A Scaffolding Design Framework for Developing Secure Interoperability Components in Digital Manufacturing Platforms

This paper presents the Virtual Open Operating System (vf-OS) Input / Output (IO) Toolkit Generator, which is a design tool to develop vf-OS IO components that interact with all kinds of manufacturing assets, either physical devices like Program Logic Controllers (PLCs), software applications like Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERPs) or legacy file formats like STEP. The vf-OS IO Toolkit Generator is based on software scaffolding, a code generation technique that allows a developer to create a working component to interact with a manufacturing asset from the vf-OS Platform without writing a line of code. As described in this paper, software scaffolding not only simplifies the development of interoperability components, but it also fosters system security and platform integration automation. Another contribution of this paper is to propose possible integrations between the IO Toolkit Generator and the vf-OS Security Command Centre in charge of platform security. Additionally, this paper describes how the concept can be extended to address other digital manufacturing platforms like Fi-Ware.