Performance analysis of Kafka distributed streaming platform for Industry 4.0

The transition to Industry 4.0 is producing a notable change in the management and organization of factories. Robots, sensors, and smart devices work together to provide advanced and modern services to the industries. Manufacturing industries have highly specialized machines worth thousands of euros that are often updated very slowly and do not have advanced interfaces to export the data they contain. These are extremely useful when analyzed with advanced tools, allowing the predictive maintenance of the machines and the discovery of any fragility. To collect and process data coming from hundreds of machines, located in many company offices, cutting-edge technologies such as message exchange middleware are used. These, when correctly configured, guarantee the scalability of the system as the number of messages increases. The use of containers and supporting infrastructures allowed the components to be easily and virtually detached from the lease. Finally, a layered architecture allows a logical and physical separation within the company, guaranteeing levels of security necessary to avoid damages deriving from possible cyber-attacks on the machines. The proposed architecture was finally validated and tested thanks to the collaboration with a company in the Emilia-Romagna territory.