Modeling and Analyzing an Industry 4.0 Communication Protocol

The increasing complexity and criticality of industrial automation systems, embodied by the concept of Industry 4.0, which brings together concepts, such as cyber-physical systems, the Internet of Things, big data, and artificial intelligence, call for more formality in specifying the technology standards underlying these systems. We define in this article a formal model of an Industry 4.0 machine-to-machine communication protocol, Hermes, used in specifying electronic board transfers in an assembly line. Our analysis of the formal specification reveals that despite the robustness of the protocol, many testing scenarios have been ignored in the protocol standard and in particular, scenarios that include simultaneous machine errors. Therefore, this article paves the way for a better informed testing strategy in Industry 4.0 systems that implement the protocol.