Process Industry 4.0: Effect on Interfaces between MES and Shop floor Integrations in Pulp and Paper Industry

The purpose of this thesis is to research how Industry 4.0 affects integrations between MES and shop floor in pulp and paper industry. Industry 4.0 is a generally used term for the fourth industrial revolution introducing modern technologies and producing principles into manufactur-ing. These modern technologies include big data and analytics, cloud computing, and IoT. Four Industry 4.0 design principles, interconnection, information transparency, decentralized deci-sions, and technical assistance, are handled as central principles when designing Industry 4.0 compliant factories. The impact of Industry 4.0 on factories covers the entire system, including system architecture, modern technologies on shop floor, and new communication methods and protocols. The thesis can be divided into two parts, theoretical and practical part. First in the theoretical part, comprehensive literature review was conducted to find out Industry 4.0 related trends that affect the shop floor. As in pulp and paper industry little Industry 4.0 related research has been done, the scope of the literature review covered also research done in other industrial fields. Based on the findings of the literature review, Industry 4.0 compliant prototype was designed and implemented. The design and implementation of the prototype form the practical part of the thesis. The most promising trends that are likely to be seen in factories when moving towards In-dustry 4.0 compliant smart factories, are smarter sensors, devices, and products, new wireless communication technologies and IoT messaging protocols, cloud and fog computing, service-oriented architecture, and decentralisation of decision making. As new communication technol-ogies, such as IoT messaging protocols, seemed to be an important part of almost every find-ing in literature review, prototype was decided to be built based on communication using OPC UA PubSub over MQTT. In this thesis it is concluded that investing in Industry 4.0 is crucial for business success in the future. In several articles and other sources introduced in this thesis the positive impact of Industry 4.0 solutions on factories has been shown. These benefits include e.g., increased prof-itability and productivity, more adaptability, and solutions for more complicated customer needs and scarce resources. Companies working with Manufacturing Execution Systems should be prepared to all the changes discussed in this thesis, although, as stated in the thesis, many of the recent technologies need to be tested more thoroughly in real production environment prior to concluding their suitability for pulp and paper industry. The implemented prototype gives promising results and indicates that communication using OPC UA PubSub over MQTT is rela-tively easy to implement