An ISA-95 based Middle Data Layer for Data Standardization - Enhancing Systems Interoperability for Factory Automation

In order to achieve fast production and seize market share, manufacturers need to integrate business and manufacturing processes quickly and efficiently. One of the major challenges is how to smoothly reconstruct, aggregate and standardize data from the various systems (e.g, ERP system, MES, IoT platform) without interference with the existing business or manufacturing processes. This paper presents a middle data layer that is designed and implemented based on the ANSI/ISA-95 industrial standard. The proposed middle data layer helps to extract key information of manufacturing operations and control systems and business systems based on the mentioned standard, and standardize and formalize the data structure. We expand the above idea into four directions. First, we give a general view of a role-based equipment hierarchy cross different levels, i.e., Business, Manufacturing, Control, and the actual process. The purpose is to have
an overview of what kind of activities should be considered for building a middle data layer from different levels. Second, we analyze the automation pyramid and try to restructure the traditional hierarchy levels by introducing the ISA-95 middle layer. Third, we identify the key objects and activities among those levels based on ISA-95 standards. By categorizing the data source, i.e., transaction data and master data, and data flows, we design the data architectures and explain how to formalize and standardize the master data and operation data. A case study is designed based on the integration of Odoo ERP, AAU MES and IIoT platform (i.e., Thingworx platform) by using the proposed ISA-95 middle data layer. The results
show the middle data layer enhances the interoperability of manufacturing systems and create a universal standardized data structures for systems integration of factory automation.