Requirements for a Big Data capturing and integration architecture in a distributed manufacturing scenario

Big Data is one of the key enabling technologies in smart manufacturing, where manufacturing companies aim at leveraging the data generated throughout their processes. The potential of Big Data Analytics is particularly significant in the context of manufacturing companies distributed worldwide. These companies own several manufacturing plants operating the same process in different environments and conditions. This generates massive amounts of data that could be analyzed in order to improve process efficiency and product quality. This paper presents the requirements for an architecture to capture, integrate and analyze the large-scale volumes of data generated in a real-world manufacturing business scenario -a chemical manufacturing sector distributed worldwide-. This scenario serves as a case study for an applied research project on Big Data Analytics. The business nature of this scenario provides those real-life requirements the architecture has to deal with. Existing approaches can be extended to fulfill these requirements, in order to be effectively applied in similar manufacturing business contexts.