Cyber-Physical Production Systems - The Opportunities and Challenges beyond the Hype

Industry 4.0 promotes a vision of a fully interconnected ecosystem of systems, machines, products and stakeholders. This requires systems to be perfectly, vertically and horizontally, integrated. This level of integration enables future autonomous systems to interact and self-regulate, towards optimal response, while generating value for their stakeholders. Despite research and development efforts, the implementation of Industry 4.0’s vision is far from the current industrial practice. Vaguely defined concepts confuse small and large companies. The whole thing is currently more of a technologically rooted philosophical paradigm shift in the design and operation of large technical systems then the turn key solution that many tend to or make believe. This shift also has important societal implications that must be timely addressed. It creates unprecedented opportunities while including many challenges. This paper, concentrating on the technological aspects, highlights opportunities and challenges paying more attention to system design principles than to candidate supporting technologies.