Smart Appliances and RAMI 4.0: Management and Servitization of Ice Cream Machines

The widespread adoption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is profoundly changing manufacturing. Several Internet-of-Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0 solutions deployed in production environments have pushed for standardization efforts, most notably Reference Architecture Model Industrie 4.0 (RAMI 4.0), typically focusing on smart factory environments. However, ICT evolution is also enabling novel smart appliance scenarios, where relatively cheap machines, connected and integrated, are deployed outside the typical industrial environment with a wide range of stakeholders involved. The paper reports about a real-world use case composed of more than 12000 ice cream machines connected worldwide and shows how, anticipating the state-of-the-art, the underlying design of the ICT platform presents many interesting similarities with RAMI 4.0. The integration of appliances in a smart value chain enables to develop novel services for different stakeholders, ranging from ice cream manufacturer and maintenance technicians to ice cream shop owners and final consumers. The important synergies with RAMI 4.0 and the extensive on-the-field validation make the proposed solution a compelling reference application, from which to draw useful and generally applicable guidelines for the development of future Industry 4.0 smart appliance platforms.