CESMII – The Smart Manufacturing Institute, funded by the Department of Energy, is working to accelerate the democratization and adoption of Smart Manufacturing. CESMII is transforming the industry by funding projects, and by fostering pre-competitive collaboration between manufacturers, academia, technology providers, and standards organizations.
While manufacturing operations generate vast amounts of data, much of it is wasted simply because it’s either not collected, or not well contextualized. Standardized information models improve data collection and contextualization, thus increasing the utility of this generated data. CESMII aims to promote Smart Manufacturing adoption by combining standardized models with technology interoperability to enable a seamless flow of information. To enhance technology interoperability, CESMII focuses on three key areas: edge, core, and application. For example, information flows from a PLC (or other operations data sources) through other OT components, to a platform core, and finally to an application that provides insights. At each intersection, that (proprietary) context is lost and is recreated for the next system. This is where SM Profiles come in. These standardized data contracts ensure interoperability by defining common naming conventions, mapping protocols, and providing a data abstraction for applications. SM Profiles are used by software from the edge to application to provide semantic interoperability for machines and processes. See the figure below to understand how SM Profiles work in CESMII’s manufacturing software reference architecture.