ABSTRACT
The objective of the Production harmonizEd Reconfiguration of Flexible Robots and Machinery (PERFoRM) architectural principles is to support a new generation of digitalized, harmonized, and, consequently, agile manufacturing systems based on the application of plug-and-produce concepts, thus enabling the production of smaller lot sizes, more customized products, shorter lead times, and shorter time to market. The approach aims to introduce a common reference architecture for Agile and Reconfigurable Manufacturing Control and Automation systems that will be applied to four diverse use cases.
The main architectural principles were validated at the industry-like environments of the test beds (MTC 2018; SmartFactory 2018), prior to the actual deployment at the end users' sites. The work performed on the test beds focused on the verification and validation of the new developed technologies to confirm that user requirements are met and to de-risk solutions before they are deployed in operational environments. The demonstrators were used to test and optimize the solutions developed using the PERFoRM approach and to provide realistic and valuable information for the development of migration strategies.
The aim of the work described in this chapter is to give an overview of the elements that were validated and present the results of the testing and demonstration activities, performed in test beds.
