Towards the Digital Factory: A Microservices-Based Middleware for Real-to-Digital Synchronization

In the last few years, research and industrial communities have spent a considerable effort in the designing and early commissioning of digitalized manufacturing environments with the primary objective of achieving a new automation paradigm, more flexible, responsive to changes, and safe. This work presents the architecture and discusses the applications through a real-life case study, of a microservices-based middleware supporting the next generation of smart-factory applications with particular attention paid to simulation tools. The proposed platform aims at being among the first solutions capable of empowering industrial cyber-physical systems (CPSs), providing an environment that streamlines the management of digital twins along the whole plant life cycle. The platform features a distributed architecture based on microservices and big data best practices; it supports the definition of CPS digital representations and the handling of data conveyed from the shop floor for real-to-digital synchronization.