A federated information system framework for vertical integration

Abstract

The convergence of operational and information technology in the era of Industry 4.0 has significantly increased the volume of data being generated on the manufacturing shop floors. Current research trends have focused on integrating this data with information present throughout the different systems in manufacturing facilities from Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to Manufacturing Execution System (MES) software, otherwise known as vertical integration. More specifically, previous works have looked at aggregating this data being read from Open Platform Communication Unified Architecture (OPC UA) servers by utilizing centralized aggregation servers to create information systems. This article, however, proposes a framework that adopts a federated information system designed to fulfill the manufacturing industry’s requirements and is capable of connecting to different OPC UA servers and storing the data within knowledge graph-based information models. GraphQL servers are also utilized in this system for easy accessibility of information by users. This system provides modularity, scalability, and interoperability to supplement the capabilities of information systems previously implemented. A prototype was also developed in this article for a federated information system for a boiler monitoring system.