Towards viewpoint-oriented engineering for Industry 4.0: A standards-based approach

Digitalised production based on networked, cyber-physical systems is the basis of the fourth industrial revolution (“Industry 4.0”). Yet, the adoption of this technology in practice remains a challenge for many companies. One of the main obstacles is the high complexity of Industry 4.0 applications, whose engineering requires multidisciplinary expertise that is usually fragmented among different stakeholders. This paper proposes a viewpoint-oriented approach for engineering Industry 4.0 applications, aiming to better adapt system models to the various stakeholders and concerns. The approach uses a combination of existing or emerging standards in the areas of systems and software engineering (ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010:2011) and Industry 4.0 (RAMI 4.0, IEC 61131-3). On this basis, the paper elaborates the notion of viewpoints with respect to their modelling and implementation including an industrial use case.