IoT-Based Techniques for Online M2M-Interactive Itemized Data Registration and Offline Information Traceability in a Digital Manufacturing System

The integration of internet-of-things (IoT) technologies in the industry benefits digital manufacturing applications by allowing ubiquitous interaction and collaborative automation between machines. Online data collection and data interaction are critical for real-time decision making and machine collaborations. However, due to the specificity of digital manufacturing applications, the technical gap between IoT techniques and practical machine operation could hinder the efficient data interactions, collaborations between machines, and the effectiveness as well as the accuracy of itemized data collection. This investigation, therefore, identifies some major technical problems and challenges that current IoT-based digital manufacturing is facing, and proposes a method to bridge the technical gap for itemized product management. The highlights of this investigation are: 1) a data-oriented system architecture toward flexible data interaction between machines, 2) a customized machine-to-machine protocol for machine discovery, presence, and messaging, (3) flexible data structure and data presentation for interoperability, and (4) versatile information tracing approaches for product management. The proposed solutions have been implemented in PicknPack digital food manufacturing line, and achieved ubiquitous data interaction, online data collection, and versatile product information tracing methods have shown the feasibility and significance of the presented methods.