Industry 4.0 Asset-based Risk Mitigation for Production Operation

Abstract

During engineering and operation of flexible robot-based production systems meeting the Industry 4.0 (I40) paradigm, engineers require guidance to analyze and resolve issues that may disturb the production process. Challenging issues stem from causes in several heterogeneous engineering disciplines. Unfortunately, current risk mitigation guidelines frequently focus on isolated components and not on risks of the entire system. This fragmented guidance is hard to apply for engineers who are not aware of existing dependencies between components of different types. Therefore, risks in the engineering and operation of I40 components are hard to identify and mitigate. In this paper, we propose the Industry 4.0 Assetbased Risk Mitigation (I4ARM) approach, providing knowledge for efficient root cause analysis to non-experts based on (a) a minimal model for knowledge representation as an I40 asset network with cause-effect annotations and (b) the I4ARM method for model building and risk mitigation with structured guidance. We build on the I40 asset network concept, causeeffect analysis, and decision trees to enable efficient and effective risk mitigation with structured guidance. I4ARM facilitates for engineers (a) defining an Industry 4.0 asset network and relationships, (b) identifying risks, and (c) supporting risk mitigation. We conceptually evaluate I4ARM for a real-world I40 use case. The results showed that the I40 Asset Network with cause-effect relationships and decision trees is usable and useful both for experienced and novice engineers to efficiently and systematically mitigate risks in I40 environments.