Cyber-Physical Production Systems in Settings with Limited Infrastructure: Blind Spots and Implications

During the last decade production innovation was mainly focused on connectivity aspects. The vision of smart factories running on software, that uses collected machine data, has become true but foremost for leading industrial companies in highly developed countries. Apart from these, production can also be found in non-industrialized craft professions as well as in less developed countries. As digitalization does not necessarily require an industrial or developed setting the latter could possibly benefit from it as well. Socio-cyber-physical production systems have been used to describe the interdependencies of linked production systems but usually focus on highly developed regions as well as for industrial applications. This paper lines out similarities and differences for each case, introduces the concept of cyber-physical production systems (CPPS) and its extension to socio-CPPS (SCPPS), which emphasizes the role of human workers in the production environment. The relation between industrial, non-industrial production and innovations is examined. Furthermore, the widening of SCCPS concepts for non-industrial production is discussed.