Home // International Journal On Advances in Systems and Measurements, volume 11, numbers 1 and 2, 2018 // View article

GeSCo: Exploring the Edge Beneath the Cloud in Decentralized Manufacturing

Authors:
Badarinath Katti
Christiane Plociennik
Michael Plociennik

Keywords: Decentralized Manufacturing; Edge Computing; Cloud MES; Cyber Physical Systems; Generic Shop-Floor Connector.

Abstract:
Decentralized manufacturing is an active research topic in current smart and open integrated factories, and is probably also the future state of practice in both the process and manufacturing industries. The Manufacturing Execution System (MES) is a comprehensive automation software solution that coordinates all the responsibilities of modern production systems. However, the MES solution is essentially designed as a centralized manufacturing control unit, which goes against the principle of the decentralized manufacturing paradigm. When the advantages and downsides of various MES offerings are explored in anticipation of changing production environments, the Cloud MES (CMES) emerges as the most flexible and affordable solution. However, when operated as a cloud based solution, the MES faces another big challenge: connectivity and network latency. To address these problems, we introduce an edge layer called Generic Shop-Floor Connector (GeSCo) near the shop-floor. In other words, the CMES delegates the responsibility of manufacturing control to this edge layer which consequently facilitates decentralization in manufacturing. Finally, the detailed experimental evaluations suggest a marked decrease of the network latency after the introduction of GeSCo layer.

Pages: 183 to 195

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2018. Used with permission.

Publication date: June 30, 2018

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-261x