The technical key to digital transformation: "Unified Namespace"

What is the "Unified Namespace" (US)?

The "Unified Namspace", or UNS for short, is first and foremost a technical concept. It's not a framework cast in software. It was led by Walker Reynolds in the USA, when he and his colleagues in projects for the digitalization of production plants, and companies as a whole, had to realize again and again that neither the classic approach of planning a large project "up front" made sense, nor were the technical means suitable. For example, there were always data silos, which were also due to the fact that, for example, sensors from different manufacturers could not communicate with each other or that their data could not be processed and merged in a uniform way. If you stuck to technical components from a single manufacturer, this could sometimes succeed in parts, but not on the whole.

The UNS collects and structures all data and events of a company in a uniform and orderly manner. By including all relevant data, it is the "single source of truth" for a company. The UNS is thus the central data hub where data is collected and accessed.

All relevant data is standardised and available in one and the same place and can be evaluated in a uniform and therefore simple way. As a result, the UNS is the architectural basis for Industry 4.0 and digital transformation initiatives.

Where and how is it used?

The concrete application of the UNS concept can take different forms. Typically, smart sensors that are already in place are first connected to an IIoT platform. This sounds "bigger" than it is, because it can simply be an MQTT broker that is fed with the sensor data in a uniform way. In the UNS context, uniform means that the UNS naming scheme is observed and the sensor data is correctly published in a semantic hierarchy. The UNS naming scheme is based on ISA-95 and sorts information into functional, informative and defining namespaces and assigns them to the actual spatial and organizational units of a company:

• Enterprise

  • Site 1

    • Area 1

      • Line 1

        • Cell 1

          • Temperature 1

      • Line 2

        • Temperature 1

        • Temperature 2

    • Area 2

      • Warehouse

        • Silo 1

          • Liquid Level 1

In further steps, other systems and sensors will gradually be connected to the IIoT platform or an MQTT broker, thus further advancing digitalization.

I don't want to go into the details of how to best define a UNS in your company semantically here, there is a lot of material on the Internet in the form of articles, podcasts and videos (e.g. "4.0 Solutions" on YouTube). For me, it's all about the aspect of starting the process immediately and quickly and bringing together already existing smart devices and their data in the way mentioned. Once this step has been taken, the first added value can often be gained. Without a long planning phase, without a large project team, without a large project budget.

Gradually, other components are then connected in the same way, always according to the pattern that the most important data sources are connected first.

The most important data is the one from which one hopes to gain important insights and which thus provides real added value. Keeping an eye on the latter is the key and not a triviality, often not in the sense of technical feasibility, but rather through clever selection of data. One could say that it is only by merging data that does not yet provide added value individually that real information is created.

A very illustrative example, also by Walker Reynolds, was a project in which a silo containing liquids. There is an inflow of liquid and an outflow of fluid in and out of this Siko. This was equipped with a level sensor and it was "smart" and sent an SMS to a responsible operator of this plant if the level became too high and someone has to manually intervene. One weekend, a corresponding SMS was received and for an outrageously high hourly wage, an external employee was immediately assigned in "alarm mode" to visit the plant on site and accordingly reduce the inflow of further liquid or increase the outflow of liquid. Apart from an insanely high bill, however, nothing was achieved, because it turned out that the inflow was so low that although the sensor had rightly reported that the silo was now already 90% full, the remaining 10% of the volume would have been sufficient for a few days with the same inflow and outflow and therefore there was no emergency at all. The information that "silo is 90% full" is not the relevant information. The crucial information would have been, "5 days to go until the silo is full".

Conclusion

The Unified Namespace, UNS, is the technical concept, the technical architectural approach that enables the digital transformation of a company, conveniently in an iterative way. Without a lot of up front planning and large budgets, digitalization can be started quickly and the first added value can be tapped at an early stage. Gradually, all relevant information is brought together in a data hub, which thus becomes a "single source of truth".