Exemplifying the potentials of web standards for automation control in manufacturing systems

Web standards developed mainly by W3C and OASIS shape the general IT domain and its applications. Due to the scale of web applications, the web standards have matured to deal with typical situations of finding the right node on the network, reconfiguring the routing for messaging, using common standards for representing graphical information and many others. Industrial manufacturing can benefit from the web standards due to interoperability and simplified application integration. This article reviews the current use of web standards in the industrial automation domain. In addition, it describes and discusses the potential of using web standards at all the levels of the automation system: from high level web-based user interfaces to the industrial controllers located in the lowest layer of the well-known automation pyramid. Aligned with such a description, the article presents a framework for Open, Knowledge Driven Manufacturing Execution Systems (OKD-MES), which enables the systematic use of web standards and technologies in factories. Finally, the manuscript exemplifies the use of web standards for automation control in real implementations in a mobile phone assembly line.