The digitisation of industry (Industry 4.0) not only enables the optimisation of processes or production, but also the exploitation of new value creation potential through the development of platform-based ecosystems. Such systems enable the networking and composition of services and processes that were previously designed and controlled independently of one other. This composition helps create synergy effects and achieve a continuous data flow without media disruptions. However, in practice this implementation often fails because a link was not provided for during the development phase of the proprietary individual services and can therefore only be achieved with a high degree of individual development effort - especially when this involves cross-company cooperation.

The PRODISYS project pilots the procedure for creating prototypical industrial platform ecosystems with connected and combinable services for improved planning and coordination of production and connected areas. Alongside the conceptual reorientation of service systems to bundle and organise services, it also addresses the integration of plant, order and production data. Suitable models and digital representations are required both for the connection of services and for the integration of data. In addition to the technical challenges, the productivity factors are also identified during implementation by the practice partners and the value-added flows are analysed on the basis of the resulting models.

In addition to fortiss GmbH as coordinator of the consortium, the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg with the Chairs for Information Systems (WI1) and Manufacturing Automation and Production Systems (FAPS) and the HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management via its Center for Leading Innovation & Cooperation (CLIC) are involved as research partners in the project, which is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with a total volume of 3 million euros. Audi AG, Continental Automotive GmbH, Crossbar.io, SAP SE and XENON Automatisierungstechnik GmbH are also involved in the project as application partners, and enable the piloting and research in practice. The research project is running from July 2017 to June 2020.