IMPLEMENTATION OF THE SMART FACTORY PARADIGM INTO TEXTILE MANUFACTURING

This paper presents a deep study of the Industrial Internet of Things technologies for the development and implementation of a Smart Factory software platform, which includes Energy Management (EnM) and Predictive Maintenance (PdM) systems. These systems are developed through the study of the product tracking and product-process interaction and further adjustment of these processes at Ratti Spa textile production plant. This paper presents one of the pilot cases of the Smart solutions for Cyber-Physical Production Systems (Smart4CPPS) initiative supported by the Intelligent Fabric Association (AFIL) from the Lombardy region of Italy. This dissertation aims to present the current status of the production plant and the suggestions for the fine-tuning of the processes in order to achieve the improvement of the production capability of the plant. As the processes and the technological assets are not ready for the introduction of Industry 4.0 solutions, necessary adjustments are suggested taking into account both human factor that affects the production workflow of the plant as well as the retrofitting of the assets. Along with the thesis, the working environment at the plant is described, indicating the general production processes and concepts concerning the production of the textile at Ratti. The study of the processes is performed through both process analysis and business mapping using Business Planning Model Notation (BPMN). The traceability solutions are studied in deep defining the critical points of the process. The suggestions to solve these issues are presented. After successful completion of the case study performed at the site of Ratti, the evaluation strategy for product tracking is defined. The final part of the thesis presents the architecture for Fincons Smart Manufacturing Platform as a tool for the monitoring of the status of the plant. It is derived from the study of well-known standards of the Industrial IoT industry (e.g. RAMI4.0, IIRA, IoT-A). The main parts of the architecture, including data collection, data processing, and reporting, are shown.