Enterprise Interoperability

Interoperability for Agility, Resilience and Plasticity of Collaborations (I-ESA 14 Proceedings)

Matthieu Lauras, Martin Zelm, Bernard Archimède, Frédérick Benaben, Guy Doumeignts, Matthieu Lauras, Martin Zelm, Bernard Archimède, Frédérick Benaben, Guy Doumeignts

• Publisher: Wiley-ISTE
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781848217997
• eBook ISBN: 9781119081388
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Computer Engineering
• Index: Computer Science

Enterprises and organizations of any kind embedded in today's economic environment are deeply dependent on their ability to take part in collaborations. Consequently, it is strongly required for them to get actively involved for their own benefit in emerging, potentially opportunistic collaborative enterprise networks. The concept of "interoperability" has been defined by INTEROP-VLab as "The ability of an enterprise system or application to interact with others at a low cost in a flexible approach". Consequently, interoperability of organizations appears as a major issue to succeed in building on the fly emerging enterprise networks.

The International Conference on Interoperability for Enterprise Systems and Applications (I-ESA 2014) was held under the motto "interoperability for agility, resilience and plasticity of collaborations" on March 26-28, 2014 and organized by the Ecole des Mines d'Albi-Carmaux, France on behalf of the European Laboratory for Enterprise Interoperability (INTEROP-VLab).

On March 24-25, co-located with the conference eight workshops and one doctoral symposium were held in four tracks complementing the program of the I-ESA'14 conference. The workshops and the doctoral symposium address areas of greatest current activity focusing on active discussions among the leading researchers in the area of Enterprise Interoperability. This part of the conference helps the community to operate effectively, building co-operative and supportive international links as well as providing new knowledge of on-going research to practitioners. The workshops and doctoral symposium aimed at exploiting new issues, challenges and solutions for Enterprise Interoperability (EI) and associated domains of innovation such as Smart Industry, Internet-Of-Things, Factories of the Future, EI Applications and Standardisation.

These proceedings include the short papers from the I-ESA'14 workshops and the doctoral symposium. The book is split up into 9 sections, one for each workshop and one for the doctoral symposium. All sections were organized following four tracks: (1) EI and Future Internet / Factory of the Future; (2) EI Application Domains and IT; (3) EI Standards; (4) EI Doctoral Symposium. For each section, a workshop report is provided summarizing the content and the issues discussed during the sessions.

The goal of the first track was to offer a discussion opportunity on interoperability issues regarding the use of Internet of Things on manufacturing environment (Workshops 1 and 3) on one hand, and regarding the potential of innovation derived from the use of digital methods, architectures and services such as Smart Networks (Workshops 2 and 4) on the other hand. The second track focused on particular application domains that are looking for innovative solutions to support their strong collaborative needs. Thus, the track developed one workshop on the use of EI solution for Future City-Logistics (Workshop 5) and one on the use of EI solutions for Crisis / Disaster Management (Workshop 6). The third track studied the recent developments in EI standardization. Two workshops were dedicated to this issue. The first one has proposed to focus on the management of standardization (Workshop 8) and the second one has chosen to work on the new knowledge on standardization developments in the manufacturing service domain (Workshop 9). The last track, the doctoral symposium presented research results from selected dissertations. The session discussed EI knowledge issues, notably in terms of gathering through social networks or Internet of Things and of exploitation through innovative decision support systems.

Workshop 1

IoT Interoperability for Manufacturing: Challenges and Experiences

Report

Domenico Rotondi

TXT e-solutions SPA
70010 Valenzano (BA), Italy
[email protected]

The goal of I-ESA 2014 Workshop 1 titled IoT Interoperability for Manufacturing: challenges and experiences was to offer a discussion opportunity on interoperability issues when the Internet of Things is applied in the manufacturing environment.

Indeed the new industrial wave envisaged by the German Industry 4.0 programme and the General Electric promoted Industrial Internet, will see the development and deployment of intelligent devices, intelligent systems, and intelligent decision making to support a deeper integration of the physical world (machines, facilities, fleets, networks, etc.) with the digital world and virtual world.

As planned the workshop held on 24 March, 14:00-18:00 had two specific subsessions the 1st one addressing the technological and scientific challenges, while the 2nd one focused on the business aspects and test cases. Both sub-sessions had a short introduction and 3 specific presentations, followed by an open discussion.

Technological & scientific challenges session

1. Smart Industry Services in times of Internet of Things and Cloud Computing – J. Martin Serrano (DERI)

The presentation discussed the issues related to the in-field deployment of Smart Industry Services there have high demands for information interoperability and Linked Data to enable automated services composition. It is challenging to make smart systems capable to deal with such automation and enable complex operations in the absence of high degree of interoperability, as main requirement a large number of open services are defined by diverse and heterogeneous systems.

2. Designing and Executing Interoperable IoT Manufacturing Systems – Udo Kannengiesser (Metasonic)

This presentation proposed a conceptual framework for designing and executing sustainable, interoperable IoT-based manufacturing systems. It is motivated by the observation that manufacturing systems operate in a complex and dynamic environment, requiring constant evolution in order to be sustainable. It is based on a view of interoperable agent-based systems as the results of continuous re-design processes, addressing changing needs from the socio-technical, ecological or economic environment. The presentation introduced the Function-Behaviour-Structure (FBS) framework from design science to describe the fundamental processes involved in re-designing these systems.

3. IoT Research position in interoperability to address manufacturing challenges – Philippe Cousin (eglobalmark)

The presentation introduced discussion within the Internet of things research cluster (IERC) on interoperability challenges and in particular on semantic interoperability. It presented IoT challenges in technical and semantic interoperability also as defined in an EU position paper to be published in 2014. Business and manufacturing aspects were not been taken into account yet but there is an important need to include requirement and challenges from this area as there are a lot of common issues and additional values that experience in manufacturing can bring. In particular on semantic discovery and interoperability issues related to intangible assets and to products-services manufacturing ecosystems.

Business aspects & test cases session

I. Manufacturing integration challenge: top-down Interoperability and bottom-up Visibility toward a global information backbone – Van Khai Nguyen (Cadcamation)

This presentation was focused on introducing the drastic shift of the manufacturing paradigm from the mechanic-based system to the computerassisted system driven by knowledge. The end-to-end process integration toward the virtual factory could be realized if only based on a fully digital factory model composed by Product, Process, Resource and Plant and their live data throughout their lifecycle. Can standards help solve this “big picture” integration issue? Knowing that the top-down integration depends on application interoperability while the bottom-up integration starts on big data analytics!

II. An improved decision support system in factory shop-floor through an IoT approach – Pierluigi Petrali (Whirlpool)

This presentation discussed how the deployment of low cost automation and pervasive computing, transformed modern shop-floor into a big data generation engine. This huge quantity of data and information are rarely used in an effective way, both in real time and analytical post-processing. The speech discussed how an IoT approach could be designed to leverage this potential and how factories of the future should transform to maximize its effect.

III. Leveraging IoT Interoperability for Enhanced Business Process in Smart, Digital and Virtual Factories – June Sola (Innovalia)

This speech focused on quickly discussing how IoT technologies are enabling technologies for new Smart Manufacturing solutions. IoT Interopeability opens the opportunity to develop horizontal platforms that provide services and information that can be linked across multiple domains and collaborators. This new scenario with increased visibility, rich and abundant real-time information about many kinds of sensors and product information; are the perfect ground to build new business processes that contribute towards STEEP objectives of European re-industrialization. The presentation quickly discussed the new technical capabilities leveraged by IoT interoperability frameworks such as those developed as part of the ComVantage and FITMAN projects, as well as the new business models and business processes that can be implemented by manufacturing industries based on these new technical foundations.

The discussion focused some of the issues highlighted by the presentations, especially on the need to have supporting tools and methodologies that can help structuring and formalizing the evolution of the ICT manufacturing systems the deployment of IoT and the new business models request.

Smart Industry Services in Times of Internet of Things and Cloud Computing

Martin Serrano — Panos Dimitropoulos

Insight Centre for Data Analytics, NUI Galway, Galway City,Ireland
(Digital Enterprise Research Institute – DERI)
[email protected]

Sensap Microsystems, Athens City, Greece
[email protected]

ABSTRACT. This paper discusses about today’s industry transformation process towards smarter industry, by means of semantic technologies, Internet of things and cloud computing enabling more intelligent services. In the field of smart industry services there are high demands for using information interoperability to, for example, enable automated services composition and provide to the systems with intelligence. It is challenging to make smart systems capable to deal with such automation and enable complex operations in the absence of high degree of interoperability, as main requirement a large number of open services that must be integrated are defined by diverse and heterogeneous systems. By using Internet of things, heterogeneity issues can be overcome and by means of cloud computing, the distributed storage and large-scale processing required capacity addressed. A specific scenario from the OpenIoT framework is briefly discussed as an exemplar approach to support the transformation towards smarter industries in times of Internet of Things and Cloud Computing.

KEYWORDS: Cloud Computing, Internet of Things, Service Openness, Service Composition, Smarter Industry, Manufacturing.

1. Introduction – Internet of Things in the Manufacturing Industry

The benefits of the Internet of things (IoT) technologies in the area of manufacturing have motivated enormous progress and potentially are generating big economic impact. Based on the advent and deployment of RFID solutions, the Internet of things is being consolidated as the progress engine in the manufacturing sector and smart industry in general [Johnson02], [Rockwell04]. RFID deployments have exposed benefits associated with the reduction of labour and inventory costs, as well as other techno-economic benefits [Lee04], [Toffaletti10]. These benefits stem from the use of unique identification (including the ability for serialization), item level track and trace and enhanced track and trace, automated genealogy, elimination of the need for line-of-sight for data readability and, finally, historical tracing. This gave rise to a number of RFID deployments for manufacturing, which however tend to be isolated and focused on specific companies and cases studies [Brintrup08].

In general, RFID deployments in manufacturing cover all the different stages of the production process. For example, in the area of product design the EU FP6 PROMISE project [Promise04] has validated the RFID based linking of field usage data with the product design stage, with a view to improving future designs of products. In terms of production planning, RFID has been used to optimize production rescheduling [Hozak08], as well as dynamic improvements in production planning [Li06].

Several case studies have also focused on the production stage, mainly based on tracking and tracing of the production processes/steps towards improving quality [Huang07], scheduling and production decision making. Other (validated) RFID applications in manufacturing include storage management of perishable materials [Mills-Harris05], Internet-based inventory control [Zhou07], automating outbound shipments of a product after manufacturing [Wessel06], as well as reconfiguring machines in response to changed product configurations [Huang07]. Most of the above RFID-based solutions are custom system integrated on the basis of the specific manufacturing requirements (for various industries), and implemented in a way that data silos have been created rather than solutions derived from generalpurpose platforms using more large-deployed infrastructure (cloud).

IoT solutions for manufacturing have been gradually extended in order to include multiple sensors, actuators and devices of the shop floor in addition to RFID. Practical solutions have been developed as part of recent IoT projects (such as IoT@Work – see [Dürkop12] and [Gusmeroli12]), but also as part of IoT vendors’ offering. Cisco, SAP and Bosch have undertaken prominent commercial efforts leading the market and opening a new vision towards how the Internet in general will look like in the future.

A prominent example is advertised by Ford Focus Electric, which has built its own Internet of Things that enables communication and data exchange across devices within its vehicles, but also between in-vehicle devices and the company that built it. Ford has built a cloud-based secure server enabling vehicle owners to access a wide range of information via an on-board wireless module and a smartphone app or through Ford’s website. The vehicle information provided includes battery state of charge, overall efficiency, energy consumption, and braking regeneration. This infrastructure enables the issue of appropriate alerts in the case of problems. Furthermore, it provides the means for reporting the car’s location when it’s lost in a parking lot, being used by the owner’s teenage drivers, or stolen¹.

Cisco emphasizes on the convergence of factory systems with IT networks, as part of its wider portfolio of IoT-related solutions. On the other hand, SAP and Bosch promote the communication and interconnection of the numerous devices that comprise a plant for tasks such as manufacturing performance monitoring and predictive maintenance. Recently, solutions that combine IoT with the cloud (i.e., as promoted by OpenIoT) have been also reported [Soldatos12][Serrano13].

In general, IoT Cloud solutions are expected to play significant role in the manufacturing industry, as also proclaimed by the initiative Industry 4.0², a term introduced by representatives of German industry leaders, researchers, industry association, and unions.

2. Smarter Services by Service Composition in Cloud Environments

Currently it is more than evident the business benefits of cloud systems, apart of the reduction in maintenance cost the capacity to run more robust processes, cloud significantly increase systems flexibility to react to user service demands efficiently and by replacing, in a best practice manner, a plethora of proprietary software platforms with generic solutions supporting standardised development and scalable stacks over the Internet. Thus Cloud is ideally the best ecosystem for service composition. Research initiatives addressing this cloud-based design trend and inspired mainly by software oriente...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Preface
• Workshop 1: IoT Interoperability for Manufacturing: Challenges and Experiences
• Workshop 2: Future Internet Methods, Architectures and Services for Digital Business Innovation in Manufacturing, Health and Logistics Enterprises
• Workshop 3: ICT Services and Interoperability for Manufacturing
• Workshop 4: SmartNets – Collaborative Development and Production of Knowledge-Intensive Products and Services
• Workshop 5: Collaboration Issues for City-Logistics
• Workshop 6: Applications of Advanced Technologies in the Context of Disaster Relief and Crisis Management
• Workshop 8: Corporate Standardisation Management
• Workshop 9: Standardisation Developments for Enterprise Interoperability and the Manufacturing Service Domain
• Doctoral Symposium
• Index of Authors