Proposal of a reference data model for Internet of Things interoperability

In the modern society an increasing number of objects are becoming “smart”. It means that an object, in addition to the physical components, is composed by “smart” components, like sensors, microprocessors, software and by “connectivity” components such as ports, antennae and protocols. IT, i.e. Information Technology, is becoming an integral part of the product itself. These objects are able to produce a huge amount of data, enabling the development of new services. The research streams regarding Servitization and Extended Products, are intertwined with the promises of PLM, i.e. Product Lifecycle Management, aiming to leverage the data generated during the product lifecycle to create valuable knowledge and thus improve quality, efficiency and sustainability of the product and its related services. The present thesis contributes to these efforts by developing a Data Model which is able to manage the details of the product during its lifecycle in IoT, i.e. Internet of Things, context. The goal of the proposed standard data model is to fill the interoperability gap among different information systems due to the information gathered in vertical “silos” and to the high number of heterogeneous protocols in the market. Moreover benefits deriving by the Data Model have been evaluated for an Italian small sized software house. Lastly, the meaningfulness of the proposed model has been validated through realistic data collected in the two use cases with existing businesses.