CDL MINT: Christian Doppler Laboratory for Model-Integrated Smart Production

The Christian Doppler Laboratory (CDL) Model-Integrated Smart Production (CDL-MINT) contributes to the foundations of software and systems modeling in general and in particular for smart Cyber Physical Production Systems (CPPS).

Production systems are becoming more and more software-intensive, thus turning into cyber-physical production systems (CPPS). This is also highlighted and reflected by Industrie 4.0, which is seen as the next industrial revolution. As with the previous industrial revolutions, new demands have to be satisfied, e.g., virtually exploring variants, finding optimal solutions, and making dynamic runtime decisions, to allow companies to be more competitive. As a consequence, however, the complexity of CPPS is increasing. To deal with this increased complexity, modeling is a promising approach in this context. However, current modeling foundations and practices are still lacking behind the emerging requirements of Industrie 4.0. First of all, models are still defined and used in isolation within a specific discipline, although it is known that CPPS are inherently multi-disciplinary systems and their optimization has to take this into account. Moreover, models are considered as static entities, mostly used as system blueprints in the early design phases, but they are basically neglected in later lifecycle phases, which drastically limits their value during the systems‘ operation for propagating important runtime information back to engineering.

Goals
The Christian Doppler Laboratory (CDL) Model-Integrated Smart Production (CDL-MINT) contributes to the foundations of software and systems modeling in general and in particular for CPPS. The main goal is to reach a revolutionary new notion of models, so-called liquid models, which implies going from isolated and static descriptions to cooperative and evolutionary prescriptions. By doing so, we stimulate a paradigm shift in modeling knowledge creation, dissemination, and evaluation leading to truly model-integrated smart production.

Results
The work of CDL-MINT is divided into two project modules, whereby each will be conducted with one industrial partner. The topics of the two modules are all concerned with model-integrated smart production, thus using the notion of liquid models as a key research driver. The module Cooperative Simulation Megamodels is focusing on the cooperative nature of models by providing schemes for managing related models and their co-simulations in order to optimize production systems. The module Reactive Model Repositories is dealing with the extended usage of models also during operation time by providing a novel kind of model repository which allows for runtime monitoring, model mining, and design model enhancement. By this, both modules contribute to the notion of liquid models by providing (i) cooperation, and (ii) evolution mechanisms for models in general and in particular for the domain of CPPS. Consequently, these modules enable end-to-end integration of engineering which provides end-to-end transparency in real-time.

Duration
01/2017-12/2023

Project Website
CDL MINT

Contact
Manuel Wimmer
Radek Sindelar
Sabine Sint

Administration
Andrea Mitter

Publications