Fábio M. Oliveira

Technology is an integral part of society and has undergone significant evolution across various domains, such as production and recreation, leading to the emergence of heterogeneous systems. These diverse systems often need to communicate and interact with one another to fully leverage their capabilities and resources, aiming for maximum efficiency. One effective method to achieve this is through the use of a message broker, a tool that facilitates communication between multiple heterogeneous systems. However, setting up message brokers can be complex, requiring access to multiple systems for configuration and lacking automation tools to streamline the process. The proposed solution involves creating a tool that can be instantiated on different machines to control the deployment, configuration, and usage of any message broker. Early results are promising, demonstrating enhanced data collection from industrial robots and improved connectivity between different message brokers.

In a constantly changing world, information stands as one of the most valuable assets for a manufacturing site. However, exchanging information is not a straightforward process among factories, and concerns regarding the trustability and validation of transactions between various stakeholders have emerged within the context of micro-factories. This work presents an architecture designed to enable information exchange among heterogeneous stakeholders, taking advantage of the cloud infrastructure. It was designed to enable the use of several tools, connected through a middleware system deployed on the cloud. To demonstrate the potential of this architecture, a platform was instantiated, and two use cases—designed to accurately represent real manufacturing sites—were implemented.