OPC and CORBA in manufacturing execution systems: a review

While MES (manufacturing execution systems) are becoming increasingly more popular in the factory environment, the intrinsic hardware heterogeneity of equipment suppliers has always been a problem to their easy and cost-effective implementation. New distributed objects technologies now exist, both open and proprietary, operating system-dependent and independent, that can be used to solve this heterogeneity related problem. This work is intended to review the technologies of MES and new distributed objects, making a comparison of specifications, standards and commercial MES products based on each one. First, this work shows a general overview of MES and the potential of distributed objects applied to them: i.e. new concepts as intelligent sensors and other. Then, the two leading distributed object technologies will be reviewed: OPC/DCOM and CORBA. Finally, an industry survey focusing on commercial MES products and the distributed objects technology used by each one will be shown.