Microservice architecture for automation: Realization by the example of a model-factory’s manufacturing execution system

The German government presented the concepts of Industrie 4.0 at the Hannover fair in 2012. Based on this, the German “Hightech-Strategie 2020” was initiated to establish Germany as the leading supplier for cyber-physical systems. This strategy includes implementation recommendations for future technologies as well as promotions for avant-garde innovations. In this context, Industrie 4.0 can be defined as a standardization and digitalization project across companies[1-2]. It defines problem fields on which should be worked upon in future and thus generate a long-term migration strategy towards a homogeneous, reliable and optimized system structure. This takes a continuous development process with various cross-sectional technologies as a base. This contribution deals with the design and implementation of a framework for automation as well as the investigation of the impacts of this framework on manufacturing executions systems (MES) and in general on the concepts of Industrie 4.0. A migration strategy is shown by the example of porting an existing MES of an Industrie 4.0 model-factory with Open-Source technologies into an edge-cluster. The focus is on the paradigm change for development, deployment, and operation. Furthermore, the draft of a miroservice- and communication-model regarding application containers for automation is shown.