Remote access for data collection from production equipment through SOAP and HTTP

Production equipment produces lots of data due to mounted sensors, positions of switches, state changes, etc. For reasons of process analysis those data are critical to be collected also remotely through a secure internet connection. The set of collected data or sampling rates may deviate from one analysis scenario to another. It might be different whether data are collected during material processing (active) or while the equipment is idle (stand by). Therefore, it shall be possible to deplay, activate, deactivate and retract particular data collection scenarios. As the equipment's structure is not implicitly known to the data receiver (e.g. maintenance engineer), it is necessary that equipment provides a self-description of its structure, parameters, state-machines, events and alarms. Moreover, due to Access through the internet, there shall be also a concept of granted access.
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Providing an equipment interface which sattisfies SEMI Interface-A standards

A set of interface standards was developed as an initiative of the semiconductor industry which provides a solution for this challenge. The standards are called SEMI E120 - Common Equipment Model; SEMI E125 - Equipment Self Description; SEMI E132 - Authenication (Security); SEMI E134 - Data Collection Management.
There is a good document which describes the motivation and how the SEMI Interface-A interfaces are functioning at http://www.sematech.org/meetings/archives/emanufacturing/20051130/03-EDA.... Also some use cases are shown there. The single standards can be purchased at http://www.semi.org/en/Store/Standards/.
But there are also ready installations of standard compliant interfaces available for the equipment-side and for the client side (http://www.peergroup.com, http://www.cimetrix.com).

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