Current developments in globalized markets lead to an increasing need for flexible and reconfigurable production systems. Especially in the domain of robotics, fast and easy change of production equipment to fulfil new tasks can lead to a remarkable gain of productivity. But the effort for configuration, which today is required to integrate, exchange or remove devices of a robot work cell, is high and often exceeds the costs for a new production system. Thus reconfiguration is avoided as far as possible. A solution for this challenge is Plug & Produce, the equivalent to Plug & Play in production environments. This Paper presents an approach for data interpretation and exchange based on Industrial Ethernet networks to reduce time and effort for the reconfiguration of robot systems. With the presented method it is possible to setup a robot system more cost and time efficient and thus to make the use of automation economic even for small lot sizes.
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