A Software Architecture to Control Service-Oriented Manufacturing Systems

This paper presents a software architecture extending the classical automation pyramid to control and reconfigure flexible, service-oriented manufacturing systems. At the Planning level, the architecture requires a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) consistent with the International Society of Automation (ISA) standard. Then, the Supervisory level is automated by introducing a novel component, called Automation Manager. The new component interacts upward with the MES, and downward with a set of servers providing access to the manufacturing machines. The communication with machines relies on the OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) standard protocol, which allows exposing production tasks as “services”. The proposed software architecture has been prototyped to control a real production line, originally controlled by a commercial MES, unable to fully exploit the flexibility provided by the case study manufacturing system. Meanwhile, the proposed architecture is fully exploiting the production line's flexibility.