Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em
Engenharia Electrotécnica e de ComputadoresService-oriented Architecture (SOA) paradigm is becoming a broadly deployed standard
for business and enterprise integration. It continuously spreads across the distinct
layers of the enterprise organization and disparate domains of application, envisioning
a unified communication solution. Service-oriented approaches are also entering the industrial automation domain in a top-down way. The recent application at device level
has a direct impact on how industrial automation deployments will evolve. Similarly
to other domains, the crescent ubiquity of smart devices is raising important lifecycle
concerns related to device control, monitoring and management. From initial setup and deployment to system lifecycle monitoring and evolution, each device needs to be taken into account and to be easily reachable.
The current work includes the specification and development of a modular, adaptive
and open infrastructure to support the control, monitoring and management of devices
and services in an industrial automation environment, such as a shop floor system. A
collection of tools and services to be comprised in this same infrastructure will also be researched and implemented. Moreover, the main implementation focuses on a SOA-based infrastructure comprising SemanticWeb concepts to enhance the process of exchanging a device in an industrial automation environment. This is done by assisting (and even automate)this task supported by service and device semantic matching whenever a device has a problem. The infrastructure was implemented and tested in an educational shop floor setup composed by a set of distributed entities each one controlled by its own SOAready
PLC. The performed tests revealed that the tasks of discovering and identifying
new devices, as well as providing assistance when a device is down offered a valuable
contribution and can increase the agility of the overall system when dealing with operation disruptions or modifications at device level
