Assessment of industrial middleware technologies for the PERFoRM project

To meet the increasing requirements which are set for modern production systems regarding flexibility, reconfigurability and collaborative behavior, a common information, Communication & Control (ICT) platform for guaranteeing connectivity has to be put in place. Industrial Middleware, i.e. SW/HW solutions, which help connecting and mediating different industrial cyber-physical components of a distributed system (such as a production system) are an essential component of such a platform. The paper describes the assessment of existing industrial Middleware solutions which are targeting re-configurability and connectivity of modern industrial environments. It states a set of important functional requirements which need to be considered to select the right solution for individual use cases. A big emphasis is put into finding industrially applicable solutions.