Affordable Data Integration Approach for Production Enterprises

The manufacturing industries in a number of high-labour-cost economies are undergoing a shift towards increased automation and intelligence typified by the ‘Industry 4.0’ paradigm. Advances from computer science research including digital informatics enables the addition of intelligence and autonomy to the flexible and reconfigurable manufacturing systems developed by manufacturing systems research. One such advance is the development of Data Distribution Services (DDSs) that enable the robust and timely distribution of high-quality data in a scalable manner. This paper describes how a DDS can be used to integrate systems across a production enterprise, including directly on a shop floor rather than using additional specialised shop floor integration components often required by other communications protocols.