The goal of the Manufacturing Reference Architecture (MRA) Working Group is to provide a fully scalable reference architecture blueprint to simplify deployment and management of the manufacturing environment.
In this repository, a list of software capabilities that a MRA needs to provide is presented. Software capabilities are provided by platforms and applications to implement use cases. See below for a definition and context on capabilities.
The goal is to provide a repository of capabilities, that can be easily referenced from the different use cases which rely on the capabilities and provide more details and context on a certain capability, e.g. special considerations in manufacturing context.
Each use case does require a certain set of capabilities. We will provide a map of capabilities for each use case. That provides implementation guidance in regards to:
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Which capabilities are needed? Helpful e.g. for fit/gap analysis, which capabilities are already present, which need to be added.
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How the capability can be implemented, e.g. using proprietary software, open source software, cloud services etc.
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Special considerations in the manufacturing context, I.e. standards that might apply, lessons learned and recommendations.
The following diagram explains the context of software capabilities:
As defined in the architecture considerations white paper [OMPMRA01-2020], the capabilities will be provided by a platforms approach as show in the following figure
Applications realise use cases using the capabilities of the platform. Applications can be of all different types like
- custom developed, maybe using a low code tooling
- Commercial of the shelf solutions from an ISV
- Serverless / function as a service snippets
- Executable machine learning models
- Apps on a mobile device
- etc. There is a many to many relationships between Use Cases and Apps. A single use case can require multiple applications, a single application can implement multiple use cases etc. Each application can consume services / capabilities from all underlying platforms.
The platforms can stretch across the different levels – from the production level via facility to the enterprise/core. E.g. the data platform needs to be able to connect to production assets, process high frequency data at the facility level and send (maybe) aggregated data to the core level. For consistent operations and management, and to reduce complexity, it is recommended to use same technology / platforms on all levels.
Capabilities are grouped into top level categories like “Security” or “Interoperability”. Each top level category has several “level 2” capabilities, providing more structure and grouping. The detailed description is then provided on the lowest level 3. The following diagram gives an overview by showing only the first two levels.
The following diagram shows on a high level how these capabilities are used to implement a condition monitoring use case:
For more details and examples, see the OMP Use Case Collection.
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