-quality engineering products. In industry, product, process, and resources are often addressed individually without explicitly expressing their dependencies. Therefore, isolated assets can hinder efficient collaboration within CPPS engineering projects that can lead to risks in case of overseen dependencies. Thus, we see the need for explicitly expressing PPR assets within an PPR Asset Network (PAN) that is (a) capable of handling assets from different viewpoints and (b) can enable efficient added value application such as risk, requirements, and configuration management. The goal of this paper include a process description for the elicitation of the PAN and to illustrate added-value applications based on a selected use case, i.e., the Industry 4.0 Testbed at CTU in Prague. We build on the PPR concept as foundation for the PAN and for added-value applications. PAN added-value applications aim at supporting risk management, requirements engineering, or configuration management by focusing on PPR assets and dependencies in context of CPPS engineering. Although PAN provides a valuable foundation for added-value applications there is the need for initial effort for the creation/generating the PAN.