Combining Reference Models for Eliciting Requirements in Industry 4.0 Projects: A Demonstration Case

The industrial domain has faced an increase of complexity, mainly due to recent technological evolutions—from sensors, connectivity, platforms, etc. Main consortiums in this domain have proposed their reference models to ease development of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) or Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT); however, companies still struggle to design their architectures. This paper proposes how reference models can be combined for early design decisions, which impact how requirements are elicited. By combining not only I4.0/IIoT references such as IIRA and RAMI4.0, this paper describes the adoption of references at the cloud and at the edge level. The approach then uses model-based development in order to define scenarios, requirements, and architecture components and deployment. The approach is described using an IIoT research project as a demonstration case.