Retrofitting a factory automation system to address market needs and societal changes

This paper presents the steps taken to retrofit a real multi robot factory automation testbed to achieve increased flexibility, reconfigurability and awareness of assets including energy-relevant, safety-relevant and quality-relevant parameters. Most changes made can be replicated on similar discrete manufacturing settings, as the leveraging technology is Web Services deploying Service Oriented Architecture. The newly introduced technologies and devices can greatly help to address both needs imposed by the market (e.g. fast product customization) and by the society (e.g. the energy savings desired in the manufacturing domain by 2020).