Volatile markets and increasing individualization of products require greater adaptability in
manufacturing resulting in continuous adaptation processes and an increased need for
commissionings throughout the life cycle of production machines. However commissioning is
currently highly specific complex and requires skilled personnel to perform many manual
operations due to machines' lack of adaptability. This is caused by rigid and hierarchical
control and automation structures as well as heterogeneity and incompatibility between
subsystems. In this work the flexibility and interoperability of fluid power manufacturing
systems is increased by applying the principles of service-oriented architectures to decouple
the traditionally rigid structures and fixed dependencies thus enabling self-organized and
largely automated commissioning. Therefore the machines are modularized into independent
Industrie 4.0 (I4.0) components which are modeled according to the concept of the Asset
Administration Shell. The components' properties and functionalities required for commissioning
are encapsulated and made available via communication interfaces. The entire commissioning is
coordinated by all I4.0 components decentrally each orchestrating its individual commissioning
sequence while considering system states and dependencies. A retrofit approach and seamless
integration of personnel enable a machine-guided commissioning on both intelligent and
conventional machines including passive components. The proof-of-concept is demonstrated and
validated on a hydraulic and pneumatic system. Compared to traditional commissioning the
presented approach improves the robustness and consistency of the process is less dependent on
personnel qualification and reduces time in many cases.
