Factory-X: A sovereign data space for mechanical and plant engineering

A sovereign data space for mechanical and plant engineering

The mechanical and plant engineering industry faces a variety of challenges: a lack of resilience in supply chains, media disruptions in internal factory data and information flows or insufficient digitalization of processes and/or machines. Within the Manufacturing-X project family, the Factory-X lighthouse project explicitly addresses an industry that is of great importance to the German economy: mechanical and plant engineering. A data space is being created for sovereign participation in future-oriented technology for data sharing and collaborative data use.

The challenge

All approaches and solutions developed in Factory-X will be based on existing open standards and concepts such as AAS, OPC-UA, EDC, etc. where possible and appropriate. The overarching goal is to enable technical interoperability in a cross-industry, open data ecosystem. Factory-X builds on solutions created in the Catena-X Automotive Network, adapts them and/or creates industry-specific solutions for specific use cases. A core concern is to maintain interoperability between emerging domain-specific data spaces. It is clear that participants in a data ecosystem can also be components of other industry sectors. Standardization therefore plays a key role.

Our service

Fraunhofer ISST is co-developing the basic technological functionality of the data space in the so-called Factory-X kernel, which follows a decentralized architecture. The developments are made available in an open source repository. Fraunhofer ISST contributes its extensive expertise in this field to the project and contributes the results achieved to global standardization committees. The institute is also involved in the development of a solution for monitoring the condition of production plants.

The result

Factory-X creates an overall system that is designed to be highly scalable from the outset. This lays the foundation for German SMEs to participate in digitalization alongside large companies, thereby strengthening the competitiveness of the industry.

Internet

https://www.factory-x.org/

Funding

Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection BMWK
Funding reference: 13MX001F
Duration: 01/2024-06/2026

Factory-X