Biblio

This paper describes an approach to overcome the interoperability challenges related to identity management systems supporting cross-collaboration between heterogeneous manufacturing platforms. Traditional identity management systems have shown many weaknesses when it comes to cloud platforms and their federations, from not being able to support a simplified login process, to information disclosure and complexity of implementation in practice. This paper discusses workflows to practically implement federated identity management across the heterogeneous manufacturing platforms and design interoperability at different levels, e.g. at the platform level and at the platform integration level. Our motivation to find the best federated identity management solution for heterogeneous cloud-based platforms is related to practical requirements coming from the ongoing European project eFactory.

In this paper, we explore the use of the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP) and its Federated Byzantine Agreement (FBA) algorithm for ensuring trust and reputation between federated, cloud-based platform instances (nodes) and their participants. Our approach is grounded on federated consensus mechanisms, which promise data quality managed through computational trust and data replication, without a centralized authority. We perform our experimentation on the ground of the NIMBLE cloud manufacturing platform, which is designed to support growth of B2B digital manufacturing communities and their businesses through federated platform services, managed by peer-to-peer networks. We discuss the message exchange flow between the NIMBLE application logic and Stellar consensus logic.