Internet of things (IoT) in manufacturing can be defined as a future where every day physical objects in the shop floor, people and systems (things) are connected by the Internet to build services critical to the manufacturing. Smart factory is a way towards a factory-of-things, which is very much aligned with IoT. IoT not only deals with smart connections between physical objects but also with the interaction with different IT tools used within the digital factory. Data and information come from heterogeneous IT systems and from different domains, viewpoints, levels of granularity and life cycle phases causing potential inconsistencies in the data sharing, preventing interoperability. Hence, our aim is to investigate approaches and principles when integrating the digital factory, IT tools and IoT in manufacturing in a heterogeneous IT environment to ensure data consistency. In particular this paper suggests an approach to identify what, when and how information should be integrated. Secondly it suggests integration between IoT and PLM platforms using semantic web technologies and Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) standard on tool interoperability.
While design of production systems based on digital models brings benefits, the communication of models comes with challenges since models typically reside in a heterogeneous IT environment using different syntax and semantics. Coping with heterogeneity requires a smart integration strategy. One main paradigm to integrate data and IT systems is to deploy information standards. In particular, ISO 10303 STEP has been endorsed as a suitable standard to exchange a wide variety of product manufacturing data. One the other hand, service-oriented tool integration solutions are progressively adopted for the integration of data and IT-tools, especially with the emergence of Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration whose focus is on the linking of data from heterogeneous software tools. In practice, there should be a combination of these approaches to facilitate the integration process. Hence, the aim of this paper is to investigate the applications of the approaches and the principles behind them and try to find criteria for where to use which approach. In addition, we explore the synergy between them and consequently suggest an approach based on combination of them. In addition, a systematic approach is suggested to identify required level of integrations and their corresponding approaches exemplified in a typical IT system architecture in Production Engineering.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.