research-article

Enabling Industry 4.0 Communication Protocol Interoperability: An OPC UA Case Study

Authors:

Subash Kannoth,

Frank Schnicke,

Pablo Oliveira AntoninoAuthors Info & Claims

ECBS 2021: 7th Conference on the Engineering of Computer Based Systems

Article No.: 14, Pages 1 - 9

https://doi.org/10.1145/3459960.3459977

Published: 27 May 2021 Publication History

Abstract

Rapid advances in digitalization are leading the automation and manufacturing sector towards the fourth industrial revolution also known as Industry 4.0, whose main goal is to realize the changeable production processes, which is currently expensive and effort-intensive. The Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture (OPC UA) is an established and well-known communication protocol in the industrial domain. The Reference Architecture Model Industry4.0 (RAMI 4.0) proposes OPC UA as the core communication protocol among assets such as machines, robots, and appliances. Despite the key role of OPC UA in Industry 4.0, there is still a lack of technical guidance on how to integrate OPC UA with other communication protocols, especially with legacy devices that communicate through proprietary protocols. To address this challenge, we propose a solution that is characterized by a set of communication primitives, a platform-independent type system and an intermediate language. We also evaluate the overhead created through integration in terms of the round-trip time and message size imposed by metadata for abstraction. We have implemented the proposed approach in reference Industry 4.0 projects, and in this paper, we report our experiences in integrating OPC UA in a homogeneous communication system comprised of Create, Read, Update, Delete and Invoke primitives which improves the protocol interoperability and reduces integration effort.

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Cited By

Tzimas EPapazetis GBenardos PVosniakos G(2024)Design and Development of a Flexible Manufacturing Cell Controller Using an Open-Source Communication Protocol for InteroperabilityMachines10.3390/machines1208051912:8(519)Online publication date: 30-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.3390/machines12080519
Chavez VWollert J(2024)Towards an Ontology-Based Generic Interface for Field Device Capabilities in Automation Systems2024 IEEE 20th International Conference on Intelligent Computer Communication and Processing (ICCP)10.1109/ICCP63557.2024.10793022(1-6)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCP63557.2024.10793022
Tran TRuppert TEigner GAbonyi J(2022)Retrofitting-Based Development of Brownfield Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0 SolutionsIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2022.318249110(64348-64374)Online publication date: 2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3182491
Show More Cited By

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cover image ACM Other conferences

ECBS 2021: 7th Conference on the Engineering of Computer Based Systems

May 2021

168 pages

ISBN:9781450390576

DOI:10.1145/3459960

Copyright © 2021 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Publication History

Published: 27 May 2021

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Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung

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ECBS 2021

ECBS 2021: 7th Conference on the Engineering of Computer Based Systems

May 26 - 27, 2021

Novi Sad, Serbia

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Cited By

Tzimas EPapazetis GBenardos PVosniakos G(2024)Design and Development of a Flexible Manufacturing Cell Controller Using an Open-Source Communication Protocol for InteroperabilityMachines10.3390/machines1208051912:8(519)Online publication date: 30-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.3390/machines12080519
Chavez VWollert J(2024)Towards an Ontology-Based Generic Interface for Field Device Capabilities in Automation Systems2024 IEEE 20th International Conference on Intelligent Computer Communication and Processing (ICCP)10.1109/ICCP63557.2024.10793022(1-6)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCP63557.2024.10793022
Tran TRuppert TEigner GAbonyi J(2022)Retrofitting-Based Development of Brownfield Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0 SolutionsIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2022.318249110(64348-64374)Online publication date: 2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3182491
Antonino PCapilla RPelliccione PSchnicke FEspen DKuhn TSchmid K(2022)A Quality 4.0 Model for architecting industry 4.0 systemsAdvanced Engineering Informatics10.1016/j.aei.2022.10180154:COnline publication date: 1-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.aei.2022.101801
Lee CKim NHong S(2021)Toward Industrial IoT: Integrated Architecture of an OPC UA Synergy PlatformIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2021.31354329(164720-164731)Online publication date: 2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3135432

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