Software deployment in manufacturing environments: A requirements analysis

Digital transformation and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) are driving the use of cloud, fog, and edge computing in manufacturing environments. As a result, numerous computing resources for software execution are available in manufacturing environments. The increased use of software and distributed systems is constantly raising the complexity of the software deployment process. Often, and specifically in manufacturing, software is subject to technological or usage requirements limiting possible resources related to the execution of the software. Since deployment decisions are often made manually without a profound basis, this leads to wrong decisions and to resources not being put to their best use. Also, the performance quality of software execution suffers with security gaps occurring and additional costs arising. Existing software deployment concepts are very generic and focus on cloud. They do not address the specific needs of operational technology and manufacturing environments. This work identifies important evaluation criteria for software deployment in manufacturing environments, based on a requirements analysis. The requirement analysis systematically analyzes cloud, fog, and edge environments, as well as software applications and system resources in manufacturing environments. The aim is to identify deployment-relevant resource properties and software requirements. The comparison, evaluation, elimination, and specification of the collected information results in a catalog of deployment-relevant criteria for selecting technically suitable options for a deployment decision. These criteria support decisions during the software deployment process. Also, these criteria provide the basis for automated and dynamic software deployment decisions in manufacturing environments.