For standardisation activities in the EC funded projects, generally it is necessary to know first what the domains and objectives of the project are. Based on this, related standards can be identified, then analysed regarding their applicability and implemented. The activities in the project can then be aligned with current regulations and on-going standardisation activities.
A Plan-Do-Check-Act methodology was applied in the EFPF project:
Very early in the project a Standardization Plan was developed, then the Standardization Strategy was defined that summarized which standardization areas have an impact on the domains critical for the success of EFPF. For example, the following areas and standards were identified as relevant to EFPF: Industrial data (ISO/TC 184/SC 4); interoperability, integration, and architectures for enterprise systems and automation applications (ISO/TC 184/SC 5, IEC/TC 65/SC 65E); Internet of Things (ISO/IEC/JTC 1/SC 41), Software and systems engineering – Business Process Management Initiative (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 7); Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (ISO/TC 307); Cybersecurity (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27); Data management and interchange (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 32); or Cloud Computing (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 38).
Here are some examples, in which standards are implemented in various the EFPF activities:
Standards like ISO 10303, ISO 20534, IEC 61131, IEC 62714, or IEC 62264 are applied in relation to the Connector and IoT Gateway Architecture to support the building blocks of EFPF platform. This was done after considering the format of data at all levels of the automation model and how this will support interoperability for the federated tools and services. Analysis carried out on IEC 62264 is used to inform the design of the EFPF Data Spine and align its development with latest standards on IoT integration.
The EFPF project implements ISO/IEC 38500 and assures that the data accountability map and associated matrix of considerations from ISO/IEC 38505 are fully adopted in EFPF. The data governing principles in EFPF are implemented according to the IT governance methods presented in these standards.
ISO/IEC 19464 (AMQP), ISO/IEC 20922 (MQTT) and ISO/IEC 21778 (JSON) are essential standards for the application integration and the building blocks of the EFPF Data Spine and the federated platform. The uptake, interoperability and/or alignment of these standards are carried out in the tasks dealing with message exchange in EFPF. Considering the cross-platform data model, EFPF platform sees ISO/IEC 19845 (UBL v2.2) - or v2.3 - as a candidate.
Standards like ISO/IEC 27000ff and ISO/IEC 24392 are used for the design of security controls in EFPF. OpenID Connect already implemented built on top of OAuth 2.0 as a security standard to enable Single Sign-On functionality in EFPF federation.
Next to the application of standards gaps identified in them will be communicated to the standardization bodies. Examples are requests to update cloud security standards such as ISO/IEC 27017. Additional user requirements and/or user usage scenarios will be submitted to the UBL community in order to contribute to UBL 2.3.
Another but major issue was identified in the gap analysis. Even there are a lot of building blocks in terms of standards available as well several reference architecture standards for Block Chain, IoT, IIoT, Industry 4.0, etc. there is no reference architecture standard for federating manufacturing platforms. To close this fundamental gap a CEN-CENELEC Workshop is be initiated by the EFPF project. The aim of this body is the elaboration of a CEN-CENELEC Workshop Agreements as a standardization deliverable on a reference architecture for federating manufacturing platforms focusing on the interoperability on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Protocol, Security and Data Model level. Additionally, a reference implementation in the form of the EFPF Data Spine and associated components will be described.
Stay tuned to get latest updates on the EFPF standardisation activities.