Towards Machine Shop 4.0: A General Machine Model for CNC machine-tools through OPC-UA

TLDR

Industry 4.0 promotes the digitalisation of manufacturing systems, transforming traditional setups and enabling advanced monitoring and control capabilities. The paper aims to support this shift by adopting new modelling practices and communication standards. It introduces a framework that models milling and lathe CNC machine‑tools using OPC‑UA, providing macro‑ and micro‑level views, enabling semantic integration, and incorporates a data‑acquisition device to digitise legacy tools. The framework successfully integrates non‑connected machine‑tools and is validated through a laboratory case study.

Abstract

The Industry 4.0 philosophy promotes the digitalisation of manufacturing systems. This results in a transformation of the traditional manufacturing systems and creates new capabilities in the subjects of monitoring and control. To assist this shift, new modelling practices and communication standards should be employed. Towards this end, this paper presents a framework for the modelling of milling and lathe CNC machine-tools, through a general machine model. The framework is based on the Open Platform Communications – Unified Architecture (OPC-UA) communications standard to provide a macroscopic and microscopic view of machine shops, towards the Machine Shop 4.0 concept. The use of OPC-UA enables the integration of different systems, following semantic modelling. Moreover, to advance legacy machine-tools into the digitalised era, a data acquisition device is developed. Therefore, machine-tools without connectivity capabilities can be integrated in this holistic framework. The proposed system is validated in a Laboratory case study.