# Reference Models for Digital Manufacturing Platforms
## 1 Introduction  
There is a strong demand for new system architectures able to address the requirements emerging from globally interconnected manufacturing structures [1]. The high demand for high demands of variability, efficient supply chain, and optimized energy consumption [2] and the rapid growth of the industrial Internet and cyber-physical technologies have led to the development of several new paradigms for manufacturing in recent years. Industry 4.0 (4.0) is expected to generate new business models, as well as increase the efficiency of manufacturing processes [3]. I4.0 proposes making use of relevant disruptive technologies that enable autonomous communications among multiple industrial devices distributed throughout a factory and on the Internet [4]. Examples of these new paradigms include smart manufacturing, cyber-physical production systems, I4.0, cloud manufacturing, and social manufacturing [5]. The digital economy, defined by fundamental changes in the characteristics of information, computing, and communications, is now the preeminent driver of economic growth, social change, and sharing economy [6; 7]. In the digital economy, platform models have strongly proliferated over the past years, reducing transaction costs and facilitating exchanges that otherwise would not have occurred [8]. Digital platforms facilitate transactions between organizations and provide services and/or products on the top of technological building blocks used as a foundation to deal with competitive pressures [9; 10]. In light of this, digital manufacturing platforms enable the provision of services associated with collecting, storing, processing and delivering data. These data are either describing the manufactured products or are related to the manufacturing processes and assets that makemanufacturing happen (material, machine, enterprises, value networks, and--not to forget--factory workers) [11]. Digital Manufacturing was coined as one of the core strategies of the European Manufacture vision and strategic agenda towards the knowledge based production [12]. Currently, the rise of digital platforms for manufacturing is a reality as they play a key role in supporting collaborative manufacturing, service, analysis, and forecasting processes in business networks. Moreover, they provide flexibility to enterprises by fast and simple orchestration of services and applications [13]. From an economic viewpoint, digital platforms are restructuring ever-more parts of the global economy. In many cases, they have disrupted the existing organization of economic activity by resetting entry barriers, changing the logic of value creation and value capture, repackaging work, and/or often repositioning power in the economic and network system [14]. From a commercial viewpoint, reference [15] states that competition in the platform economy will be fierce, especially as companies from adjacent sectors extend beyond their traditional markets. Moreover, it is also highlighted that digital platforms disrupt and dominate markets to create communities of enormous scale, offering new forms of innovation and value creation and this requires the definition of appropriate business and commercial models focused on digital manufacturing platforms' value proposition. Based on this, it seems that the creation of digitally enabled platforms for manufacturing will continue to evolve over the following years, which indicates that reference models will be necessary to facilitate this evolution providing reference approaches to locate use cases in an appropriate way saving time and costs. Reference models, such as the Reference Architecture Model for Industry 4.0 (RAMI 4.0) 1, provide a solution-neutral reference architectural model for applications that make use of Internet of Things (IoT), big data analytics, and other technologies advancements in manufacturing processes, what is known as smart manufacturing, intelligent manufacturing, or simply Industry 4.0.