The architecture separates control, operations and enterprise responsibilities

Every connected-factory programme faces an early temptation to wire shop-floor sensors straight into whatever visualisation tool or enterprise database the sponsor already licenses.[S01] Moving a register value from a ring-spinning frame or a garment-sewing line to an executive chart does not explain which work centre produced the count, which production order was active, whether the machine was in a changeover test or normal execution, or who holds authority to amend a miscounted bundle.[S02] Without an explicit model of functions and shared information, every dashboard project reinvents its own plant hierarchy and reconciliation logic inside private scripts.[S01]

As shown in Exhibit 10, GFT organises the factory into six vertical responsibility tiers before naming any software package or network protocol.[S01] The diagram is an illustrative architectural design synthesising standards scope from ISA-95, IEC 62264, W3C Web of Things and ETSI MEC rather than an operating record from an existing mill.[S02] While Exhibit 10 clarifies which layer owns each class of decision, verifying boundary enforcement in deployment requires the interface contracts and acceptance tests defined later in this paper.[S19]

ANSI/ISA-95.00.01-2025, known as ISA-95 Part 1, summarises the scope of the manufacturing operations and control domain, addresses how physical assets of a manufacturing enterprise are organised, lists the functions associated with the interface between control functions and enterprise functions, and describes the information shared among those functions.[S01] Before an integrator configures a gateway on a carding machine, a slasher-dyeing range or a sewing line, the architecture must define how the enterprise partitions its holdings into sites, areas, production lines, work centres, work units and equipment modules.[S01]

In Cameroon's textile sector, where public reporting on existing industrial assets such as CICAM has noted multi-site structures across Garoua and Douala with distinct spinning, weaving and finishing capacities, physical organisation cannot be left to network IP addressing.[R12] When a technician swaps a failed controller on a stenter frame or moves an overlock sewing machine between garment lines, device addresses change while work-centre responsibility remains, or the equipment moves while its maintenance history must follow the physical asset.[S01] Adopting the ISA-95 physical-asset hierarchy ensures that every measurement point is bound first to an engineered equipment role and only secondarily to a communication endpoint.[S01] Order promising, commercial purchasing, financial accounting and master production scheduling sit on the enterprise side of the ISA-95 boundary, whereas work-centre dispatching, material lot tracking, setup verification and inline quality disposition sit inside the manufacturing operations and control domain.[S01]

IEC 62264-1:2013 formalises this separation by describing the manufacturing operations management domain at Level 3 and its activities, alongside the interface content and associated transactions within Level 3 and between Level 3 and Level 4.[S02] In the IEC 62264 hierarchy, Level 0 defines the physical production processes, Level 1 covers sensing and manipulating those processes, Level 2 addresses monitoring and supervisory control, Level 3 governs manufacturing operations management across production, maintenance, quality and inventory workflows, and Level 4 manages business planning and logistics.[S02]

The critical rule in IEC 62264-1 is that Level 3 and Level 4 communicate through structured transactions rather than shared memory or direct device polling.[S02] Level 4 issues a production schedule specifying product families, quantities and due dates alongside the approved bill of materials.[S02] Level 3 checks equipment availability, crew rosters, work-in-process balances and tooling readiness, translates the commercial requirement into executable work orders for specific lines and shifts, and returns verified production performance responses that Level 4 consumes for inventory valuation and capacity replanning.[S02]

When a factory omits the Level 3 boundary and connects Level 4 enterprise software directly to Level 1 or Level 2 controllers, transaction integrity collapses.[S02] A programmable logic controller on a loom or cutting table counts mechanical strokes, picks or knife cycles; it does not know whether those cycles produced first-quality fabric for an export order, calibration waste during a reed change, or rework on a rejected batch.[S02] Even where Level 3 functions are initially hosted in a lightweight operations database rather than a full manufacturing execution system, preserving the IEC 62264-1 transaction contract between Level 3 and Level 4 keeps business planning and shop-floor execution decoupled.[S02]

A raw sensor reading has no intrinsic business meaning.[S01] Knowing that a sewing motor drew 420 watts at 10:14:02 or that a folding-table optical sensor triggered 180 times in fifteen minutes, as an illustrative telemetry example, tells a plant manager nothing about delivery performance, rework loss or electricity per shirt.[S08] Raw signals become actionable production evidence only when joined with operational context: which production order was running, which fabric roll and dye lot were loaded, which specification applied, which crew was assigned, and whether the line was scheduled for production or maintenance.[S01] In the GFT reference architecture, Level 3 manufacturing operations management is the sole authoritative owner of this production context.[S02]

Both ISA-95 Part 1 and IEC 62264-1 organise the manufacturing operations domain around four resource pillars: personnel, equipment, material and process segments across production, maintenance, quality and inventory operations.[S01] When a spinning, weaving, dyeing or garment order executes on the floor, each operational event binds those four pillars at a specific work centre over a bounded time interval.[S02]

When a dashboard bypasses Level 3 and assembles context inside front-end chart queries, consistency breaks down because production, quality and energy charts bind equipment, material and time using incompatible boundaries.[S08] Fixing this requires a single Level 3 context service that records the active binding of work centre, production order, operation step, material lot, crew state and planned calendar state; when an edge node publishes a machine cycle, bundle scan or metre reading, the Level 3 pipeline attaches the authoritative context active at the event's source timestamp.[S15]

ISO 22400-2:2014 bridges shop-floor event capture and management reporting by presenting manufacturing KPIs through their formula and corresponding elements, their time behaviour, their unit or dimension, and other characteristics.[S08] The standard separates basic measured elements, such as planned busy time, actual production time, good quantity, scrap quantity and rework quantity, from composite indicators calculated from those elements, such as availability, effectiveness, quality ratio and overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).[S08]

In GFT's responsibility model, basic elements originate at the edge and Level 2 supervision boundary, while the KPI formula, element reconciliation and aggregation window are governed at Level 3.[S08] The Level 3 KPI service applies the ISO 22400-2 dictionary definition, separates planned from unplanned downtime, prevents double-counting of rework, and confirms that numerator and denominator share the same work-centre and time boundary.[S08]