The main topic of the master thesis is the implementation of a unified system for the interconnection of industrial controllers. In Industry 4.0, standardisation and interoperability are one of the main issues holding back the digital transformation of manufacturing. Therefore, we wanted to check if the Kepware KEPServerEX software, via the OPC UA standard, can be used as a single entry point to retrieve data from different industrial controllers. For the purpose of implementing the system, we have chosen a real use-case from industry, namely, sending data from the hydraulic system of a CNC machine to the cloud, in order to improve maintenance efficiency. We proposed a new data pipeline, which was finally compared with the existing one. Kepware KEPServerEX has proven to be a suitable tool for achieving greater uniformity in the connection of industrial controllers to the IT level, which further helps us to develop IIoT solutions faster.
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