Modeling and Executing Production Processes with Capabilities and Skills using Ontologies and BPMN

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel approach to modeling and executing modular production recipes using ontologies, BPMN, and skills, enabling adaptable manufacturing processes independent of specific plant layouts.

Contribution

It introduces a method to model production recipes abstractly with capabilities and skills, facilitating flexible execution in modular manufacturing systems.

Findings

Successfully demonstrated in a flexible manufacturing system

Enables binding of recipes to available resources dynamically

Supports complex process orchestration with IT functionalities

Abstract

Current challenges of the manufacturing industry require modular and changeable manufacturing systems that can be adapted to variable conditions with little effort. At the same time, production recipes typically represent important company know-how that should not be directly tied to changing plant configurations. Thus, there is a need to model general production recipes independent of specific plant layouts. For execution of such a recipe however, a binding to then available production resources needs to be made. In this contribution, select a suitable modeling language to model and execute such recipes. Furthermore, we present an approach to solve the issue of recipe modeling and execution in modular plants using semantically modeled capabilities and skills as well as BPMN. We make use of BPMN to model \emph{capability processes}, i.e. production processes referencing abstract descriptions of resource functions. These capability processes are not bound to a certain plant layout, as there can be multiple resources fulfilling the same capability. For execution, every capability in a capability process is replaced by a skill realizing it, effectively creating a \emph{skill process} consisting of various skill invocations. The presented solution is capable of orchestrating and executing complex processes that integrate production steps with typical IT functionalities such as error handling, user interactions and notifications. Benefits of the approach are demonstrated using a flexible manufacturing system.