A Framework for Software Deployment in Manufacturing Environments

Increasing digitalization is leading to more and more use of software in manufacturing environments. Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) systems are increasingly converging and form complex networks over which various software systems must be deployed in a distributed manner. Therefore, companies face the challenge of managing the growing number of devices and software, which are often heterogeneous and cannot be described and managed uniformly. Manual software deployment and management is becoming increasingly costly or is no longer practicable in larger manufacturing environments. Specific manufacturing requirements, such as time and hardware dependencies, must also be considered during the software deployment. To meet these requirements, companies need software deployment mechanisms supporting their software deployment and management throughout the entire software lifecycle. Automated software deployment and management combined with a comprehensive self-description of the systems and software landscape can help solve the challenges. This work proposes a framework for software deployment in manufacturing environments addressing these challenges. It describes the fundamental problems and the necessary functional modules. A concept, including an architecture for the framework, is proposed. The framework was prototypically implemented and published open source as a project at the Eclipse Foundation.