An approach for implementing cyber-physical production in legacy machines

Abstract

With time, technology is advancing at even faster rates, and the manufacturing industry is being driven to utilise such technologies to keep up with the customer demands and maintain the necessary market share to remain competitive. The rapid development of various technologies allows machines in manufacturing plants to communicate with each other, which in turn allows the implementation of digital twins, which improve the manufacturing processes. Such systems are referred to as cyber-physical production systems. However, decommissioning all the current machinery for them to be replaced with cyber-physical production systems is a decision for which it is practically impossible to justify its expenditure. Therefore, the objective of this study is to investigate whether a methodology can be utilised to reconfigure legacy equipment and machinery into cyber-physical production systems. In this study, the available literature on such transformation methodologies is reviewed. However, due to the infancy of this field, not a lot of relevant literature is published, and a transformation methodology which satisfies the necessary criteria is not available. Therefore, literature relevant to the missing criteria was reviewed and utilised in the definition of a transformation methodology which satisfies all the necessary criteria. The proposed transformation methodology is implemented on a legacy injection moulding machine, and the tool which came out of the implementation is evaluated. The evaluation of the tool based on this implementation is therefore reflective of the transformation methodology itself. Since the injection moulding machine was successfully transformed into a cyber-physical production system, and the high level-runtime can be communicated to the machine remotely and automatically, it is concluded that the transformation methodology is effective. Therefore, by utilising the transformation methodology proposed in this study, a legacy machine can be reconfigured into a cyber-physical production system, which in turn allows businesses in the manufacturing industry become more competitive without the need to decommission all the current legacy machines and invest in cyber-physical production systems.