Requirements for an AI-enabled Industry 4.0 Platform - Integrating Industrial and Scientific Views

Intelligent manufacturing is one goal of smart industry/ Industry 4.0 that could be achieved through Artificial Intelligence (AI). Flexibly combining AI methods and platform capabilities, such as dynamic offloading of code close to production machines, security or interoperability mechanisms are major demands in this context. However, recent Industry 4.0 software platforms fall short in various of these demands, in particular in upcoming ecosystem scenarios, e.g., when data or services shall be shared across platforms or companies without vendor lock-ins. The aim of the funded Intelligent Industrial Production (IIP) IIP-Ecosphere project is to research concepts and solutions for ‘easy-to-use’ AI in Industry 4.0 and to demonstrate the results in a prototypical software platform. Core questions are which demands shall drive the development of such a platform and how a feasible set of requirements can be determined that balances scientific and industrial interests. In this paper, we discuss our approach on eliciting requirements in this context for two interlinked requirements perspectives, a usage and a functional view. In summary, we collected 67 usage view activities / scenarios and 141 top-level requirements with 179 detailing sub-requirements. About 35% of the requirements have so far been realized in a prototype and some of the identified concepts are currently being taken up by a standardization initiative for edge devices in Industry 4.0.