FactStack

Abstract

The management and preservation of the diverse and constantly evolving data of Industry 4.0 remains an open challenge to date. Interoganizational and interoperable solutions are needed to power the digital manufacturing supply chain of the future. Principles from research data management recently address this problem through the use of global, persistent identifiers in combination with resource versioning and data provenance. We present FactStack, a data management and preservation solution based on open Web technologies and the FactDAG data interoperability model. We outline the system’s implementation, evaluate its performance and illustrate its applicability to industry using a real-world use case in textile engineering. Considering risks and opportunities of practical industry adoption and remaining open challenges, we conclude that FactStack simplifies the on-demand integration of persistence and provenance into existing resource-oriented architectures, facilitating data management and preservation for the agile and interorganizational manufacturing processes of Industry 4.0.