Article
Opportunistic and Location-Based Collaboration
Architecture among Mobile Assets and Fixed
Manufacturing Processes
Dae Han Wi
1
ID
, Hyo Jun Kwon
1
, Jung Kwang Park
1
, Soon Ju Kang
1,
*
ID
and Jae Duck Lee
2
1
School of Electronics Engineering, College of IT Engineering, Kyungpook National University, 80 Daehakro,
Bukgu, Daegu 41566, Korea; dnleogks23@naver.com (D.H.W.); bluekgssk@gmail.com (H.J.K.);
miff214@naver.com (J.K.P.)
2
Smart Distribution Research Center, Advanced Power Grid Division, Korea Electrotechnology Research
Institute, Changwon 51543, Korea; jdlee@keri.re.kr
* Correspondence: sjkang@ee.knu.ac.kr; Tel.: +82-53-950-6604; Fax: +82-53-950-5505
Received: 28 June 2018; Accepted: 14 August 2018; Published: 17 August 2018
Abstract:
Research into integrating the concept of the internet of things (IoT) into smart factories has
accelerated, leading to the emergence of various smart factory solutions. Most ideas, however, focus
on the automation and integration of processes in factory, rather than organic cooperation among
mobile assets (e.g., the workers and manufactured products) and fixed manufacturing equipment
(e.g., press molds, computer numerical controls, painting). Additionally, it is difficult to apply smart
factory and IoT designs to analog factories, because such a factory would require the integration
of mobile assets and smart manufacturing processes. Thus, existing analog factories remain intact
and smart factories are newly constructed. To overcome this disparity and to make analog factories
compatible with smart technologies and IoT, we propose the opportunistic and location-based
collaboration architecture (OLCA) platform, which allows for smart devices to be attached to workers,
products, and facilities to enable the collaboration of location and event information in devices.
Using this system, we can monitor workers’ positions and production processes in real-time to
help prevent dangerous situations and better understand product movement. We evaluate the
proposed OLCA platform’s performance while using a simple smart factory scenario, thus confirming
its suitability.
Keywords: smart factory; opportunistic computing; location-aware; mobile asset management; IoT
1. Introduction
Due to the advance of technology, many industrial factories are becoming automated in various
ways. Current factory automation techniques mainly use centralized control-based production
automation systems (i.e., Industry 3.0). However, future factories (i.e., Industry 4.0) will be equipped
with real-time communication technologies that are attached to products moving throughout the
factory [
1
,
2
]. It will also provide devices for workers to wear as well as providing a smarter
environment for manufacturing facilities [
3
–
6
]. Currently, these smart factory technologies focus
on automating and integrating production processes rather than device collaboration, and they do not
suggest a model that connects products, workers, and manufacturing equipment together [7,8].
In addition, it is difficult to apply these device-collaborative smart technologies to traditional
analog factories, because they must integrate both the necessary smart mobile assets and the existing
manufacturing processes. Therefore, companies typically invest tremendous capital to instead build
a new factory that is fitting the smart factory requirements. Especially in the existing analog factory,
Sensors 2018, 18, 2703; doi:10.3390/s18082703 www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors
