Developing Industrial CPS: A Multi-Disciplinary Challenge

Industrial Cyber–Physical System (CPS) is an emerging approach towards value creation in modern industrial production. The development and implementation of industrial CPS in real-life production are rewarding yet challenging. This paper aims to present a concept to develop, commercialize, operate, and maintain industrial CPS which can motivate the advance of the research and the industrial practice of industrial CPS in the future. We start with defining our understanding of an industrial CPS, specifying the components and key technological aspects of the industrial CPS, as well as explaining the alignment with existing work such as Industrie 4.0 concepts, followed by several use cases of industrial CPS in practice. The roles of each component and key technological aspect are described and the differences between traditional industrial systems and industrial CPS are elaborated. The multidisciplinary nature of industrial CPS leads to challenges when developing such systems, and we present a detailed description of several major sub-challenges that are key to the long-term sustainability of industrial CPS design. Since the research of industrial CPS is still emerging, we also discuss existing approaches and novel solutions to overcome these sub-challenges. These insights will help researchers and industrial practitioners to develop and commercialize industrial CPS.