Business process management for Industry 4.0 – Three application cases in the DFKI-Smart-Lego-Factory

Abstract

The advent of Industry 4.0 is expected to dramatically change the manufacturing industry as we know it today. Highly standardized, rigid manufacturing processes need to become self-organizing and decentralized. This flexibility leads to new challenges to the management of smart factories in general and production planning and control in particular. In this contribution, we illustrate how established techniques from Business Process Management (BPM) hold great potential to conquer challenges in Industry 4.0. Therefore, we show three application cases based on the DFKI-Smart-Lego-Factory, a fully automated “smart factory” built out of LEGO ® bricks, which demonstrates the potentials of BPM methodology for Industry 4.0 in an innovative, yet easily accessible way. For each application case (model-based management, process mining, prediction of manufacturing processes) in a smart factory, we describe the specific challenges of Industry 4.0, how BPM can be used to address these challenges, and, their realization within the DFKI-Smart-Lego-Factory.