Proposal of an Automation Solutions Architecture for Industry 4.0

New automation technology solutions that incorporate an Industry 4.0 perspective for the integration of production environments are increasingly being considered by industry organizations. The concept behind these solutions is to break the paradigm of automation layers based on their functions instead of their hierarchical level. In this sense, a new architecture is needed to address the needs that arise from the perspective of Industry 4.0. The purpose of this article is to propose a new architecture based on integrated functions to meet the current requirements of production systems. An analysis of case studies of automation solutions deployed in real-world production systems is performed and the results can be used for further discussions on this research topic.