The fourth industrial revolution promises a further automation of process control by cyber-physical systems. The individual products gain the ability for controlling their production and logistics themselves. By coordinating themselves they can jointly achieve business objectives. This logical decomposition reduces the complexity of cross-company process control significantly. Thus, even exceptions on short notice can be dealt with in real-time. In operation, the required artificial intelligence will usually not be implemented on the active objects. Instead, adequate software platforms for the so-called Industry 4.0 are required. This article investigates the requirements for such platforms and describes how they can be implemented.
