Landscape of Architectural Design Decisions in Industry 4.0

Design of manufacturing system involves various architectural design decisions (ADDs), including software and hardware component allocation, production service composition, plant layout determination, and production planning. These ADDs gain significance in Industry 4.0 (I4.0) scenarios due to the frequent need for architecture synthesis to achieve adaptable and flexible production processes. Additionally, synthesizing ADDs in conjunction with each other increases the decisions’ impact on system quality attributes (QAs). The increasing importance of architecture synthesis and optimization (ASO) in I4.0 necessitates an overview of ADDs within this context. This paper expands on the previous work by creating a landscape of I4.0-related ADDs based on insights from the BaSys 4.0 research project series. The landscape describes relevant ADDs and their relationships, and suggests multi-dimensional ASO workflows. Mapping the ADD landscape to BaSys 4.0 research enhances idea generation and the exploration of existing solutions in ASO.