Introduction
The Equans Smart Factory (ESF) software product is a state‑of‑the‑art Manufacturing Execution System used by more than 130 factories worldwide. Its applications vary from feed and food production facilities to chemical plants. Over the past twenty years, a wide variety of functionalities and communication interfaces has been developed.
One of those interfaces is aimed at retrieving the vast amount of data that lives inside the ESF in a secure, scalable, and extensible way. The available data covers every aspect that the ESF is concerned with in the areas of Operations & Performance, Track & Trace, Material usage & Stock, Planning & Delivery, Maintenance & Energy etc. Both batch data as well as real time data. To create business value out of this data we created a piece of technology to enable this. We call this the Data Gateway.
Keywords: ETL layer, data management, pub-sub, Industrial Automation (MES, SCADA), Industry 4.0, OT-IT connectivity, API, software product development, cloud technology
Technologies: Apache Camel, Python, Java, XML/JSON/Parquet, containerization
Tools: Jira, Confluence, Github, Eclipse/IntelliJ
Description
Your assignment will be to enhance the Data Gateway (DG). The DG delivers data from the OT domain (the industrial automation) to the IT domain (where other applications live such as ERP and financial systems). Essentially the DG is an Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) system.
As this is a relatively young piece of technology Many ideas to enhance this ETL layer exist. Think: adding an external API for querying by external clients; an integrated solution with an MQTT broker; a monitoring and management interface (using the Equans Digital standard Design System); enhancements in the field of deployment (CI/CD); creation of data sets through configuration incl. an intuitive wizard with advanced UI capabilities, and more. Are you the one that leaves a lasting mark on the evolution of this essential enabler for exciting new opportunities to valorise data for our customers?
This assignment is for people that are curious, self-driven, technology savvy and not afraid of going through moments of unclarity and doubts. As this is a product development that may span multiple periods, you will either pioneer in this field, or advance the development from its current state.
The team
You will work in a team of ten software engineers (medior and senior) in the Industrial Automation team at Equans Digital. The team is located in Zaandam, less than 15 minutes away from central Amsterdam by train.
We work according to a light Scrum approach, and are close to our main stakeholders (project and service engineers). This assures early and direct communication, allowing us to stay focused on customer needs. You will receive guidance from experienced engineers, while maintaining the freedom to shape your research and project direction. Reviewing of each others work is embedded in the process, as are demos, whiteboard sessions, and internal software development team meetings.