A Low-cost Integration Approach for Distributed Manufacturing Information Systems

As a stepping stone to Industry 4.0, integrating information systems leads to enhanced functionalities, since data can be accessed by another system, and time savings during the development because capabilities can be shared among systems. However, data is generally distributed over heterogeneous information systems and there is a lack of standardised interfaces to facilitate the interaction with resources. This paper proposes a low-cost integration approach for multiple distributed manufacturing information systems, which are based on the same reference architecture. In particular, we identify, conceptually design and evaluate integration strategies proposed in the literature that have the potential to be low-cost. The evaluation results of this integration exercise seem to suggest that coordinators in combination with a common service bus are likely to be implemented at low cost for integrating distributed information systems.