Workshop: Platform economy for small and medium-sized businesses

Identifying and systematically exploiting new opportunities

Digital platforms have gained increasing economic importance in recent years. The rise of digital platforms also creates new opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), for example by opening up new distribution channels or acquiring new customer groups. At the same time, the new technology also gives rise to risks that must be taken into account.

• The workshop aims to make the opportunities and risks of the platform economy tangible so that the participants can understand them and map them to their specific constraints and their own needs.
• The contents of the workshop will be introduced to the participants through lectures and moderated discussions. The experimental environment "Smart Factory Web" serves as a tool to illustrate the workshop contents.
• The Smart Factory Web is an officially recognized testbed of the Industry IoT Consortium (IIC) since 2016.
• The workshop is aimed at managing directors, innovation, strategy and marketing managers of small and medium-sized enterprises

Industrie 4.0 Integration Platform

Combination of Industrie 4.0 Application Scenarios

• OCP - Order Controlled Production
• AF - Adaptable factory
• SAL - Self-organising adaptive logisitics
• VBS - Value Based Services

Technology Testbed

The IIC Testbed Smart Factory Web

In 2015, the Korea Electronics Technology Institute KETI and Fraunhofer IOSB have launched a project financed by the Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy (MOTIE). Based on Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) concepts, both partners are investigating integrated architectures and technologies for a web of distributed smart factories.

The Smart Factory Web aims to form a network of smart factories with flexible adaptation of production capabilities and sharing of resources and assets to improve order fulfilment.

• Flexible adaptation of production capabilities and sharing of resources/assets in a web of Smart Factories to improve order fulfillment
• Provide the technical basis for new business models with flexible assignment of production resources across factory locations
• Factory-to-factory interoperability with the industrial standards OPC UA and AutomationML
• Enable cross-site usage scenarios with secure Plug & Work functions and data analytics

The Smart Factory Web was accepted as IIC Testbed by the Industry IoT Consortium (IIC) in the course of its consortial meeting on 19 September 2016 in Germany. Since 2018, Microsoft Corporation and since 2020 SAP have joined the testbed consortium.

A full list of IIC testbeds can be found on IIC Testbed page.

The project creates values in three respects:

Business

• Create and validate new business models with flexible assignment of production resources across factory locations
• Help operators to manage factory resources efficiently with a view of all factories by using mashup, simulation and data analytic services
• Create new opportunities for SMEs, allowing flexible response to orders

Economic

• Reduce IT system integration and installation costs
• Faster engineering and ramp-up time of modules, machines and IT systems
• Improve equipment utilization

Societal

• Enabling development of an ecosystem of companies with new job profiles
• Enable cross-site collaboration of production and engineers

Technology Transfer

We offer trainings and workshops on international standards in:

• Industrie 4.0 / Asset Administration Shell (AAS)
• International Data Spaces (IDS)
• IEC 62541 OPC-UA (OPC Unified Architecture)
• IEC 62714 AutomationML (Automation Markup Language)
• OGC Sensor Things API