Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Towards the Digital Factory: A Microservices-Based Middleware for Real-to-Digital Synchronization

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Microservices

Abstract

In the last few years, research and industrial communities have spent a considerable effort in the designing and early commissioning of digitalized manufacturing environments with the primary objective of achieving a new automation paradigm, more flexible, responsive to changes, and safe. This work presents the architecture and discusses the applications through a real-life case study, of a microservices-based middleware supporting the next generation of smart-factory applications with particular attention paid to simulation tools. The proposed platform aims at being among the first solutions capable of empowering industrial cyber-physical systems (CPSs), providing an environment that streamlines the management of digital twins along the whole plant life cycle. The platform features a distributed architecture based on microservices and big data best practices; it supports the definition of CPS digital representations and the handling of data conveyed from the shop floor for real-to-digital synchronization.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 129.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 169.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. N. Alshuqayran, N. Ali, R. Evans, A systematic mapping study in microservice architecture, in 2016 IEEE 9th International Conference on Service-Oriented Computing and Applications (SOCA) (2016), pp. 44–51

    Google Scholar 

  2. A. Barni, A. Fontana, S. Menato, M. Sorlini, L. Canetta, Exploiting the digital twin in the assessment and optimization of sustainability performances, in 2018 International Conference on Intelligent Systems (IS) (2018), pp. 706–713

    Google Scholar 

  3. Z. Bi, L.D. Xu, C. Wang, Internet of things for enterprise systems of modern manufacturing. IEEE Trans. Ind. Inf. 10(2), 1537–1546 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. V. Brandstetter, J.C. Wehrstedt, A framework for multidisciplinary simulation of cyber-physical production systems. IFAC-PapersOnLine 51(11), 809–814 (2018)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. T. Cerny, M.J. Donahoo, M. Trnka, Contextual understanding of microservice architecture: current and future directions. ACM SIGAPP Appl. Comput. Rev. 17(4), 29–45 (2018)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. M. Ciavotta, M. Alge, S. Menato, D. Rovere, P. Pedrazzoli, A microservice-based middleware for the digital factory. Proc. Manuf. 11, 931–938 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  7. M. Ciavotta, A. Bettoni, G. Izzo, Interoperable meta model for simulation-in-the-loop, in 2018 IEEE Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPS) (2018), pp. 702–707

    Google Scholar 

  8. A. Ciuffoletti, Automated deployment of a microservice-based monitoring infrastructure. Proc. Comput. Sci. 68, 163–172 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. N. Dragoni, S. Giallorenzo, A.L. Lafuente, M. Mazzara, F. Montesi, R. Mustafin, L. Safina, Microservices: yesterday, today, and tomorrow, in Present and Ulterior Software Engineering (Springer, Berlin, 2017), pp. 195–216

    Book  Google Scholar 

  10. N. Dragoni, I. Lanese, S.T. Larsen, M. Mazzara, R. Mustafin, L. Safina, Microservices: how to make your application scale, in Perspectives of System Informatics - 11th International Andrei P. Ershov Informatics Conference, PSI 2017, Moscow, Russia, June 27–29, 2017, Revised Selected Papers (2017), pp. 95–104

    Google Scholar 

  11. R. Drath, A. Luder, J. Peschke, L. Hundt, AutomationML-the glue for seamless automation engineering, in IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation, 2008. ETFA 2008 (2008), pp. 616–623

    Google Scholar 

  12. L. Ferrarini, C. Veber, 3d graphic simulation of flexible manufacturing systems with day dream daemon and 3dcreate, in 2008 6th IEEE International Conference on Industrial Informatics (2008), pp. 1401–1406

    Google Scholar 

  13. I. Fette, A. Melnikov, The websocket protocol. Technical Report (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  14. M. Grieves, J. Vickers, Digital twin: mitigating unpredictable, undesirable emergent behavior in complex systems, in Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Complex Systems (Springer, Berlin, 2017), pp. 85–113

    Google Scholar 

  15. E. Hozdić, Smart factory for industry 4.0: a review. Int. J. Mod. Manuf. Technol. 7(1), 28–35 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  16. M. Httermann, DevOps for Developers (Apress, New York, 2012)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  17. J. Innerbichler, S. Gonul, V. Damjanovic-Behrendt, B. Mandler, F. Strohmeier, Nimble collaborative platform: microservice architectural approach to federated IoT, in 2017 Global Internet of Things Summit (GIoTS) (2017), pp. 1–6

    Google Scholar 

  18. N. Jazdi, Cyber physical systems in the context of Industry 4.0. 2014 IEEE Automation, Quality and Testing, Robotics (2014), pp. 2–4

    Google Scholar 

  19. K. Khanda, D. Salikhov, K. Gusmanov, M. Mazzara, N. Mavridis, Microservice-based IoT for smart buildings, in 2017 31st International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications Workshops (WAINA) (2017), pp. 302–308

    Google Scholar 

  20. J. Lee, Smart factory systems. Informatik-Spektrum 38(3), 230–235 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. T. Lodderstedt, D. Basin, J. Doser, SecureUML: a UML-based modeling language for model-driven security, in International Conference on the Unified Modeling Language (Springer, Berlin, 2002), pp. 426–441

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  22. Y. Lu, Industry 4.0: a survey on technologies, applications and open research issues. J. Ind. Inf. Integr. 6, 1–10 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. J. Manyika, M. Chui, B. Brown, J. Bughin, R. Dobbs, C. Roxburgh, A.H. Byers, Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition, and Productivity (McKinsey Global Institute, New York, 2011)

    Google Scholar 

  24. N. Marz, J. Warren, Big Data: Principles and Best Practices of Scalable Realtime Data Systems (Manning Publications, Shelter Island, 2015)

    Google Scholar 

  25. G.D. Maso, D. Rovere, M. Ciavotta, M. Alge, D2.2 MAYA functional models framework. H2020 MAYA Project Deliverable (2018). https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e5b573e49c&appId=PPGMS

  26. R.K. Mobley, An introduction to Predictive Maintenance (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 2002)

    Google Scholar 

  27. G.E. Modoni, E.G. Caldarola, M. Sacco, W. Terkaj, Synchronizing physical and digital factory: benefits and technical challenges. Proc. CIRP 79, 472–477 (2019)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. F. Montesi, J. Weber, Circuit breakers, discovery, and API gateways in microservices. arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.05830 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  29. S. Newman, Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems (O’Reilly Media, Newton, 2015)

    Google Scholar 

  30. A. Parrott, L. Warshaw, Industry 4.0 and the Digital Twin (Deloitte University Press, New York, 2017), pp. 1–17

    Google Scholar 

  31. A. Razzaq, A. Hur, H.F. Ahmad, M. Masood, Cyber security: threats, reasons, challenges, methodologies and state of the art solutions for industrial applications. 2013 IEEE Eleventh International Symposium on Autonomous Decentralized Systems (ISADS) (2013), pp. 1–6

    Google Scholar 

  32. C. Richardson, Microservices Patterns (Manning Publications, Shelter Island, 2018)

    Google Scholar 

  33. R. Rosen, G. Von Wichert, G. Lo, K.D. Bettenhausen, About the importance of autonomy and digital twins for the future of manufacturing. IFAC-PapersOnLine 48(3), 567–572 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. A.-R. Sadeghi, C. Wachsmann, M. Waidner, Security and privacy challenges in industrial internet of things. Proceedings of the 52nd Annual Design Automation Conference - DAC 15, vol. 17 (2015), 1–6

    Google Scholar 

  35. D. Taibi, V. Lenarduzzi, C. Pahl, Processes, motivations, and issues for migrating to microservices architectures: an empirical investigation. IEEE Cloud Comput. 4(5), 22–32 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. D. Thangavel, X. Ma, A. Valera, H.-X. Tan, C. Keng-Yan Tan, Performance evaluation of MQTT and CoAP via a common middleware, in 2014 IEEE Ninth International Conference on Intelligent Sensors, Sensor Networks and Information Processing (ISSNIP) (2014), pp. 1–6

    Google Scholar 

  37. K. Thramboulidis, D.C. Vachtsevanou, A. Solanos, Cyber-physical microservices: an IoT-based framework for manufacturing systems, in 2018 IEEE Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPS) (2018), pp. 232–239

    Google Scholar 

  38. K. Witkowski, Internet of Things, big data, industry 4.0 - innovative solutions in logistics and supply chains management. Proc. Eng. 182, 763–769 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  39. L.D. Xu, W. He, S. Li, Internet of Things in industries: a survey. IEEE Trans. Ind. Inf. 10(4), 2233–2243 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. C. Yang, W. Shen, X. Wang, Applications of Internet of Things in manufacturing, in Proceedings of the 2016 IEEE 20th International Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design, CSCWD 2016 (2016), pp. 670–675

    Google Scholar 

  41. S. Yun, J.-H. Park, W.-T. Kim, Data-centric middleware based digital twin platform for dependable cyber-physical systems, in 2017 Ninth International Conference on Ubiquitous and Future Networks (ICUFN) (2017), pp. 922–926

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgement

This work has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreements Nos 678556 and 723094.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Milano-Bicocca, Milano, Italy

    Michele Ciavotta

  2. Technology Transfer System S.r.l., Milano, Italy

    Giovanni Dal Maso & Diego Rovere

  3. University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland, Manno, Switzerland

    Radostin Tsvetanov & Silvia Menato

Authors
  1. Michele Ciavotta
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Giovanni Dal Maso
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Diego Rovere
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Radostin Tsvetanov
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Silvia Menato
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michele Ciavotta .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Distributed Adaptive Systems (DAS) Research Unit, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento, Italy

    Antonio Bucchiarone

  2. Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark

    Nicola Dragoni

  3. Distributed Systems Group, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria

    Schahram Dustdar

  4. Dept of Computer Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Patricia Lago

  5. Institute of Technologies and Software Development, Innopolis University, Innopolis, Russia

    Manuel Mazzara

  6. Institute of Technologies and Software Development, Innopolis University, Innopolis, Russia

    Victor Rivera

  7. Innopolis University, Innopolis, Russia

    Andrey Sadovykh

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Ciavotta, M., Maso, G.D., Rovere, D., Tsvetanov, R., Menato, S. (2020). Towards the Digital Factory: A Microservices-Based Middleware for Real-to-Digital Synchronization. In: Bucchiarone, A., et al. Microservices. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31646-4_11

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31646-4_11

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-31645-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-31646-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation