On the one side, Industrial competitiveness today means shorter product lifecycles, increased product variety, and shorter times to market and customized tangible products and services. To face these challenges, the manufacturing industry is forced to move from traditional management, control, and automation approaches towards industrial cyber-physical systems.
On the other side, several emergent engineering approaches and related Information‐Communication‐Control‐Technologies, such as Multi‐Agent-Systems, Service‐Oriented Architecture, Plug‐and‐Produce Systems, Cloud and Fog Technologies, Big Data and Analytics, among others, have been researched during the last years. The confluence of those results with the latest developments in Industrial Digitalization, Systems‐of‐Cyber-Physical-Systems Engineering, Internet‐of‐Things, Internet‐of‐Services, and Industry 4.0 is opening a new broad spectrum of innovation possibilities.
The PERFoRM (Production-harmonizEd-Reconfiguration of Flexible Robots and Machinery) approach is one of them. It teaches the reader what it means when production machines and systems are digitalized and migrated into Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems and what happens when they are networked and start collaborating with each other and with the human, using the internet.
After a Technology Trend Screening and beyond a comprehensive state-of-the-art analysis about Industrial Digitalization and Industry 4.0-compliant solutions, the book introduces methods, architectures, and technologies applicable in real industrial use cases, explained for a broad audience of researchers, practitioners, and industrialists.
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Armando Walter Colombo (Fellow IEEE) joined the Department of Electrotechnical and Industrial Informatics at the University of Applied Sciences Emden-Leer, Germany, became Full Professor in August 2010 and Director of the Institute for Industrial Informatics, Automation and Robotics (I2AR) in 2012. He worked during the last 17 years as Manager for Collaborative Projects and also as Edison Level 2 Group Senior Expert at Schneider Electric, Industrial Business Unit.
Dr. Michael Gepp is working as a technical consultant at Siemens Corporate Technology, Research Group on Systems Engineering - Engineering Methods and Tools.
Jose Barata Oliveira is a professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering of the New University of Lisbon and a senior researcher of the UNINOVA Institute.
Paulo Leitão is a professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering of the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança, Portugal.
Jose Barbosa is a senior researcher at Polytechnic Institute of Bragança, Portugal. He is also an invited professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering of the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança.
Jeffrey Wermann a scientific assistant and a member of the institute for Industrial Informatics, Automation and Robotics (I²AR). Mr. Wermann is also performing graduated and post-graduated teaching activities as Invited Lecturer in the courses of the Master on Industrial Informatics, specialization "Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems" of the University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer in Germany.
