An Integrated Industrial Ethernet Solution for the Implementation of Smart Factory

Smart factory addresses the vertical integration of physical entities and information systems. Network and cloud are two essential infrastructures to achieve this goal. Among them, the network provides interconnection for communication and data flow, while the cloud provides powerful and elastic computing and storage abilities for big data and intelligent applications. This paper presents a cloud-centric framework for the implementation of the smart factory. Based on this framework, three high leveled protocols viz., EtherCAT, DDS, and OPC UA are selected to implement machine network (controller to sensors/actuators communication), machine to machine communication, and machine to cloud communication respectively, to satisfy diverse communication requirements of the smart factory. An integrated architecture for combining ontology knowledge and semantic data to support intelligent applications is also proposed. These network and data process schemes are verified in a smart factory prototype for personalized candy packing application.