Open Data for Smart Production at Combient Smart Production Forum

The theme for the Combient Smart Production Forum was Leveraging Open Source Solutions for Smart Production. The purpose of the forum was to highlight open source solutions that are developed to the point where they can compete with the solutions of major commercial providers.

Professor Delsing, coordinator of the Eclipse Arrowhead project, spoke on findings and insights that the project has generated highlighting the importance of open source data for smart production. He began by clearly defining what open source software is, introducing some common open source licenses and presenting the open collaboration model on which the Eclipse Arrowhead collaboration is based before going on to provide a broad overview of the project. 

Arrowhead’s major objectives are interoperability, integrability and independence. Interoperability, Delsing explained, is based on a service oriented architecture with the “three Ls” of late binding, loose coupling and lookup (of service consumers and providers). Integrability is essential for easy transitions and interactions between legacy systems and native Arrowhead systems and independence means guaranteeing freedom from underlying technologies and application protocols. 

Delsing talked about the advantages offered by local clouds that reduce energy consumption and engineering complexity and allow for greater security as well as real time operation. He went on to demonstrate how the core systems in Arrowheads Service Oriented Architecture can provide interoperability, integrability and independence as well as exemplary security and autonomous information exchange. A series of charts and graphics demonstrated what the solution could mean for a production plant, showing what a multilevel service exchange might look like and the maturity levels of the various Arrowhead components. 

By demonstrating a range of use cases and findings from the Arrowhead project, Delsing was able to underscore the importance of open source IT as a cornerstone for cost efficient, integrated, large scale digitisation. Open source IT will also provide stakeholders with more automation for their investment and have lasting future impacts on production efficiency, employment and fighting climate change.