When we think of DNA, we think of biology but the concept of DNA has become so culturally ingrained it is now colloquial - and the concept of a blueprint common to people may help revolutionize manufacturing.

A group at the Fraunhofer Institute have set out to decode "factory DNA".

It's a catchy term and their aim is to reduce the costs that arise whenever products or machines have to be changed, like to build a new model of car. The simple addition of a manipulator to a production line – or even just an operating system update – can create havoc, since the slightest of changes has an impact on the entire operation.

What is lacking is an intelligent link between components: the products being manufactured, the facilities doing the manufacturing, and the IT systems controlling things. A factory can function smarter if it can react more or less autonomously to any changes. An interim step was their work with Daimler AG on the "ProVis.Agent" production management system which manages around 2,000 machines in the plant where the C-Class Mercedes is made.

The key thing is to put in place intelligent links between the manufacturing facilities and the IT systems. Today, if a product is changed, the first step is to rearrange the production line. Only then is the IT system reconfigured manually and that is tedious and error-prone. Home computing underwent a similar development. In the past, you had to install the appropriate driver before you could connect a peripheral device. Nowadays, all you need to do is plug in a USB cable.

"And the trouble is, you only notice any mistakes when the line is back up and running," says Dr. Olaf Sauer, division director at the Fraunhofer Institute for Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation IOSB in Karlsruhe. Soon, he says, employees can simply plug in a data cable and that's that. The magic words are "plug and work".

A factory will often have many different kinds of machines built by many different companies, without standardized software or even a standard software language. The researchers  invented and patented a digital translator to take the various digital device descriptions and convert them into a standard machine language called Computer Aided Engineering Exchange (CAEX). This information is then sent to a special data storage system, which is also being patented by the Institute.

"Together, these two components are enough to make a simple USB-type solution feasible," says Sauer. "Once the data have started to flow, the computer can design a process control plan for the new production line unaided."

They showed proof of concept by putting together a miniature model facility comprising four components: a conveyor belt, a turntable, a testing device, and a further conveyor belt. Work has already started on a real-world application.