A migration methodology for factories digital transformation

Over the last years, several technologies and control systems have been de-veloped towards the decentralization of automation control architectures for cyber-physical production systems. Nevertheless, only few of these technol-ogies are already in use. To support their adoption in brownfield production sites migration strategies and business case evaluations are necessary. This paper presents a migration approach and a business case evaluation method-ology tailored to the migration of legacy automation systems towards the In-dustry 4.0 paradigm. The proposed approach aims to evaluate opportunities and mitigate the risks of migration from technical, operational, human and business perspectives. The methodology follows an iterative approach start-ing from the definition of the current situation of the factory and the identi-fication of business goals aiming at evaluating a set of possible migration paths and selecting the optimal one according to a cost-benefit analysis. The paper concludes with an exemplary application of the methodology in a real industrial environment, developed within the FAR-EDGE European Project.