Implementation and Trial Evaluation of a Wireless Manufacturing Execution System for Industry 4.0

This paper presents the implementation framework and performance evaluation of a seamless wireless Manufacturing Execution System (MES) for Industry 4.0. The proposed wireless solution is based on self-configuring multi-access gateways that enable the transport of delay-tolerant industrial Ethernet control data traffic over LTE or Wi-Fi (or both, using hybrid-access techniques). The wireless MES solution has been deployed at the Smart Production Lab facilities at Aalborg University, allowing for the removal of Ethernet cables between modules in a production line setup, and thus enabling a faster re-configuration of the production facilities. The performance of the wireless MES solution is also benchmarked in the paper against the reference Ethernet case in terms of latency and packet loss. The trials revealed that, despite of the increase in latency and packet loss as compared to the reference operation over Ethernet, both LTE and Wi-Fi under different conditions were able to reliably support the production control operations at MES level as no discernable difference was observed in the overall functionality of the system.