Factory Equipment Network Testing Framework Project

Real-time production information is needed to optimize manufacturing activities in a factory, but acquiring this information from isolated proprietary equipment is a manual process that takes time and introduces errors. Connecting equipment to the factory network can make accurate production information immediately available, but widespread interconnection of equipment has been inhibited by the lack of common information models and methods to measure performance and conformance. This project will develop and deploy a measurement science-based performance and conformance testing framework to enable real-time factory floor monitoring and optimization of manufacturing applications.

Develop a measurement science-based performance and conformance testing framework to enable the integration of real-time factory equipment information and achieve optimization of manufacturing applications, delivering results through open-source implementations and standards bodies by 2014.

The new technical idea is to develop a testing framework that measures the effectiveness of standards for collecting real-time production information from factory floor equipment, reducing barriers to optimizing manufacturing activities within a factory. In order to optimize, real-time production information needs to be easily collected and distributed to the applications that need the information. This information is typically collected manually, a laborious process that takes time and introduces human error. The Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition (SMLC) recognizes that "the collection and use of engineering data in manufacturing facilities today is relatively inefficient due to the lack of standardized, easily useable data systems," and calls for better data protocols, interfaces and communications in their priority action for establishing consistent data methods for all industries^[1]. Proprietary solutions exist for collecting data from particular brands of equipment, and progress has been made on standard protocols for exchanging this data. The most widespread standard, OPC (originally Object Linking and Embedding for Process Control) defines a protocol but lacks an information model needed for meaningful information exchange. New standards, such as the Association for Manufacturing Technology's MTConnect and IEEE 1451 for networked sensors, define protocols and an information models. What is lacking is the measurement science to determine if these information models provide the necessary information to support manufacturing optimization, conformance tests that verify correct implementation by equipment, and performance tests that can measure the fidelity (timeliness and accuracy) of the information. This project addresses these challenges by developing a factory equipment network testing framework comprised of a universal client application (UCA) for measuring information fidelity, coupled with protocol-specific personality modules (PMs) that connect different types of equipment and provide accurate measurements of the original quantities as the basis for performance measurement.

The initial work will be based on NIST performance measurement software for Industrial Ethernet, The value of the performance characteristics measured by this software, such as latency, bandwidth, and jitter, were recognized to be widely applicable to other factory network standards and led to the UCA and PM conceptual architecture proposed here. Early work will determine the requirements for the new testing framework, its internal architecture and external interfaces, and software details such as programming language, development environment, and supporting libraries. During the early project phase, collaboration with industry partners across the discrete manufacturing, batch and continuous process industries will determine the additional information modeling and performance measurement needs. Following the initial design and prototyping, the work will focus heavily on two key aspects of the testing framework: defining performance tests as extensible "plug-ins" to the UCA and implementing conformance tests in the PMs of selected standards. A key aspect of this work will be the establishment of a factory network testbed. A difficult problem will be to determine how to compare network information to the underlying process measurements to assign uncertainty to the reported performance indicators, reducing the need for people to work outside the framework to obtain meaningful results. The initial framework will use existing equipment and results from testing with the IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol for high-performance timing. Research will be conducted to improve the measurement techniques beyond traditional Gaussian statistical analysis currently used to report latency, bandwidth, and jitter. The project will conclude with a fully open-source implementation of the UCA, a set of PMs for a representative set of popular factory network information standards, and comprehensive set of documentation that will help developers in the future expand the framework to work with new standards as they arrive and to establish performance and conformance tests. A key task during the final phase will be to identify and partner with an accredited standards organization to develop a testing or certification service for networked factory equipment.

Outputs:

• The Industrial Ethernet Network Performance (IENetP) Test Tool was first released in 2009 and later revised in 2011.
• The IEEE Standards Association's Standards Board approved the publication of parts of the suite of smart transducer interface standards, including IEEE 1451.0 for common command interface, 1451.5 for wireless transducer interface, and 1451.7 for sensor to RFID system interface.
• The MTConnect specification, Version 1.0.

Outcomes:

• IENetP has been named as the primary data analysis tool in the ODVA EtherNet/IP Low-Cost Performance Test Suite and has been downloaded approximately 1200 times.
• The IEEE 1451.0, 1451.5, and 1451.7 interface standards were adopted by ISO as international standards, ISO/IEC/IEEE 21450, 21451-5, and 21451-7 standards, respectively.

This project will contribute to the Industrial Ethernet standard from the ODVA (formerly the Open DeviceNet Vendor Association), the OPC standard from the OPC Foundation, the MTConnect specification from the Association for Manufacturing Technology (AMT), the IEEE 1451 standard for networked sensors, and the IEEE 1588 standard for a precision time protocol. Expansion of the testing framework to include other standards is likely and may include wireless protocols such as ISA 100. The project will work with industry associations and standards development organizations (SDOs) to establish testing and certification authorities for the subject standards. Organizations may include the IEEE Conformance and Assessment Program (ICAP), the International Society of Automation (ISA), the Association for Manufacturing Technology (AMT), and the OPC Foundation.