Development of an Information-interoperable Environment Based on Open Technologies for Lean Production Systems

Lean production systems require an information-interoperable environment that can process diverse factory information for all workers to do KAIZEN activities. Moreover, the information-interoperable environment should be connected to an inter-enterprise collaboration environment. For those reasons, an Information-Interoperable Environment (IIE) that can connect device-level information and Manufacturing Execution System (MES)-level information was developed using Open Robot (or Resource) interface with the Network (ORiN). Moreover, CaoSQL2FDML for changing the IIE’s information to Factory Data Markup Language (FDML) information was developed for inter-enterprise collaboration. This paper describes development of IIE including CaoSQL2FDML, prototype system development, and results of the system’s operational testing.