Smart Manufacturing: Speaking the Same Language 

The Fraunhofer Institute, Europe’s largest application-oriented research organization, is doing research to digitally link all aspects of the manufacturing process with the goal of reducing down time and problems associated with manufacturing more than one design on the same line.

By “Decoding Factory DNA,” as the Institute puts it, an intelligent link between manufacturing equipment and IT systems can be created on the factory floor, allowing changes to be made in essentially a “plug-n-play” format.

The challenge at the Institute is dealing with the various software that each piece of equipment runs on. To solve this problem, the Institute created and patented a digital translator which converts the digital descriptions into a standard machine language. This technology is expected to forge a path for the creation of highly intelligent, smart manufacturing factories in the near future.