A Model-Driven Approach for IoT-Based Monitoring Systems in Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0 provides a framework for applying new technologies in industrial environments to boost the efficiency and intelligence. A recently blossomed technology in Industry 4.0 is Internet of Things (IoT), which allows us to create a smart environment by connecting various equipment. One of the main applications of IoT in a smart factory is to design monitoring systems, which helps put the behavior of devices under permanent and comprehensive supervision. However, the rapid growth and change in the monitoring facilities creates a big challenge for people who either want to use that equipment in Industry 4.0, or want to update the systems to benefit from this technology. To address this problem, this paper presents new approach based on model-driven engineering paradigm, for simplifying the design and development of real-time monitoring systems in an industrial environment. Our approach includes a domain-specific modeling language, a graphical editor, and model-to-code transformations that generate a hardware descriptive code, a mobile application, and a web application for a monitoring system. To evaluate the applicability of our approach, a scenario in the power industry has been designed, which offers user a VHDL code, a mobile application, and a web application for monitoring processes of the plant.