Development of ubiquitous manufacturing platform with event-driven smart gateway

Abstract

The recent advancement in computer-integrated manufacturing related technologies (e.g. internet of things, information technology and service-oriented architecture) has prompted the need for a novel effective, efficient and economical automatic identification and data collection solution for manufacturing scenario. Accurate and timely manufacturing front line information is essential to guarantee the functions and performance of enterprise information systems (EISs) deployed, and is the basis of entire information flow in enterprise. Both researchers and commercial players have made great contributions to the fields of enterprise information systems and data capturing technologies. However, real-time data processing and on-line knowledge support to seamlessly link up the EISs and shop floor front-line operations are still open to discuss. This research discusses an overall solution for manufacturing real-time field data capturing, processing and disseminating strategy in ubiquitous manufacturing environment, named Ubiquitous Manufacturing Platform (UMP).

This research discusses the design and development of UMP, which is an innovative framework to integrate Auto-ID hardware devices and software services for facilitating manufacturing shop floor production management. The proposed event-driven UMP aims to enable shop floor real-time visibility and traceability, and bridge the gap between frontline operations and management level activities (e.g. planning and scheduling). On one hand, production management objectives are fulfilled through defined and configured services, and eventually carried out at shop floor operating sites with managed Auto-ID devices. On the other hand, the generated shop floor real-time field data is captured as events, which are then processed and aggregated to leveled meaningful information to satisfy various information requirements for different roles in an enterprise. UMP is expected to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of production supervision and decision making, and to reduce the production disturbances.

This research has made the following achievements and contributions. Firstly, a scalable and reconfigurable infrastructure for manufacturing real-time field data capturing, processing and disseminating, named UMP, is developed based on several core technologies to achieve seamless dual-way connectivity and interoperability among enterprise application systems, shop floor, production line and workstation levels.

Secondly, an innovative information processing mechanism, namely critical event model, is designed to connect the real-time field data in manufacturing processes to implied business context information. Based on this model, real-time field data is able to be organized in various abstract levels, so as to be useful for making adaptive enterprise decisions.

Thirdly, a lightweight devices middleware solution named Gateway Operating System (GOS), is designed and proposed to support UMP. GOS enables a unified system interface for manufacturing companies to deploy and manage their heterogeneous Auto-ID devices. Furthermore, it allows multiple back-end manufacturing applications to share the same Auto-ID infrastructure, and shields the application systems from the implementation detail of enabling hardware devices.

Fourthly, the gateway event processing procedure is presented to implement the engine for shop floor real-time field data capturing, processing and disseminating. Based on the Auto-ID infrastructure, it combines the concept of event and software agents into workflow management to realize real-time reconfigurable ubiquitous manufacturing.