Reference architecture to integrate heterogeneous manufacturing systems for the digital thread

Published

May 22, 2017

Author(s)

Moneer M. Helu, Thomas D. Hedberg, Allison Barnard Feeney

Abstract

The increasing growth of digital technologies in manufacturing has provided industry with opportunities to improve its productivity and operations. One such opportunity is the digital thread, which links product lifecycle systems so that shared data may be used to improve design and manufacturing processes. The development of the digital thread has been challenged by the inherent difficulty of aggregating and applying context to data from heterogeneous systems across the product lifecycle. This paper presents a reference four-tier architecture designed to manage the data generated by manufacturing systems for the digital thread. The architecture provides segregated access to internal and external clients, which protects intellectual property and other sensitive information, and enables the fusion of manufacturing and other product lifecycle data. A prototype implementation of the architecture with a contract manufacturer highlights the potential of this reference architecture to generate knowledge that would otherwise be inaccessible to a manufacturing decision maker.

Citation

CIRP Journal of Manufacturing Science and Technology

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cirpj.2017.04.002

Keywords

Data architecture, Digital thread, Systems integration

Citation

Helu, M. , Hedberg, T. and Barnard, A. (2017), Reference architecture to integrate heterogeneous manufacturing systems for the digital thread, CIRP Journal of Manufacturing Science and Technology, [online], https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cirpj.2017.04.002 (Accessed October 10, 2025)