Tying Together Solutions for Digital Manufacturing: Assessment of Connectivity Technologies & Approaches

Abstract

This paper concerns the development of low-cost solutions to address challenges in digital manufacturing (DM). Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs) are a promising approach for addressing the requirements of a low-cost DM architecture. Interaction between services in a SOA is facilitated by a connectivity technology, i.e., a framework for interoperable data exchange between heterogeneous participants. We review a variety of connectivity technologies according to their suitability for use in an SME manufacturer's production environment, and we assess how they have been integrated into past architectures. We then provide insights into an incremental and modular architecture for manufacturing SMEs.

Six-Gear Roadmap towards the Smart Factory

“…Although Industrial Ethernet has been the de-facto backbone of many plant floor connectivity, it is worth to mention that the emergence of 5G technologies are a key enabler of the next generation communication technologies operating at much higher frequencies and larger bandwidth [61]. Key communication protocols for data representation that are widely used in industrial environment are OPC-UA, DPWS, UPnP, MT-Connect, DDS and other key messaging transfer protocols includes MQTT, JSON, XML, HTML, HTTP, CoAP, REST [62].…”

“…The IT technology market is already providing solutions to overcome the complexities of IT and OT integration to solve the challenges of interoperability (using open and multiple standards and protocols for communication), data security (using best practice CS standards and protocols) and scalability (via cloud ready solution) [54,62,[74][75][76]. Table A2 in the Appendix A shows a list of leading Industry 4.0 ready IT platforms used in the manufacturing industry that use best practices connectivity and integration architecture that combine elements of IIoT and MOM/MES.…”

“…Case studies in [78,79] shows examples of manufacturers implementation of such option. Other option combines industrial code-less IT systems with built-in software bridges, modules and communication protocols that are capable of connecting and integrating data across the manufacturing operation layers [62]. Examples of such IT systems are OPC Router [80] and Kepserver [81].…”

An Application of HRI in Low-Cost Digital Manufacturing

“…Our ultimate goal is the adoption of low-cost digital solutions by manufacturing SMEs, who need to keep development and legacy integration costs low and for solutions to be simple to deploy. To address these joint needs, we proposed in [1] the use of off-the-shelf and/or open source technologies, and a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). A SOA is a framework for the composition of complex systems from autonomous, interoperable services, facilitating digitalisation and flexible integration of legacy machines and robots by "bolting on" low-cost technologies.…”

“…The instance can be reached incrementally, e.g. by (1) wrapping CouchDB in oneM2M, (2) wrapping the field device in a DDS service, (3) bridging DDS and OPC-UA, etc.…”