Wael M. Mohammed

Cyber–Physical Systems for Open-Knowledge-Driven Manufacturing Execution Systems

Manufacturing execution systems play an important role of bridging high-level enterprise functions and production or manufacturing operations. The embedded systems are usually in charge of controlling execution of the operations. Modern embedded systems have become capable of simultaneous and deterministic execution of control algorithms and IP-based communication, making it possible to create complex cyber-physical systems (CPSs), where the computational and communication resources of a device can be used directly for various control, supervisory, or monitoring functions. The complexity for defining open-knowledge-driven manufacturing execution system (OKD-MES) is in maintaining awareness of overall system state to avoid disruptive actions as various functions may be requested from a system. The problem is that obtaining such information on system state may necessitate collecting data from a number of devices, as there may not be a single data point for state information. This paper describes and illustrates an approach for designing OKD-MES on top of CPSs that controls robot workstations and conveyor-based transportation system of a pallet-based production system.

A web-based simulator for a discrete manufacturing system

Virtualization has become a supportive approach for simulating system behaviour efficiently thanks to the revolution of computer and smart devices. In fact, the employment of running virtual tools that mimic the real physical world is nowadays a requirement in some fields as in e.g. industrial automation. This research work presents a virtual tool that simulates a real assembly line. The main features of this simulator are listed as; web application that can be accessed with any devices that supports html web pages, animated application that provides a UI for the user, discovery mechanism that allows web applications to interact with the simulator automatically and RESTful-based services, which increases the flexibility and versatility in terms of deployment. FASTory simulator has been developed and deployed during the eScop project. In addition, presented simulator has been employed by C2NET (Cloud Collaborative Manufacturing Networks) project for development some of its tools. Furthermore, the exploitation of the FASTory simulator is extended to cover as well the education of next generation of engineers for design and implementation of modern CPS. As Tampere University of Technology provides a M.Sc. degree in automation engineering, students use the simulator for their experiments, ensuring that mistakes are recoverable and harmless.

Generic platform for manufacturing execution system functions in knowledge-driven manufacturing systems

ABSTRACT Information technologies grow rapidly nowadays with the advance and extension of computing capabilities. This growth affects several fields, which consume these technologies. Industrial Automation is not an exception. This publication describes a general and flexible architecture for implementing Manufacturing Execution System (MES) function, which can be deployed in multiple industrial cases. These features are achieved by combining the flexibility of knowledge-driven systems with the vendor-independent property of RESTful web services. With deployment of this solution, MES functions may gain more versatility and independency. This research work is a continuation of the development of the OKD-MES (Open Knowledge-Driven Manufacturing Execution System) framework during the execution of the eScop project. The OKD-MES framework consists on a semantic-based solution for controlling and enhancing the flexibility and re-configurability of MES. In such scope, this research presents MES functions architecture that might be implemented in the OKD-MES framework in order to increase the flexibility of event-driven manufacturing systems.

Providing an access control layer to web-based applications for the industrial domain

The advances in virtual engineering brought about the creation of models of physical systems. This has been enhanced by the use of relevant standards and web technologies to develop interfaces for monitoring and controlling industrial systems at the shop floor or remotely over the internet. However, owing to the open nature of the internet as well as vulnerabilities associated with internet-based technologies, it becomes imperative to put in place security measures. This will allow to mitigate this particularly as it concerns the management, control, and monitoring of entities making use of the interface. The first step is to ensure an efficient user access control for web-based solutions. This article proposes an approach for developing an access control layer to web applications. In addition, a web-based application, i.e., the FASTory simulator, is used as the test-bed for implementing this approach.

Legacy systems interactions with the supply chain through the C2NET cloud-based platform

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) represents the highest level of the manufacturing systems according to ISA-95 standard. It includes supply chain management, and customer-manufacturer-supplier interactions, essential to a successful business relationship in the frame of Industry 4.0. Many research efforts are being put in place to follows the latest ICT advances, combining them with manufacturing systems technologies. In this manner, the C2NET factories of future project (c2net-project.eu) has been put in place to provide a cloud-based collaborative network for supply chain interactions. This research paper focuses on providing a solution for retrieving ERP data via a Legacy System Hub, which is powered by the previous PlantCockpit project (www.tut.fi/plantcockpit-os/) outcomes. This solution allows the C2NET users to transfer the ERP data from the company side to the C2NET platform via the Data Collection Framework (DCF). Thus, the contribution of this research work is a generic solution that enables the interaction between systems owned by different organizations involved in the same supply chain. As C2NET targets the Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), three data adapters are developed for MS Excel, SQL and RESTful data sources. The result of this research enhances the users experience in terms of interface and it might help in the C2NET databases for controlling and monitoring the instance changes in the ERP data on the company side.

Development of a mobile application for the C2NET supply chain cloud-based platform

Cloud-based ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) Platform is a tendency to facilitate collaboration across Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in the industrial supply chain. However, fast and smooth accessibility to the cloud resource is a vital challenge due to efficiency, reliability, security and other critical issues. This paper presents the development of a mobile application by using web technologies for supply chain cloud-based platform to support user to keep informed and make fast decisions based on real-time notification and information. Furthermore, it illustrates the architecture, integration and implementation of a hybrid mobile application by showing real use cases in different scenarios.

A solution for processing supply chain events within ontology-based descriptions

The industry is constantly moving towards the research, implementation and deployment of new solutions that permit the optimization of processes. Nowadays, such solutions consist mostly on ICT developments, which permit the collection, distribution, integration, analysis, and manipulation of heterogeneous data. The under way Cloud Collaborative Manufacturing Networks (C2NET) project targets the development of cloud-enabled tools for supporting the SMEs supply network optimization of manufacturing and logistic assets. The C2NET solution includes the implementation of paradigms as e.g. cloud computing or service-oriented and event-driven architectures, used for wide data integration. Among its requirements, the C2NET platform needs a solution for catch, process and react to events triggered in different locations of collaborative manufacturing networks, which are endowed with devices that permits the integration of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). This paper presents the architecture and main functionality of a knowledge-based approach that allows processing supply chain events handled by CPS devices. The main component of the presented solution is the SECA ontology, which is a knowledge base that can be updated at runtime. The main purpose of the ontology is to describe events, their status and the actions to be performed once a set of events are triggered in certain order. This research work offers a solution that can be employed by the C2NET platform not only to catch and process events; but also to notify linked data consumers.