SONATA NFV platform and smart manufacturing-specific Network Services are being tested at Weidmüller’s factory in Detmold (Germany).
Weidmüller is a worldwide leading supplier of solutions and components for the industrial connectivity and electronic components for transfer of energy, signals and data in the industrial environment.
“Using the SONATA platform, in Weidmüller we have designed and tested several VNFs that have increased the efficiency of the communication networks in our manufacturing facilities….Thanks to SONATA, Weidmüller’s networks can be auto-configurable, the QoS/QoE can be improved and machine downtimes reduced because of lower latencies and real-time analytics.”
Patrick-Benjamin Bök (VP Global Digitalization, Weidmüller)
Like in any other production environment, in Weidmüller, the deployment and maintenance of communication networks is expensive and requires high efforts. Industry 4.0 and the new business requirements are raising new challenges that Weidmüller is addressing with the help of SONATA.
TESTED SCENARIOS
Concretely, Weidmüller is testing three scenarios that exist in modern factories using SONATA technologies, thus probing its benefits as a system to operate an agile and flexible network:
- Machine Setup: Create an innovative, flexible factory network and analyze the operational data, machine data, and process data coming from the machines;
- Threat defense: Detect and contain threats;
- AR-based maintenance: Enable augmented reality support for machine maintenance and repairs.
Scenarios
Read more about scenarios
Machine Setup
As factories become mobile, machines physically move not only inside a factory but also to another locations. Current network infrastructure does not match the associated requirements because wired connections and fix subnets, as well as fix routes, cause high effort for each adaptation. With NFV/SDN technologies, initialization and re-configuration of networks due to movement of machines should be easy and automated.
We know how we can help a company that is thinking about building and installing a new site and/or machine park and we have simulated this scenario in Weidmüller premises.
Note: We assumed that all machines that should be integrated are IP protocol compatible; other machine interfaces can be connected using the appropriate bridging technologies to translate between protocol stacks.
What we did was to install a SONATA PoP in a small, co-located data center, e.g., consisting of a couple of COTS servers. When these servers and the SONATA installation were ready, an edge analytics network service was deployed to aggregate operational data, machine data, and process data generated by that machine park and to push it to the cloud backends.
Besides, as the main aim of all improvement in manufacturing is to increase the efficiency of production, all available machine data shall be collected and analyzed. This includes information of the production process delivered by the machine itself as well as sensor data coming from Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) sensors. For some purposes, like avoiding larger damage to a machine when a failure is detected, process data should be analysed locally, close to the machines (edge computing), to find issues as fast as possible. For other purposes, long-term analysis can take place in a cloud environment. With SONATA, the latency is reduced and the efficiency improved, thus enabling novel real-time analytics capabilities.
The developed network services can be packaged, on-boarded, and instantiated in a few seconds, which then allows to interconnect new machines, collect, and analyze machine data. Compared to the considerable manual effort that is required in traditional manufacturing scenarios, this constitutes significant time savings.
- NFV-based Machine Interconnection - Functional View
- Setup required hard-and software infrastructure
- Edge analytics capacity per machine park
- Transmit (O/M/P) data to cloud
- Integration of new machine - Hardware installation
- Integration of new machine - Configuration done
- Faciliated setup and maintenance of factory networks
- NFV-based Machine Interconnection - SONATA View
- install NFVI-PoP on all premises
- deploy edge analytics network service
- Instantiate cloud connection
- Configuration of new machine via machine manager portal
- Automatic deployment of required network services
- Virtualization technologies and automated deployment concepts
- NFV-based Machine Interconnection - Functional View
- Setup required hard-and software infrastructure
- Edge analytics capacity per machine park
- Transmit (O/M/P) data to cloud
- Integration of new machine - Hardware installation
- Integration of new machine - Configuration done
- Faciliated setup and maintenance of factory networks
- NFV-based Machine Interconnection - SONATA View
- install NFVI-PoP on all premises
- deploy edge analytics network service
- Instantiate cloud connection
- Configuration of new machine via machine manager portal
- Automatic deployment of required network services
- Virtualization technologies and automated deployment concepts
Threat defense
Industry networks must deal with a lot of threats, e.g., industrial spying. To protect operation-critical infrastructure from those threats, (security) network functions, such as Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) and firewalls (FW), are used and deployed in different locations of the network. If such a security function detects malicious activities, it should not only raise alerts, but also trigger active countermeasures, like isolating the machine under attack from the rest of the factory network to further investigate it. All data transmissions of this machine should stop immediately and besides, the information might be corrupted and is unusable for any analysis.
These re-configuration tasks are complicated in existing factory networks and cannot be automated. With SONATA and its advanced programmability features the network service(s) that interconnect the factory network with the concerned machine can be automatically reconfigured and the machine put to quarantine.
- Security function detects malicious activities - Functional View
- Avoid spread of attack
- Machine A must be isolated, no i open connections to factory network
- Provide secure maintenance connection for 3rd party support
- Threat is contained
- Restore original network topology, start data transmission
- Security function detects malicious activities -SONATA View
- Stop connection to edge analytics network service for this machine
- Reconfiguration of machine interconnection service
- Enable VPN connection
- Threat is contained
- Reconfiguration of machine interconnection service
- Security function detects malicious activities - Functional View
- Avoid spread of attack
- Machine A must be isolated, no i open connections to factory network
- Provide secure maintenance connection for 3rd party support
- Threat is contained
- Restore original network topology, start data transmission
- Security function detects malicious activities -SONATA View
- Stop connection to edge analytics network service for this machine
- Reconfiguration of machine interconnection service
- Enable VPN connection
- Threat is contained
- Reconfiguration of machine interconnection service
AR-based maintenance
The production machine is a physical entity that requires regular maintenance, as malfunctions can be found and the machine can even fail completely. When this happens, engineers with a deep technical understanding of the machine are needed to repair the machine and bring it back to production. A recent trend to simplify such maintenance tasks is using Augmented Reality (AR) systems, such as smart glasses, to directly provide the engineers with additional information. This information can contain technical details about the machine to be fixed, e.g., technical documentation, even dynamic data, such as real-time machine data, thus helping find the cause of the problem. Those advanced supporting technologies introduce special requirements in a factory network. They might, e.g., require high bandwidths that exceed the normal bandwidths available in a machine park's network or have additional isolation requirements, e.g. when maintenance tasks are delegated to third party companies that should not be directly connected to the production network.
SONATA platform can help solve these issues. First of all, SONATA enables the dynamic, on-demand deployment of the network functionalities required by the mentioned supporting mechanisms, e.g. the network to connect the smart glasses, and serve them with real-time machine data. Second, SONATA allows proper isolation of those on-demand services from the regular production services. Both capabilities can be achieved by using SONATA network slicing. One slice will deal with regular machine operations, while the other can be created on-demand when an AR-based maintenance is required.
- AR-support needed for maintenace/ repairs-Functional View
- User wants to use AR
- User wants to use AR
- AR equipment must be separated from factory network
- Sufficient video stream quality needed
- AR equipment ready to use
- Provide network capacities for AR - SONATA View
- Start AR Maintenance Service via machine manager portal
- Deployment of needed network service
- Proper configuration of network service to isolate AR equipment
- Manage high requirements caused by AR
- With slicing, proper isolation of on-demand services is possible
- AR-support needed for maintenace/ repairs-Functional View
- User wants to use AR
- User wants to use AR
- AR equipment must be separated from factory network
- Sufficient video stream quality needed
- AR equipment ready to use
- Provide network capacities for AR - SONATA View
- Start AR Maintenance Service via machine manager portal
- Deployment of needed network service
- Proper configuration of network service to isolate AR equipment
- Manage high requirements caused by AR
- With slicing, proper isolation of on-demand services is possible
NETWORK SERVICES DEVELOPED
For these three scenarios, Weidmüller is deploying four NS:
NS1: Factory edge service
It is deployed once per factory site and/or machine park. It has two main purposes: First, it connects the factory site/machine park with the rest of the (global) factory network and in particular with the factory-wide cloud backend that collects monitoring information about all production sites of the entire company. Second, it provides edge analytics capabilities to monitor and analyze the data produced by the machines already at the edge of the site/park and allows for quick reaction, e.g., if machine metrics exceed thresholds. This network service is deployed in the factory operations slice which contains all services and functions that are critical for the production. This network service contains at least four VNFs. First, it has some VNFs for network security and traffic analysis, namely a firewall (FW) and an intrusion detection system (IDS) that ensure that no malicious traffic enters the site’s/park’s factory network. Second, the network service has functions for machine data aggregation, local storage, forwarding, and data analysis. Those functionalities are part of two VNFs, namely the cloud connector (CC) and the edge analytics engine (EAE) VNF. Optionally, the network service may have additional supporting VNFs, like WAN optimizers (WO) or routers (RTR) depending on the requirements of the uplink from the site/park to the rest of the company’s network.
This network service contains at least four VNFs. First, it has some VNFs for network security and traffic analysis, namely a firewall (FW) and an intrusion detection system (IDS) that ensure that no malicious traffic enters the site’s/park’s factory network. Second, the network service has functions for machine data aggregation, local storage, forwarding, and data analysis. Those functionalities are part of two VNFs, namely the cloud connector (CC) and the edge analytics engine (EAE) VNF. The EAE’s quick analysis and visualization of machine data allows to recognize changing machine parameters or metrics with minimal delay, e.g., increasing temperature or fluctuating molding pressure. Such deviations in measured machine data can lead to reduced quality of the produced products and potentially even damages of the machine. Hence, it is crucial to detect and react to any undesired fluctuations immediately Optionally, the network service may have additional supporting VNFs, like WAN optimizers (WO) or routers (RTR) depending on the requirements of the uplink from the site/park to the rest of the company’s network.
NS2: Machine interconnection service
The machine interconnection service´s purpose is to interconnect a single machine to the factory site/machine park network. It is deployed once per machine in the site/park and used to control the machine and to collect monitoring data from it, e.g., the machine’s state or sensor data. The service is also deployed as part of the factory operation slice and interacts with the factory edge service. It contains the following VNFs:
- First, a router (RTR) VNF that creates an own subnet per machine to which all components, e.g., controllers and sensors of the machine are connected. This one-subnet-per-machine policy is based on our experiences from real-world factory deployments, in which the networks are organized exactly like this. Today, in non-SONATA networks, those subnet setups are configured and maintained manually by the IT staff of the factory. Such manual configuration and maintenance is error-prone and very time-consuming, especially if machines are moved between machine parks or production lines.
- Second, the machine interconnection service contains a machine data collector (MDC) VNF which is responsible for interacting with the physical machine components (or a digital twin) and collecting/requesting data from them. It also translates data exchange formats used by the machines to a more modern MQTT-based exchange format, well known in the IoT community.
- Finally, the network service contains some security functionalities like a FW and optionally a VPN VNF.
NS3: AR Maintenance Service
The third network service is specifically built for the AR maintenance scenario. It is instantiated on-demand whenever an AR maintenance should be done and provides the required network connections for the used AR gear. This service is placed in the maintenance slice to isolate it from the operational network. This is in particular useful if the maintenance should be done by third-party companies, e.g., maintenance service companies or machine vendors, which should never get access to the operations network. Once the maintenance has been done, the service is terminated to free network resources, showing a service dynamicity that is not possible in today’s factory networks.
NS4: Manager Service
It is deployed once per factory site, offering management functionalities, e.g., a factory portal that is used by technical staff to add new machines to a machine park and monitor the machines states.
This network service plays a supporting role and is not crucial for the actual machine operations. However, once you have a SONATA deployment in your factory, it makes sense to implement and deploy those management functions using SONATA to reduce the overheads of maintaining additional infrastructure. This service is not fixed to a particular slice and will be pre-deployed whenever the smart manufacturing pilot is demonstrated.
BENEFITS ACHIEVED
Thanks to SONATA, Weidmüller has been able to improve internal efficiency and reduce configuration maintenance costs to enable a new generation of flexible factory networks.