# Smart Factory Web--A Blueprint Architecture for Open Marketplaces for Industrial Production
## 4 IIC Testbed Smart Factory Web  
The idea of the Smart Factory Web (SFW) originated in a testbed of the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) ([[https://www.iiconsortium.org/test-beds.htm](https://www.iiconsortium.org/test-beds.htm)]([https://www.iiconsortium.org/test-beds.htm](https://www.iiconsortium.org/test-beds.htm)), accessed on 15 July 2021) initiated by Fraunhofer IOSB and the Korean research partner Korea Electronics Technology Institute (KETI) in 2016. The primary goals of the Smart Factory Web testbed have always been:  
* Achieve a flexible adaptation of production capabilities and sharing of resources and assets in a web of Smart Factories to improve order fulfillment.
* Provide the technical basis for new business models with flexible assignment and sharing of production resources.  
Since its approval as an IIC Testbed in 2016, the Smart Factory Web Testbed has attracted participation by global IT players such as Microsoft and SAP to jointly leverage commercial business cases. There is also a link to the IIC testbed Negotiation Automation Platform led by NEC which applies the SFW for the registration and search for suitable manufacturing resources. Details of the SFW Testbed may be found in [13; 14].  
Figure 2 shows the overall workflow of the SFW. In the first step, \"Asset Registration and Search\", assets (manufacturing resources such as factories or machines) are registered on SFW with a description of their capabilities. Capabilities can be expressed in terms of what the asset produces (e.g., a computer mouse as a product) or in terms of how the asset produces, processes or transforms a product (e.g., 3D printing, or metal cutting and bending). Registered assets can be searched for on SFW on the basis of their capabilities as well as other metadata such as location. A client of the SFW may search for a set of candidate assets able to perform an overall manufacturing task, e.g., as represented by a supply chain or production diagram. The next step is to negotiate with the candidate assets on delivery terms and conditions such as price, time, quantity and quality. The negotiation procedure may be manual or supported by platforms such as the Negotiation Automation Platform ([[https://hub.iiconsortium.org/negotiation-automation-platform](https://hub.iiconsortium.org/negotiation-automation-platform)]([https://hub.iiconsortium.org/negotiation-automation-platform](https://hub.iiconsortium.org/negotiation-automation-platform)), accessed on 15 July 2021) of NEC (see Section 7.1) that uses AI techniques to facilitate the solution of the complex multi-constraint, multi-objective optimization problem. The result of this secondstep is the selection of assets to accomplish the overall manufacturing task. The third step in the workflow comprises the ordering, operation and monitoring of the manufacturing steps in the selected assets. Assets can provide operational reports to the SFW. These can be at machine level (e.g., for quality control or machine maintenance purposes), or simply give the status of the order processing. All three steps may require confidential, commercially sensitive information to be exchanged. The usage control for such information can be specified and implemented with the technologies of the International Data Spaces (IDS) Association [15], such as the IDS Connector [16].