Continuous Integration, Deployment and Validation: Supporting Scalable Industrial Ecosystems

The DiMAT project (Digital Technologies for Modelling, Simulation and Optimisation in Materials) aims to deliver open-source digital tools to accelerate the digital transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This article presents the design and implementation of Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD) pipelines, which support the development, testing, and delivery of DiMAT platform components. By leveraging Docker containerisation and Kubernetes orchestration, the platform ensures robust scalability, efficient resource use, and cloudnative modularity. Security is enforced through Keycloak-based identity management, while interoperability is supported via standards such as IIRA, RAMI 4.0, IDSA-RAM, EMMO, MODA, and CHADA. These integrated approaches enable secure and reliable data exchange across toolkits and ensure the continuous delivery of new features in industrial research environments. The proposed CI/CD architecture serves as a replicable model for other industrial digitalisation projects.