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3.3 Future Factory Concepts 169
the location, product status or costumer information can help to identify the
situation and to configure the filter mechanisms.
While the consumer world already takes advantage of context sensitive
applications, industrial applications are still missing. In contrast to the consumer
world the relevant context information is distributed over a large number
of IT systems like enterprise resource planning, plant data collection or product
lifecycle management systems and even sensor systems e.g., to localize the
human operator. The key to the realization of context sensitive data tailoring
is the effective implementation of data krakens interfacing all the different
systems and extracting the relevant context information. The context sensitive
assistance requires the integrated access to every layer of the company and so
requires the existence of a nonhierarchical factory internet.
From the point of view of the human machine interface augmented reality
interfaces offer a lot of potential. Notably tablet computers with integrated
cameras, high computing power and the capability to wireless networking
are very well suited to implement such applications. The camera can be used
to identify objects; the networking capability enables the access of various
content data bases and the high computing power enables the superposition of
the identified context to the real image. A SmartFactory KL survey showed that
about 78% of the participants can imagine the utilization of augmented reality
in the context of factory automation. Major application fields are maintenance,
logistics and training [8].
3.3.4 Lessons Learned
The mentioned technology concepts have been implemented by a number of
SmartFactory KL partners from industry within public and private projects. The
following conclusions reflect the experience gained in those projects since the
founding of the technology initiative in 2004.
From the pure technological point of view huge advances have been made
in recent years. Auto ID technologies, Wireless communication standards and
Ethernet based field busses have reached a high level of maturity. With well
accepted standards like OPC-UA, specifications and reference implementations
of non realtime M2M communication are being developed. Field devices
as well as MES and ERP software systems implementing OPC-UA are offered.