scope:

The primary scope of application of this guideline is discrete manufacturing. Discrete manufacturing is expected to fulfil the demand on adaptability. It refers to all levels of the factory - from the sensor at manufacturing level and visualisation of a production at manufacturing control level through to the calculation of key indicators at company management level. Today, diverse heterogeneous software systems exist at every level, which operate with interfaces that are normally proprietary and need to be adapted or re-programmed for each modification. IT systems of the digital factory, in which the planning data of a factory is stored and managed, are provided upstream of those IT systems that control and monitor the operational processes of a factory. Often, changes are introduced here and then transferred to the real world. For some time now, these system worlds between planning and near-production IT have merged.

In practice, modifications implemented in production plants do not only result in physical "moving" of plants within a factory, but rather in an increasing number of software adaptations, i.e.

• due to software embedded in field devices that are connected via the field bus, for example in sensors, actuators, drives, valves, etc.

• on the controlling software of machines and systems, for example programmable logic controllers (PLCs),

• on the software that is at a higher level than the direct system controls, for example MES.

Until now, we have worked on a pyramid-like structure of information technology in production companies (Figure 1) [7].

The structure of the "automation pyramid" originally resulted from the high volume and the requirement of the generated information, and on the time requirements of these at different levels, for example process-oriented information processing in real-time at manufacturing level, batch-oriented or user-oriented information processing at company management level. As a result of growing penetration of information technology at all hierarchical levels of the factory, it is now beginning to crystallise that the information flows across all levels of the factory are increasing, resulting in the need of defining a new reference model of industrial information architecture [7], which shall reflect the three dimensions of vertical and horizontal integration and the integration over the life cycle of production systems. [7] describes a few contributions to this information model, namely for the following aspects: At manufacturing control level, powerful software systems in the form of Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) have established themselves without which it would not be possible to control the complexity of the interconnected production processes. In terms of enabling the required adaptability, its systematic connection with systems of the Digital Factory (lifecycle dimension) and automation technology at field level (vertical integration dimension) is required, which shall be implemented by using syntax and semantics that are valid across the various levels [7].

The data contents described in this guideline are to contribute to facilitating adaptability in the nearproduction software components in a standardised manner across the various levels of the factory and for the respective objects. Special focus is placed on the generic character of the structure and the contents of the data to be exchanged between machines and MES so as not to delimit the scope unnecessarily.