Driving Industry 4.0 at Distributed Edges with Cloud Orchestration
INTRODUCTION
Industry 4.0 is disrupting the industry and is changing the linear fixed-purpose architectures towards decentralized processes that enable swarms of intelligent assets with autonomous capabilities ( machine to machine communication and interaction ) that can be leveraged dynamically within highly-networked and diverse environments . This transformation can be attributed in part to the convergence of Operational Technology ( OT ) with Information Technology ( IT ) systems that is reinventing on how participants within the whole supply chain communicate and interact . While in the past their communication and interaction patterns were structured in a hierarchal manner e . g ., following the ISA-95 automation pyramid ( Figure 1 , left ), Industry 4.0 is making these patterns more flexible , networked , and decentralized ( Figure 1 , right ).
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. 1 - Industry 4.0 is driving a shift from a hierarchical and centralized stacks to highly distributed systems . Besides considering the chances of highly networked and distributed systems , modern architectures for industrial setups must address complexity and be robust against disruptions . Disruptions in business-critical processes within the Design to Operate ( D2O ) phases ( e . g ., design , plan , procure , manufacture , deliver and operate ) [ 1 ] may lead to costly interruptions of the whole supply chain . As the supply chain is highly networked around the globe , any interruption in a node can propagate to its next nodes in a domino effect .
Consider a manufacturing scenario with total loss of cloud connectivity that is coupled with last minute unplanned changes ( shift worker unreliability , material delays , and resources unavailability ). Thus , businesses need to also acquire , combine , and process data locally from multiple sources ( OT with IT systems ) in a disconnected mode and to execute business processes ( in particular , mission critical and latency sensitive processes ) independently of the cloud . At the same
IIC Journal of Innovation - 19 -