Industry 4.0 Connectors -- A Performance Experiment with Modbus/TCP

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the performance of handcrafted and automatically generated Modbus/TCP connectors for Industry 4.0 applications, demonstrating that automation can enhance flexibility and efficiency in integrating legacy devices like energy meters.

Contribution

It introduces an automated approach for generating Modbus/TCP connectors and compares their performance with handcrafted versions in industrial settings.

Findings

Generated connectors perform comparably to handcrafted ones.

Automation increases development efficiency.

Applicable to legacy energy metering devices.

Abstract

For Industry 4.0 applications, communication protocols and data formats even for legacy devices are fundamental. In this paper, we focus on the Modbus/TCP protocol, which is, e.g., used in energy metering. Allowing Industry 4.0 applications to include data from such protocols without need for programming would increase flexibility and, in turn, improve development efficiency. As one particular approach, we discuss the automated generation of Modbus/TCP connectors for our Open Source oktoflow platform and compare the performance of handcrafted as well as generated connectors in different settings, including industrial energy metering devices.