Using Physical Factory Simulation Models for Business Process Management Research

The production and manufacturing industries are currently transitioning towards more autonomous an
intelligent production lines within the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0). Learning Factories as small scale physical models of real shop floors are realistic platforms to conduct research in the smart manufacturing area without depending on expensive real world production lines or completely simulated data. In this work, we propose to use learning factories for conducting research in the context of Business Process Management (BPM) and Internet of Things (IoT) as this combination promises to be mutually beneficial for both research areas. We introduce our physical Fischertechnik factory models simulating a complex production line and three exemplary use cases of combining BPM and IoT, namely the implementation of a BPM abstraction stack on top of a learning factory, the experience-based adaptation and optimization of manufacturing processes, and the stream processing-based conformance checking of IoT-enabled processes.