Event-driven IT-architectures as enabler for Industry 4.0

Originating in 2011, Industry 4.0 describes the digital revolution of industry and has since become a collective term for smart, mutable and data driven factories. During the last decade systemic and methodical solutions were designed and implemented that enable corresponding data driven use cases for producers. Today's system providers offer complex data ecosystems in which data-driven use cases are built-in and implementers offer focused digitalisation projects to rapidly address quick wins. While an assessment of expectations around Industry 4.0 results in requirements within the domains of modifiability, connectivity, data and organisation for an IT-architecture, many such solutions are found to be violating essential requirements as systemic flexibility and data-availability. Not only is this a relevant matter for architectural purists, but it highlights real problems that industry is still facing while applying digitalisation measures in pursuit of Industry 4.0. While event-driven architectures go back to the design of modern operating systems, the emergence of powerful, resilient and cheap broker-technologies has risen the polarity of event-driven IT-architectures for businesses in the last decade. Although its occurrence is predominantly represented in ecommerce, finance and insurance, many prominent manufactures have since begun their transformation into an event-driven IT-architecture. Reasons for this architectural adaptation include exceptional data availability, resilience, scalability and especially data sovereignty. An assessment of event-driven IT-architecture's properties and implications reveals an excellent fit for the architectural requirements of Industry 4.0. In this work the subject of Industry 4.0 is analysed along literature to derive a collective understanding of expectations from a factory implementing Industry 4.0. Subsequently, IT-architectural requirements are derived that describe an architecture capable of satisfying these expectations. Then event-driven IT-architectures are analysed regarding their structural composition and capabilities. Finally, the fit of event-driven IT-architecture is evaluated against the architectural requirements of Industry 4.0, discussing congruence and divergence

Apollo experience report. Guidance and control systems: Command and service module stabilization and control system

The concepts, design, development, testing, and flight results of the command and service module stabilization and control system are discussed. The period of time covered was from November 1961 to December 1972. Also included are a functional description of the system, a discussion of the major problems, and recommendations for future programs

Teaching photonic integrated circuits with Jupyter notebooks : design, simulation, fabrication

At Ghent University, we have built a course curriculum on integrated photonics, and in particular silicon photonics, based on interactive Jupyter Notebooks. This has been used in short workshops, specialization courses at PhD level, as well as the M.Sc. Photonics Engineering program at Ghent University and the Free University of Brussels. The course material teaches the concepts of on-chip waveguides, basic building blocks, circuits, the design process, fabrication and measurements. The Jupyter notebook environment provides an interface where static didactic content (text, figures, movies, formulas) is mixed with Python code that the user can modify and execute, and interactive plots and widgets to explore the effect of changes in circuits or components. The Python environment supplies a host of scientific and engineering libraries, while the photonic capabilities are based on IPKISS, a commercial design framework for photonic integrated circuits by Luceda Photonics. The IPKISS framework allows scripting of layout and simulation directly from the Jupyter notebooks, so the teaching modules contain live circuit simulation, as well as integration with electromagnetic solvers. Because this is a complete design framework, students can also use it to tape out a small chip design which is fabricated through a rapid prototyping service and then measured, allowing the students to validate the actual performance of their design against the original simulation. The scripting in Jupyter notebooks also provides a self-documenting design flow, and the use of an established design tool guarantees that the acquired skills can be transferred to larger, real-world design projects

Lessons from an Open Source Business

Creating a successful company is difficult; but creating a successful company, a successful open source project, and a successful ecosystem all at the same time is much more difficult. This article takes a retrospective look at some of the lessons we have learned in building BigBlueButton, an open source web conferencing system for distance education, and in building Blindside Networks, a company following the traditional business model of providing support and services to paying customers. Our main message is that the focus must be on creating a successful open source project first, for without it, no company in the ecosystem can flourish

Proposing a Solution for a Self-Managed Data-Ecosystem in Production: Use-Case-Driven IT-OT-Integration with an Event-Driven IT-Architecture

With the development of publicly accessible broker systems within the last decade, the complexity of data-driven ecosystems is expected to become manageable for self-managed digitalisation. Having identified event-driven IT-architectures as a suitable solution for the architectural requirements of Industry 4.0, the producing industry is now offered a relevant alternative to prominent third-party ecosystems. Although the technical components are readily available, the realisation of an event-driven IT-architecture in production is often hindered by a lack of reference projects, and hence uncertainty about its success and risks. The research institute FIR and IT-expert synyx are thus developing an event-driven IT-architecture in the Center Smart Logistics' producing factory, which is designed to be a multi-agent testbed for members of the cluster. With the experience gained in industrial projects, a target IT-architecture was conceptualised that proposes a solution for a self-managed data-ecosystem based on open-source technologies. With the iterative integration of factory-relevant Industry 4.0 use cases, the target is continuously realised and validated. The paper presents the developed solution for a self-managed event-driven IT-architecture and presents the implications of the decisions made. Furthermore, the progress of two use cases, namely an IT-OT-integration and a smart product demonstrator for the research project BlueSAM, are presented to highlight the iterative technical implementability and merits, enabled by the architecture

Critical review of the e-loyalty literature: a purchase-centred framework

Over the last few years, the concept of online loyalty has been examined extensively in the literature, and it remains a topic of constant inquiry for both academics and marketing managers. The tremendous development of the Internet for both marketing and e-commerce settings, in conjunction with the growing desire of consumers to purchase online, has promoted two main outcomes: (a) increasing numbers of Business-to-Customer companies running businesses online and (b) the development of a variety of different e-loyalty research models. However, current research lacks a systematic review of the literature that provides a general conceptual framework on e-loyalty, which would help managers to understand their customers better, to take advantage of industry-related factors, and to improve their service quality. The present study is an attempt to critically synthesize results from multiple empirical studies on e-loyalty. Our findings illustrate that 62 instruments for measuring e-loyalty are currently in use, influenced predominantly by Zeithaml et al. (J Marketing. 1996;60(2):31-46) and Oliver (1997; Satisfaction: a behavioral perspective on the consumer. New York: McGraw Hill). Additionally, we propose a new general conceptual framework, which leads to antecedents dividing e-loyalty on the basis of the action of purchase into pre-purchase, during-purchase and after-purchase factors. To conclude, a number of managerial implementations are suggested in order to help marketing managers increase their customers’ e-loyalty by making crucial changes in each purchase stage

The global vulnerability discovery and disclosure system: a thematic system dynamics approach

Vulnerabilities within software are the fundamental issue that provide both the means, and opportunity for malicious threat actors to compromise critical IT systems (Younis et al., 2016). Consequentially, the reduction of vulnerabilities within software should be of paramount importance, however, it is argued that software development practitioners have historically failed in reducing the risks associated with software vulnerabilities. This failure is illustrated in, and by the growth of software vulnerabilities over the past 20 years. This increase which is both unprecedented and unwelcome has led to an acknowledgement that novel and radical approaches to both understand the vulnerability discovery and disclosure system (VDDS) and to mitigate the risks associate with software vulnerability centred risk is needed (Bradbury, 2015; Marconato et al., 2012). The findings from this research show that whilst technological mitigations are vital, the social and economic features of the VDDS are of critical importance. For example, hitherto unknown systemic themes identified by this research are of key and include; Perception of Punishment; Vendor Interactions; Disclosure Stance; Ethical Considerations; Economic factors for Discovery and Disclosure and Emergence of New Vulnerability Markets. Each theme uniquely impacts the system, and ultimately the scale of vulnerability based risks. Within the research each theme within the VDDS is represented by several key variables which interact and shape the system. Specifically: Vender Sentiment; Vulnerability Removal Rate; Time to fix; Market Share; Participants within VDDS, Full and Coordinated Disclosure Ratio and Participant Activity. Each variable is quantified and explored, defining both the parameter space and progression over time. These variables are utilised within a system dynamic model to simulate differing policy strategies and assess the impact of these policies upon the VDDS. Three simulated vulnerability disclosure futures are hypothesised and are presented, characterised as depletion, steady and exponential with each scenario dependent upon the parameter space within the key variables

Impact of Interoperability on CAD-IP Reuse: An Academic Viewpoint

Mind-boggling complexity of EDA tools necessitates reuse of intellectual property in any large-scale commercial or academic operation. However, due to the nature of software, a tool component remains an ill-defined concept, in contrast to a hardware component (core) with its formally specified functions and interfaces. Furthermore, EDA tasks often evolve rapidly to fit new manufacturing contexts or new design approaches created by circuit designers; this leads to moving targets for CAD software developers. Yet, it is uneconomical to write off tool reuse as simply an endemic “software problem”. Our main message is that CAD tools should be planned and designed in terms of reusable components and glue code. This implies that industrial and academic research should focus on (1) formulating practical tool components in terms of common interfaces, (2) implementing such components, and (3) performing detailed evaluations of such components. While this is reminiscent of hardware reuse, most existing EDA tools are designed as stand-alone programs and interface through files. 1