Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) are becoming more automated and aimed to be as efficient as possible by enabling integration between their operations and Information Technology (IT) resources. In combination with production automation, these systems need to identify their assets and the correlation between them; any potential threats or failures alert the relevant user/department and suggest the appropriate remediation plan. Moreover, identifying critical assets in these systems is essential. With numerous research and technologies available, assessing IT assets nowadays can be straightforward to implement. However, there is one significant issue of evaluating operational technology critical assets since they have different characteristics, and traditional solutions cannot work efficiently. This study presents the necessary background to attain the appropriate approach for monitoring critical assets in CPSs' Situational Awareness (SA). Additionally, the study presents a broad survey supported by an in-depth review of previous works in three important aspects. First, it reviews the applicability of possible techniques, tools and solutions that can be used to collect detailed information from such systems. Secondly, it covers studies that were implemented to evaluate the criticality of assets in CPSs, demonstrates requirements for critical asset identification, explores different risks and failure techniques utilised in these systems and delves into approaches to evaluate such methods in energy systems. Finally, this paper highlights and analyses SA gaps based on existing solutions, provides future directions and discusses open research issues.

Chatty Factories is a three-year investment by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) through its programme for New Industrial Systems. The project explores the transformative potential of placing IoT-enabled data driven systems at the core of design and manufacturing processes. The research focuses on the opportunity to collect data from IoT-enabled sensors embedded in products during real-time use by consumers, explores how that data might be immediately transferred into usable information to inform design, and considers what characteristics of the manufacturing environment might optimise the response to such data. The project also considers implications arising for skills development in the education sector as well as ethics in manufacturing. In this paper we provide a vision for future “Chatty Factories”.