Cluster of Excellence Internet of Production

The Internet - in its importance as a worldwide socio-technical network - has revolutionized the availability of data and knowledge. With the concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) the idea was transferred to the physical world. The direct application of the IoT approach to production is currently not possible, since production technology is characterized by considerably more parameters but less available data than other big data domains. Although there are large amounts of data available in modern production technology, they are neither easily accessible, interpretable, nor networked in such a way that knowledge can be generated from them. The Internet of Production (IoP) is based on the vision to enable a new level of cross-domain collaboration by providing semantically adequate and context-related data from production, development and usage in real time and adapted granularity. The central scientific approach is to provide digital shadows as application-specific aggregated and multi-perspective data sets. In the Cluster of Excellence, a conceptual reference infrastructure will be designed and implemented to enable the generation and use of digital shadows.

To implement the Internet of Production, Aachen's renowned scientists from production engineering, computer science, materials science and economics have formed themselves. Together, they address interdisciplinary challenges such as the integration of reduced production models into data-driven machine learning with the goals of cross-domain knowledge building and context-adaptive actions. The Internet of Production provides the basis for new methods of holistic work by developing and improving engineering methods and processes. This requires an integrated approach in production engineering. Aachen as the starting point for the Internet of Production is characterized by a unique breadth and an outstanding reputation in production research.