Overlay Architecture for Field Computing Systems

Conventional production systems have mainly focused on production practices. Future production system is required to have more flexibility to deal with various problems for production auxiliary tasks in addition to production practices. In order to solve these problems, the use of field data from devices on the factory floor is required in many cases. For using the field data more effectively for auxiliary tasks, an approach to add functions to field devices is increasingly required. However, for building a computing environment that achieves this approach, it is necessary to solve the following two issues. (1) Provide field devices with the common computing environment independent of the device type. However, this environment should not adversely affect the original device functions for production practices. (2) Allow multiple persons in charge of auxiliary tasks to use the common computing environment concurrently. In other words, persons in charge can select necessary devices and build distributed applications on top of them without interfering with other activities. This paper presents FOA (field overlay architecture) that allows building the computing environment on top of the production system to deal with various problems for production auxiliary tasks, and also describes a new operating model of FOA-based production system