In this paper, a cloud-based collaborative manufacturing network platform is proposed. The platform enables supply network partners situated in different geographic locations to have access to the OEM's planning data allowing to carry out purchase, production and deliver planning activities simultaneously and collaboratively, on any operating system. The proposed solution integrates the OEMs' legacy systems and IoT devices, offering optimization functionality and collaboration tools. The benefit of the presented approach is that there is no need for the OEMs to invest in complex IT infrastructures. This results in substantial saving in cost, production management time and, also, significant improvement in OEMs' agility to changes in a supply network environment.

Adaptive Human Machine Interfaces (HMI) are used to improve the interaction between users and interfaces by taking into account the state of the user and the system. This paper describes a solution that enables the generation of adaptable HMIs applying web application technologies in the Android Operating Systems. The solution is based on an Adaptive Human Machine Interface Engine, and in this article one of the main components, called HMI Builder, is presented. The HMI Builder uses different technologies to retrieve information from the system in order to generate adaptive elements in the HMI. This approach is a flexible solution that can be incorporated in most of the Android devices in the market; including smartphones and tablets. The proposed approach was implemented and tested in a manufacturing scenario by creating adaptive interfaces for different types of user based on the user roles, tasks, the state of the system and the context. Finally, the technical implementation details, result and future work are presented and discussed.

This paper presents two implementations of condition monitoring of significant information in a typical machine utilized in the pulp and paper industry, a circuit oil lubrication system. The two discussed alternatives confront a traditional centralized monitoring approach against a Web Service based approach. Advantages and disadvantages of one choice over the other are considered. Both solutions make possible condition based and predictive maintenance as opposed to cyclic maintenance (the approach utilized before these improvements came into place in the presented industrial setting). The presented developments led to vital financial and time savings.

The last years we are witnessing of rapid advances in the industrial automation domain, mainly driven by business needs towards agility and supported by new disruptive technologies. Future factories will rely on multi-system interactions and collaborative cross-layer management and automation approaches. Such a factory, configured and managed from architectural and behavioural viewpoints, under the service-oriented architecture (SOA) paradigm is virtualized by services exposed by its key components (both HW and SW). One of the main results of this virtualization is that the factory is transformed into a “cloud of services”, where dynamic resource allocation and interactions take place. This paper presents a view on such architecture, its specification, the main motivation and considerations, as well as the preliminary services it may need to support.