Collaborative Process Automation Systems

Providing a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art in Collaborative Process Automation Systems (CPAS), this book discusses topics such as engineering, security, enterprise connectivity, advanced process control, plant asset management, and operator efficiency. Collaborating with other industry experts, the author covers the system architecture and infrastructure required for a CPAS, as well as important standards like OPC and the ISA-95 series of standards. This in-depth reference focuses on the differences between a CPAS and traditional automation systems. Implications on modern automation systems are outlined in theory and practice. This book is ideal for industrial engineers, as well as graduate students in control and automation.

Understand the current and future research into technologies that underpin the increasing capabilities of automation technologies and their impact on the working world of the future. Rapid advances in automation and robotics technologies are often reported in the trade and general media, often relying on scary headlines such as “Jobs Lost to Robots.” It is certainly true that work will change with the advent of smarter and faster automated workers; however, the scope and scale of the changes is still unknown. Automation may seem to be here already, but we are only at the early stages. Automation and Collaborative Robotics explores the output of current research projects that are improving the building blocks of an automated world. Research into collaborative robotics (cobotics) is merging digital, audio, and visual data to generate a commonly held view between cobots and their human collaborators. Low-power machine learning at the edge of the network can deliver decision making on cobots or to their manipulations. Topics covered in this book include: Robotic process automation, chatbots, and their impact in the near future The hype of automation and headlines leading to concerns over the future of work Component technologies that are still in the research labs Foundational technologies and collaboration that will enable many tasks to be automated with human workers being re-skilled and displaced rather than replaced What You Will Learn Be aware of the technologies currently being researched to improve or deliver automation Understand the impact of robotics, other automation technologies, and the impact of AI on automation Get an idea of how far we are from implementation of an automated future Know what work will look like in the future with the deployment of these technologies Who This Book Is For Technical and business managers interested in the future of automation and robotics, and the impact it will have on their organizations, customers, and the business world in general

Collaborative manufacturing is an interactive process with great potential, but without the direct input of the plant floor systems information, a significant piece of the management process is not available for consideration. Collaborative Manufacturing provides guidance and examples of how and why real-time events within the plant floor managemen

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 22nd IFIP WG 5.5 Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises, PRO-VE 2021, held in Saint-Étienne, and virtually in November 2021. The 70 papers (15 full and 55 short) presented with 5 industrial workshop papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 189 submissions. They provide a comprehensive overview of major challenges and recent advances in various domains related to the digital transformation and collaborative networks and their applications with a strong focus on the following areas related to the main theme of the conference: sustainable collaborative networks; sustainability via digitalization; analysis and assessment of business ecosystems; human factors in collaboration 4.0; maintenance and life-cycle management; policies and new digital services; safety and collaboration management; simulation and optimization; complex collaborative systems and ontologies; value co-creation in digitally enabled ecosystems; digitalization strategy in collaborative enterprises’ networks; pathways and tools for DIHs; socio-technical perspectives on smart product-service systems; knowledge transfer and accelerated innovation in FoF; interoperability of IoT and CPS for industrial CNs; sentient immersive response network; digital tools and applications for collaborative healthcare; collaborative networks and open innovation in education 4.0; collaborative learning networks with industry and academia; and industrial workshop.

Based on the results of the study carried out in 1996 to investigate the state of the art of workflow and process technology, MCC initiated the Collaboration Management Infrastructure (CMI) research project to develop innovative agent-based process technology that can support the process requirements of dynamically changing organizations and the requirements of nomadic computing. With a research focus on the flow of interaction among people and software agents representing people, the project deliverables will include a scalable, heterogeneous, ubiquitous and nomadic infrastructure for business processes. The resulting technology is being tested in applications that stress an intensive mobile collaboration among people as part of large, evolving business processes. Workflow and Process Automation: Concepts and Technology provides an overview of the problems and issues related to process and workflow technology, and in particular to definition and analysis of processes and workflows, and execution of their instances. The need for a transactional workflow model is discussed and a spectrum of related transaction models is covered in detail. A plethora of influential projects in workflow and process automation is summarized. The projects are drawn from both academia and industry. The monograph also provides a short overview of the most popular workflow management products, and the state of the workflow industry in general. Workflow and Process Automation: Concepts and Technology offers a road map through the shortcomings of existing solutions of process improvement by people with daily first-hand experience, and is suitable as a secondary text for graduate-level courses on workflow and process automation, and as a reference for practitioners in industry.

New technologies are revolutionising the way manufacturing and supply chain management are implemented. These changes are delivering manufacturing firms the competitive advantage of a highly flexible and responsive supply chain and manufacturing system to ensure that they meet the high expectations of their customers, who, in today's economy, demand absolutely the best service, price, delivery time and product quality. To make e-manufacturing and supply chain technologies effective, integration is needed between various, often disparate systems. To understand why this is such an issue, one needs to understand what the different systems or system components do, their objectives, their specific focus areas and how they interact with other systems. It is also required to understand how these systems evolved to their current state, as the concepts used during the early development of systems and technology tend to remain in place throughout the life-cycle of the systems/technology. This book explores various standards, concepts and techniques used over the years to model systems and hierarchies in order to understand where they fit into the organization and supply chain. It looks at the specific system components and the ways in which they can be designed and graphically depicted for easy understanding by both information technology (IT) and non-IT personnel. Without a good implementation philosophy, very few systems add any real benefit to an organization, and for this reason the ways in which systems are implemented and installation projects managed are also explored and recommendations are made as to possible methods that have proven successful in the past. The human factor and how that impacts on system success are also addressed, as is the motivation for system investment and subsequent benefit measurement processes. Finally, the vendor/user supply/demand within the e-manufacturing domain is explored and a method is put forward that enables the reduction of vendor bias during the vendor selection process. The objective of this book is to provide the reader with a good understanding regarding the four critical factors (business/physical processes, systems supporting the processes, company personnel and company/personal performance measures) that influence the success of any e-manufacturing implementation, and the synchronization required between these factors. · Discover how to implement the flexible and responsive supply chain and manufacturing execution systems required for competitive and customer-focused manufacturing · Build a working knowledge of the latest plant automation, manufacturing execution systems (MES) and supply chain management (SCM) design techniques · Gain a fuller understanding of the four critical factors (business and physical processes, systems supporting the processes, company personnel, performance measurement) that influence the success of any e-manufacturing implementation, and how to evaluate and optimize all four factors

This book integrates the material of the lecture series “Blockchain and Robotic Process Automation”, offered at Kiel University. The lecture series sheds light on current research topics on blockchain and robotic process automation (RPA) also in combination with business process management (BPM) or process mining. In this series, leading scientists and business experts give insights into the use of the blockchain technology and RPA. The seven contributions included offer a general introduction into blockchain and smart contracts, and detail the extraction of meaningful events for process mining from blockchain, challenges of blockchain-based collaborative business processes, executing Decision Model and Notation decisions on the blockchain, a blockchain-based solution for digital payment, blockchain use cases in transportation and logistics, and automatically identifying process automation candidates using natural language processing. Overall, the book provides researchers and graduate students with a basic introduction into blockchain, its applications, useful combinations of BPM and blockchain, and use cases for RPA.

Industrial Process Automation Systems: Design and Implementation is a clear guide to the practicalities of modern industrial automation systems. Bridging the gap between theory and technician-level coverage, it offers a pragmatic approach to the subject based on industrial experience, taking in the latest technologies and professional practices. Its comprehensive coverage of concepts and applications provides engineers with the knowledge they need before referring to vendor documentation, while clear guidelines for implementing process control options and worked examples of deployments translate theory into practice with ease. This book is an ideal introduction to the subject for junior level professionals as well as being an essential reference for more experienced practitioners. Provides knowledge of the different systems available and their applications, enabling engineers to design automation solutions to solve real industry problems. Includes case studies and practical information on key items that need to be considered when procuring automation systems. Written by an experienced practitioner from a leading technology company