This part of the project focuses on defining the factory as a machine, a system in which the important components can be described as models that represent resources over time, in the Lean way.

We will identify the requirements for the three models that represent the Smart factory:

• Lean Accounting, which variables and relations represent the economic model of the company that owns the factory
• Lean Manufacturing, which variables and relations represent the way of producing
• Cost Engineering, which variables represent the product cost.

The experimental development aims at making the whole factory a big measuring machine, by developing the following prototype infrastructure:

1. Edge Computing network nodes and intelligent gateways
2. Cyber Physical System composed of:
   • measuring machine
   • modelling machine
   • reasoning and running machine
   • universal interface machine.

The prototypes will be applied in industrial end users representing the real world.

The HOME project wants to make available to the people working in the plant, the information necessary to manage the processes in real-time.

This human function that manages the factory becomes Smart if supported by the adequate analysis, supporting and alerting tools.

The Cyber Physical System will be the central system to support factory management, since it will provide:

• real-time support for decision making

• interfaces for machines, robots and applications

• complete automation for the factory subsystems that do not require human intervention (e.g. Energy, Climate, Sub-services).

The idea of tackling the factory as a big measuring machine, is an approach that comes back cyclically, because it fills the need for an overview of every correlated phenomenon: economic, productive, social and organisational.