Fraunhofer Institute for Cognitive Systems IKS
Fraunhofer Institute for Cognitive Systems IKS
© istock.com/nadtytok

© istock.com/nadtytok

Flexible Production

Modern industrial systems are highly-connected and must be highly-available

© iStock.com/AleksandarGeorgiev

Industry 4.0 means that in modern production flows, all actuators, devices and systems within the value chain are connected to one another across the entire organization. In particular, trends such as batch size 1 and just-in-time production contribute to this environment. A high degree of connectivity requires production systems that feature a high degree of flexible adaptivity. These systems must nevertheless be safe and dependable. The European Machinery Directive forms the basis for the safety norms of the individual systems and their connectivity.

Connectivity enables predictive maintenance and improved service quality

The processes and technologies developed for Industry 4.0 environments can be used to implement connected and flexible production workflows. This enables in particular predictive maintenance, high-availability systems, improved service quality and more efficient maintenance.

Fraunhofer IKS makes your production systems flexible

The Fraunhofer Institute for Cognitive Systems IKS can assist you in implementing a flexible production system. To do that, the institute works with various building blocks to guarantee safe and dependable operation even in dynamic environments:

  • Service-oriented architectures (SOA) for flexible control functions and an architecture-compliant design
  • Mechanisms for the dynamic and flexible reaction to changing conditions and performance fluctuations  
  • Provisioning and continuous integration of safety functions via familiar DevOps frameworks
  • Methods and tools for fault-tolerant function outsourcing or control via the cloud
  • Processes for tracking and analyzing causes of errors and their impact on system availability and dependability
  • Methods for adherence to fail-operational requirements for industrial controls
In addition to contract development, we offer you various other options for collaborating with Fraunhofer IKS, such as joint innovation teams, studies and potential analyses. Here you will find an overview of our cooperation models.