Using a model-based engineering approach for developing Industrial Internet of Things applications

Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), a new way of developing manufacturing systems and their participants, better known as Cyber-physical Systems (CPS), is a term that is promoted by the emergence of the so-called fourth industrial revolution. This new trend in industrial manufacturing offers new automation possibilities with the goal to optimize operational efficiency, minimize costs and realize new business models. However, accompanied with those new opportunities, on the other hand engineering such systems and their architectures has become a complex and difficult task. Having recognized this issue, the Reference Architecture Model Industrie 4.0 (RAMI 4.0) has been introduced in order to provide viewpoints for structuring an Industry 4.0 based system according to the different concerns to address. Although providing a standardized framework, at the current point of view it is difficult to describe a detailed system architecture, since this reference model is missing formalizations and common methods. Therefore, this paper proposes a possibility of aligning the model-based engineering methods introduced by the Software Platform Embedded Systems (SPES) with the architectural concepts of RAMI 4.0 in order to close the aforementioned gap and provide well-defined methodology in order to develop current and future industrial systems. To achieve this, similarities between both approaches are analyzed and compared with each other and a architecture definition based on the ISO 42010 is given, which is subsequently evaluated by the application of a real-world case study. © 2020 IEEE.