Architectural Patterns for RFID Applications in Manufacturing

When applying RFID in production, it needs to be integrated into the used IT systems. However, till today system designers cannot rely on a standard solution for integrating RFID technology in manufacturing software systems. Each manufacturer has to deal with the same challenges: No consolidated findings on how to integrate RFID into the IT infrastructure exist. The consequence is that each IT department has to develop a solution from scratch. In order to give well-founded design guidelines for embedding RFID into the company’s IT infrastructure, we conducted seven in-depth case studies of the state-of-the-art in manufacturing IT infrastructures. Our findings allowed us to specify architectural patterns for common RFID applications in manufacturing. With our work we support system designers in choosing the appropriate architecture for different RFID applications and design goals. We present our solutions in form of architectural patterns that enable manufacturing IT systems to benefit from RFID.