Intelligent Production Planning and Control in the Cloud - towards a Scalable Software Architecture

Today's manufacturing companies are undergoing a transformation towards increased digitalization, automation of manufacturing processes and as well new forms of manufacturing organization and business models. While large-size manufacturing companies are able to follow the pace of such technological developments, small- to mid-size manufacturing companies (SME) often experience substantial problems in adopting technologically and organizationally far reaching concepts as for example propagated by Industry 4.0. In this paper we will discuss a particular problem area of SME - production planning and control - in the light of future manufacturing scenarios. We will outline typical requirements regarding production planning and control in small- to mid-size companies and will propose a scalable cloud-based architectural concept for an intelligent production planning and control (iPPC) software service that we are currently developing as a research prototype and demonstrator solution for industry.