Road4FAME partner Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum has presented the Road4FAME project, together with three other EU-funded projects in the area of cyber-physical systems (CPS) at a local event in the Federal State of Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The event was hosted by MicroTec Südwest -The Leading Cluster for Smart Solutions in Baden-Württemberg and comprised more than 90 participants from the IT- sector, sensor technologies, academia and public institutions. A number of high-level speakers from Bosch Sensor Tec GmbH, Software AG, EnOcean GmbH, Sick AG, Roche Diagnostics GmbH, Festo AG, IBM, DFKI – Research Center of Artificial Intelligence and FZI – Research Center for Information Technology presented their perspectives on and opportunities for CPS industry applications and business models.
In search for future IT architectures and services for manufacturing, it is evident that there is a current trend to convert factories into smart environments, hence the creation of Cyber-Physical Production Systems incorporating the entire manufacturing process.
Topics such as IT security, Big Data and awareness building for multidisciplinary cooperation were identified as key for the further development of CPS systems. Even though technical developments and ICT-based integration services are well advanced, there is a present implementation problem of CPS in real-life environments. In light of this current implementation lack, the need for increasing synergies between the areas of software, hardware and microelectronics has to be addressed in order to generate smart products and services.
The Road4FAME consortium will take on this spirit for its EU-Consultation event in May, where different communities – Internet of Things – CPS and Factories of the Future (FoF) will be invited. More info will soon be provided by the Road4FAME consortium.