A STEP-compliant process planning system for CNC turning operations

Over the last 50 years, there have been many significant enhancements in computer aided systems which have influenced the CNC technology. One area that can be considered as a bottleneck to these CNC enhancements, and in particular to interoperability in CNC manufacturing is G&M part programming (ISO 6983). To overcome this bottleneck, the new standard ISO 14649, known as STEP-NC, is being developed to provide detailed information on component design, process planning and machining strategies to manufacture parts for the next generation of intelligent CNCs. This standard forms the basis of a new paradigm shift in the CNC domain to support digital modelling of CNC manufacturing resources. The research in this paper aims to identify major issues and develop new software tools to demonstrate the feasibility of interoperable CNC manufacturing based on STEP-NC. Besides the literature review on recent research and development on STEP-NC, this paper proposes a Process Planning System (PPS) with surface roughness chosen as the process planning objective. PPS consists of five modules: program reader, process planner, STEP-NC CAD viewer, STEP-NC CAM viewer and program writer. The reader is responsible for interpreting the geometry and the manufacturing data from a STEP-NC text file into a stored data list. The process planner uses this data list and enables users to evaluate surface roughness based on a mathematical model. Through the STEP-NC CAD viewer, the part geometry can be shown and via the STEP-NC CAM viewer the toolpath can be verified. Finally, the writer converts the stored STEP-NC data of the system into an updated STEP-NC file. An example case study component is used to demonstrate the PPS and show the interfacing of the STEP-NC data.     

Assessment of interoperability in cloud manufacturing

Cloud manufacturing is defined as a resource sharing paradigm that provides on-demand access to a pool of manufacturing resources and capabilities aimed at utilising geographically dispersed manufacturing resources in a service-oriented manner. These services are deployed via the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and its underlying IT infrastructure, architecture models, as well as data and information exchange protocols and standards. In this context, interoperability has been identified to be a key enabler for implementing such vertically or horizontally integrated cyber-physical systems for production engineering. Adopting an interoperability framework for cloud manufacturing systems enables an efficient deployment of manufacturing resources and capabilities across the production engineering life-cycle. In this paper, the authors investigate interoperability in the context of cloud manufacturing to identify the key parameters that determine whether or not a change-over from traditional cloud manufacturing to interoperable cloud manufacturing is financially viable for a given scenario of service providers and manufacturing orders. The results obtained confirm that interoperable cloud manufacturing systems cannot be considered a one-size-fits-all option. Rather, its applicability depends on a number of driving parameters that need to be analysed and interpreted to determine whether or not it provides a financially viable alternative to cloud manufacturing without an overarching interoperability framework.     

Knowledge framework for intelligent manufacturing systems

Nowadays, competition is experienced not only among companies but among global supply chains and business networks. There is a demand for intelligent world-class solutions capable of reinforcing partnerships and collaborations with an improved cross-cultural understanding. However due to the proliferation of terminology, organizations from similar business environments have trouble cooperating, and are experiencing difficulties exchanging electronically vital information, such as product and manufacturing data, even when using international standards. To address similar interoperability problems, the Intelligent manufacturing systems program () is providing an opportunity to develop industry-led R&D initiatives, building common semantics and integrated solutions. The SMART-fm project was one of those initiatives. It led to the development of the international standard for product data representation and exchange in the furniture sector (ISO 10303-236) and identified the challenge of semantic interoperability which is today a major challenge in modern enterprise integration. This paper presents a knowledge framework to address that challenge and make interoperable intelligent manufacturing systems a reality. It proposes to use semantically enriched international product data standards, and knowledge representation elements as a basis for achieving seamless enterprise interoperability.     

Interoperability and information discovery

In the context of information systems, there is interoperability when the distinctions between separate information systems are not a barrier to accomplishing a task that spans those systems. Interoperability so defined implies that there are commonalities among the systems involved and that one can exploit such commonalities to achieve interoperability. The challenge of a particular interoperability task is to identify relevant commonalities among the systems involved and to devise mechanisms that exploit those commonalities.

The present paper focuses on the particular interoperability task of information discovery. The Global Information Locator Service (GILS) is described as a policy, standards, and technology framework for addressing interoperable information discovery on a global and long‐term basis. While there are many mechanisms for people to discover and use all manner of data and information resources, GILS initiatives exploit certain key commonalities that seem to be sufficient to realize useful information discovery interoperability at a global, long‐term scale.

This paper describes ten of the specific commonalities that are key to GILS initiatives. It presents some of the practical implications for organizations in various roles: content provider, system engineer, intermediary, and searcher. The paper also provides examples of interoperable information discovery as deployed using GILS in four types of information communities: bibliographic, geographic, environmental, and government.     

Smart manufacturing process and system automation – A critical review of the standards and envisioned scenarios

Smart manufacturing is arriving. It promises a future of mass-producing highly personalized products via responsive autonomous manufacturing operations at a competitive cost. Of utmost importance, smart manufacturing requires end-to-end integration of intra-business and inter-business manufacturing processes and systems. Such end-to-end integration relies on standards-compliant and interoperable interfaces between different manufacturing stages and systems. In this paper, we present a comprehensive review of the current landscape of manufacturing automation standards, with a focus on end-to-end integrated manufacturing processes and systems towards mass personalization and responsive factory automation. First, we present an authentic vision of smart manufacturing and the unique needs for next-generation manufacturing automation. A comprehensive review of existing standards for enabling manufacturing process automation and manufacturing system automation is presented. Subsequently, focusing on meeting changing demands of efficient production of highly personalized products, we detail several future-proofing manufacturing automation scenarios via integrating various existing standards. We believe that existing automation standards have provided a solid foundation for developing smart manufacturing solutions. Faster, broader and deeper implementation of smart manufacturing automation can be anticipated via the dissemination, adoption, and improvement of relevant standards in a need-driven approach.     

New perspectives for the future interoperable enterprise systems

The rapid changes in today's socio-economic and technological environment in which the enterprises operate necessitate the identification of new requirements that address both theoretical and practical aspects of the Enterprise Information Systems (EIS). Such an evolving environment contributes to both the process and the system complexity which cannot be handled by the traditional architectures. The constant pressure of requirements for more data, more collaboration and more flexibility motivates us to discuss about the concept of Next Generation EIS (NG EIS) which is federated, omnipresent, model-driven, open, reconfigurable and aware. All these properties imply that the future enterprise system is inherently interoperable. This position paper presents the discussion that spans several research challenges of future interoperable enterprise systems, specialized from the existing general research priorities and directions of IFAC Technical Committee 5.3,¹ namely: context-aware systems, semantic interoperability, cyber-physical systems, cloud-based systems and interoperability assessment.     

A federated approach to develop enterprise interoperability

Interoperability is one of the requisite features for existing enterprises in the increasing competitive and complex global market. In the last decade, enterprise interoperability has been developed and prescribed by various kinds of frameworks, methods, and techniques. However interoperability development is still not mature enough to become a science. Meanwhile, it keeps evolving according to different business requirement and market environment. Nowadays, networked environment causes unpredictable dynamical situations, thus sustainable interoperability becomes a new research dimension in the interoperability of enterprise systems and applications domain. In the sustainable interoperability, enterprise interoperability dynamics is one of the focal topics. This dynamic approach also called federated is originated from Enterprise Interoperability Framework of INTEROP NoE, which aims to establish interoperability on the fly. This paper presents current state on federated approaches to develop enterprise interoperability dynamics. Based on this study, a novel Federated interoperability approach is proposed. It aims at bridging the gap from interoperability concepts to the implementation of interoperable enterprise information systems development. This approach reuses distributed simulation interoperability concepts to facilitate and coordinate the communication between heterogeneous distributed information systems of the enterprises. This simulation part has been implemented into a software platform. This platform is complaint with the latest version of the high level architecture that is a distributed communication standard. This approach also proposes a development lifecycle that intends to reuse existing information systems without recoding them but by adapting them to the new requirements of interoperability dynamics.     

NEGOSEIO: A framework for negotiations toward Sustainable Enterprise Interoperability

With the rise of the Internet, competitiveness is pressuring enterprises to build better solutions with fewer resources, following new trends and supporting new platforms and methodologies. On the other hand, legislation and regulations are updating frequently and deeply, and demanding rapid compliance from enterprises. These frequent business changes shake all the interoperability links between the enterprises, leading to periods of adaptation where business operation is not possible. The urge to rapidly regain interoperability often leads to unfounded, poorly-chosen solutions, which lead to inefficiency and rework. This paper proposes that the best way to have a strong interoperable environment is to perform constant, periodic maintenance operations in order to adapt enterprises to their surrounding ecosystem. It introduces NEGOSEIO, a framework that promotes continuous improvement and adaptation towards the management of interoperability on enterprise systems, and which has negotiations as a core mechanism to handle inconsistencies and solutions for the detected interoperability problems. Following this approach, enterprises shall become more adaptable to changes and external factors, consequently developing resilient and efficient interactions with its supply chain. The paper validates the framework with its application in a real business case of aerospace mission design on the European Space Agency (ESA).     

Dimensional metrology interoperability and standardization in manufacturing systems

Dimensional metrology is an important part of any manufacturing system. It consists of distinct components and requires a large, diverse, and interconnected knowledge base. How to pass information seamlessly with minimal cost and minimal data loss between different components of a dimensional metrology system is a major issue that concerns software and hardware vendors, standards developers, and customers. This paper focuses on the four main elements of a dimensional metrology system: product definition, measurement process plan definition, measurement process execution, and analysis and reporting of quality data. The activities and software modules that are involved in these elements are discussed. Key issues that cause interoperability problems are identified. These issues are discussed as they relate to the current situation in dimensional metrology standards development. The STEP (ISO 10303) standards are the product of an international effort to achieve interoperability for manufacturing systems. Extending STEP is an appropriate way to solve the interoperability problem within dimensional metrology systems. Further development of STEP standards is proposed so that Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing (GD&T) information already available in STEP can be linked with manufacturing feature information, measurement technology, and measurement results. The proposed STEP data model is an attempt to provide a standard that will support automatic measurement process plan generation for in-process on-machine measurement. Some case studies are under way to test the model.     

Interoperability requirements for automated manufacturing systems in construction

Multi-disciplinary software interoperability in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Operations industry is becoming a new and widely adopted business culture. Technical advances in interoperability architectures, frameworks, methods and standards during the last decade resulted in higher maturity of product and process models. Mature models, in effect, enable data exchange by an increasing number of software applications in the industry. This establishes trust in data exchange and results in the lower cost impact of inefficient interoperability. The negative cost impact increases with advancing life-cycle phase, from planning and design phase to construction phase and to operation and maintenance phase. Interoperability in the planning and design phase is most mature and well published, while interoperability in the construction phase and for automated manufacturing is less researched. This paper reviews state-of-the art automated manufacturing systems in construction and researches interoperability requirements for automated construction in context of the entire building lifecycle. Our research is based on experimental free-form clay building, designed with embedded simple HVAC components, and manufactured with additive layer technology. Conclusions provide valuable results for interoperability research and practice in construction projects with automated manufacturing systems in place.     

User model interoperability: a survey

Nowadays a large number of user-adaptive systems has been developed. Commonly, the effort to build user models is repeated across applications and domains, due to the lack of interoperability and synchronization among user-adaptive systems. There is a strong need for the next generation of user models to be interoperable, i.e. to be able to exchange user model portions and to use the information that has been exchanged to enrich the user experience. This paper presents an overview of the well-established literature dealing with user model interoperability, discussing the most representative work which has provided valuable solutions to face interoperability issues. Based on a detailed decomposition and a deep analysis of the selected work, we have isolated a set of dimensions characterizing the user model interoperability process along which the work has been classified. Starting from this analysis, the paper presents some open issues and possible future deployments in the area.     

Sustaining interoperability of networked liquid-sensing enterprises: A complex systems perspective

The emerging Liquid-Sensing Enterprise (LSE) concept provides manufacturing industrial networks with the required enablers to seamless interoperate and sustain its interoperability along the operational life cycle. Actually, the actual domain of enterprise information systems interoperability prospects the need for a new paradigm able to manage the network dynamics, facilitating adaptation along the lifecycle of an enterprise and the LSE network. The theory of complex systems provides a set of heuristics that can be applied to support the formalization of the LSE industrial network and its dynamics, demonstrating how they can be enabled and at the same time controlled to keep the overall level of interoperability stable. Hence, today there is technology suitable to implement such systems, capable to realize the LSE real, digital and virtual worlds. However, isolated, this technology cannot deliver the requirements for a self-sustainable LSE network. The authors propose a novel metaphor from complexity as a framework to model and implement the mechanism for sustaining interoperability in such networked environments. They identify the motivations for sustaining interoperability of networked liquid-sensing enterprises, having complex and adaptive systems as a vehicle to model and understand the relationships between enterprises and enterprise information systems in networked environments. Then, existing technology such as model-driven interoperability, agent-based or service oriented architectures, and knowledge management, is proposed to detail the conceptual solution for the sustainability of interoperability. An instantiation of the concept proposed is presented, which details the prototypal application elaborated in a real manufacturing scenario, implemented and validated during the European Project Factories of the Future IMAGINE.     

A survey of certified mail systems provided on the Internet

Over the last several years, an increasing number of certified mail systems have been put into place on the Internet. Governments, postal operators and private businesses now provide value-added electronic services that match the quality of postal certified mail. So far, there is no common view on the security properties that an electronic certified mail system has to provide. This applies to implementers and, surprisingly, also applies to the research community. All certified mail systems provided on the Internet are autonomous, and most are closed systems. However, recent developments call for cross-border certified mail communications that are similar to what we have become accustomed to in e-mail. This demand is emphasized by the ongoing implementation of the European Union (EU) Services Directive. The interoperability of certified mail systems is a new and challenging research field. The aim of this paper is to assess and discuss various standards and certified mail systems deployed on a large scale by drawing on the literature. This will facilitate interoperability efforts by offering a clearer view on the security properties that are actually applied in practice, as opposed to what is in research. We do this by classifying systems according to the security properties defined to date in the literature. Our findings show that standards and systems provided on the Internet have adopted many aspects of postal certified mail with respect to fairness, non-repudiation services and applied trust models. Nevertheless, there are still differences and incompatibilities, and the community must work toward common and interoperable systems. We encourage research into additional properties that could be applied in practice.     

Applications of agent-based systems in intelligent manufacturing: An updated review

Agent technology has been recognized as a promising paradigm for next generation manufacturing systems. Researchers have attempted to apply agent technology to manufacturing enterprise integration, enterprise collaboration (including supply chain management and virtual enterprises), manufacturing process planning and scheduling, shop floor control, and to holonic manufacturing as an implementation methodology. This paper provides an update review on the recent achievements in these areas, and discusses some key issues in implementing agent-based manufacturing systems such as agent encapsulation, agent organization, agent coordination and negotiation, system dynamics, learning, optimization, security and privacy, tools and standards.     

ONTO-PDM: Product-driven ONTOlogy for Product Data Management interoperability within manufacturing process environment

This paper proposes an approach for facilitating systems interoperability in a manufacturing environment. It is based on the postulate that an ontological model of a product may be considered as a facilitator for interoperating all application software that share information during the physical product lifecycle. The number of applications involved in manufacturing enterprises may in fact refer to the knowledge that must be embedded in it, appropriately storing all its technical data based on a common model. Standardisation initiatives (ISO and IEC) try to answer the problem of managing heterogeneous information scattered within organizations, by formalising the knowledge related to product technical data. The matter of this approach is to formalise all those technical data and concepts contributing to the definition of a Product Ontology, embedded into the product itself and making it interoperable with applications, thus minimising loss of semantics.     

Agent-Based Systems for Intelligent Manufacturing: A State-of-the-Art Survey

Agent technology has been considered as an important approach for developing distributed intelligent manufacturing systems. A number of researchers have attempted to apply agent technology to manufacturing enterprise integration, supply chain management, manufacturing planning, scheduling and control, materials handling, and holonic manufacturing systems. This paper gives a brief survey of some related projects in this area, and discusses some key issues in developing agent-based manufacturing systems such as agent technology for enterprise integration and supply chain management, agent encapsulation, system architectures, dynamic system reconfiguration, learning, design and manufacturability assessments, distributed dynamic scheduling, integration of planning and scheduling, concurrent scheduling and execution, factory control structures, potential tools and standards for developing agent-based manufacturing systems. An extensive annotated bibliography is provided.     

A generic interoperability testing framework and a systematic development process for automated interoperability testing

Interoperability is a prerequisite to allow users to access systems implemented by different vendors seamlessly. A good baseline to achieve interoperability is the implementation of a common set of standards. However, this is often not sufficient as different implementations of a standard are not necessarily interoperable. Therefore, different implementations of systems need to be assessed for interoperability by applying interoperability testing. In this article, we present a generic framework that enables automated interoperability testing with message checks, which assess the compliance of messages exchanged between systems. The goal of this framework is the provision of a basic functionality of interoperability test entities, the definition of a generic interoperability test environment, and guidelines for the specification of automated interoperability tests. The framework also considers aspects related to interoperability testing including verdicts, automation, and limitations of the system under test. Through the application of the framework, interoperability of systems can be assessed, systems can be validated, and standards can be improved. In addition, we present a systematic development process for automated interoperability tests to formalize the development and specification of an interoperability test system. We also consider aspects and critical issues, which are important for the development of a complete interoperability test system. The framework and the process are language and system technology independent. We present their application in a case study that includes interoperability tests for the Internet Protocol Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) using the Testing and Test Control Notation Version 3 (TTCN-3).     

Integrated modeling within a Hydrologic Information System: An OpenMI based approach

This paper presents a prototype software system for integrated environmental modeling that provides interoperability between the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI) Hydrologic Information System (HIS) and the Open Modeling Interface (OpenMI). The primary motivation for making these two systems interoperable is that the CUAHSI HIS has a primary focus on hydrologic data management and visualization while the OpenMI has a primary focus on integrated environmental modeling. By combining the two systems into a single software application, it is possible to create an integrated environmental modeling environment that scientists and engineers can use to understand and manage environmental systems. Using standards to achieve the steps required to find, gather, integrate, and analyze hydrologic data allows for a wide community of groups to participate because it establishes key rules and protocols that must be followed in order to add to the overarching system. The key contribution of this work, therefore, is an investigation of two standards in the community and exploring ways to provide interoperability between them. HydroModeler is a software implementation of our work and provides an OpenMI-compliant modeling environment embedded within the CUAHSI HIS HydroDesktop software system. We describe the design and implementation of this prototype software system, and then present an example application in which evapotranspiration is modeled using OpenMI components that consume HIS time series data for input. Finally, we conclude with a summary of our experience exploring the potential for interoperability between data and modeling systems, and suggest ways in which future development can better facilitate connections between the various subsystems needed within an integrated environmental modeling system.     

Semantic communications between distributed cyber-physical systems towards collaborative automation for smart manufacturing

Machine-to-machine (M2M) communication is a crucial technology for collaborative manufacturing automation in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)-empowered industrial networks. The new decentralized manufacturing automation paradigm features ubiquitous communication and interoperable interactions between machines. However, peer-to-peer (P2P) interoperable communications at the semantic level between industrial machines is a challenge. To address this challenge, we introduce a concept of Semantic-aware Cyber-Physical Systems (SCPSs) based on which manufacturing devices can establish semantic M2M communications. In this work, we propose a generic system architecture of SCPS and its enabling technologies. Our proposed system architecture adds a semantic layer and a communication layer to the conventional cyber-physical system (CPS) in order to maximize compatibility with the diverse CPS implementation architecture. With Semantic Web technologies as the backbone of the semantic layer, SCPSs can exchange semantic messages with maximum interoperability following the same understanding of the manufacturing context. A pilot implementation of the presented work is illustrated with a proof-of-concept case study between two semantic-aware cyber-physical machine tools. The semantic communication provided by the SCPS architecture makes ubiquitous M2M communication in a network of manufacturing devices environment possible, laying the foundation for collaborative manufacturing automation for achieving smart manufacturing. Another case study focusing on decentralized production control between machines in a workshop also proved the merits of semantic-aware M2M communication technologies.     

Semantic-based QoS management in cloud systems: Current status and future challenges

Cloud Computing and Service Oriented Architectures have seen a dramatic increase of the amount of applications, services, management platforms, data, etc. gaining momentum for the necessity of new complex methods and techniques to deal with the vast heterogeneity of data sources or services. In this sense Quality of Service (QoS) seeks for providing an intelligent environment of self-management components based on domain knowledge in which cloud components can be optimized easing the transition to an advanced governance environment. On the other hand, semantics and ontologies have emerged to afford a common and standard data model that eases the interoperability, integration and monitoring of knowledge-based systems. Taking into account the necessity of an interoperable and intelligent system to manage QoS in cloud-based systems and the emerging application of semantics in different domains, this paper reviews the main approaches for semantic-based QoS management as well as the principal methods, techniques and standards for processing and exploiting diverse data providing advanced real-time monitoring services. A semantic-based framework for QoS management is also outlined taking advantage of semantic technologies and distributed datastream processing techniques. Finally a discussion of existing efforts and challenges is also provided to suggest future directions.