Microservice-Based Implementation of the Reference Architectural Model for Industry 4.0
Vitor Furlan de Oliveira, Guilherme Matiolli, Fabrício Junqueira, Claudio J. Bordin, Rômulo Gonçalves Lins · IEEE Access · 2026
This paper presents a prescriptive microservice-based architecture that operationalizes the Reference Architectural Model for Industry 4.0 (RAMI4.0) by mapping its layered functionalities to deployable microservices. The Asset Administration Shell (AAS) is adopted as the canonical data model and interface, enabling standardized interoperability and modular scalability across heterogeneous assets. To address the inconsistent adoption of reference models and the integration of diverse components, the architecture combines AAS-based Submodels with MQTT publish-subscribe and HTTPREST communication protocols via standard interfaces. The system was validated in an automotive use case where a vehicle was instantiated as an Industry 4.0 Component, supporting bidirectional synchronization between physical and digital domains. All components were instrumented for metric collection and visualization, demonstrating low-latency operation, efficient resource usage, and near-linear scalability under increasing load. Quantitatively, the architecture achieved an adaptability index of 77.7%; temporal consistencies of 564 ms (Asset to Digital Twin) and 2024 ms (Digital Twin to Asset); and 209 ms for database synchronization. The main contribution is a concrete architectural blueprint that enforces consistent RAMI4.0 adoption while demonstrating empirical behavior under load, thus facilitating reuse across domains through asset-agnostic upper layers. The paper concludes with limitations and future work on security hardening, formal verification of distributed behaviors, and large-scale orchestration.