Cloud-based manufacturing-as-a-service environment for customized products

Rauschecker, Ursula and Meier, Matthias and Muckenhirn, Ralf and Yip, Arthur Lan Kuan and Jagadeesan, Ananda Prasanna and Corney, Jonathan; Cunningham, Paul and Cunningham, Miriam, eds. (2011) Cloud-based manufacturing-as-a-service environment for customized products. In: eChallenges e-2011 Conference Proceedings. IIMC International Information Management Corporation, ITA. ISBN 9781905824274

[thumbnail of Cloud-based Manufacturing-as-a-Service Environment for Customized Products] PDF. Filename: Cloud_based_Manufacturing_as_a_Service_Environment_for_Customized_Products.pdf
Final Published Version

Download (675kB)

Abstract

This paper describes the paradigm of cloud-based services which are used to envisage a new generation of configurable manufacturing systems. Unlike previous approaches to mass customization (that simply reprogram individual machines to produce specific shapes) the system reported here is intended to enable the customized production of technologically complex products by dynamically configuring a manufacturing supply chain. In order to realize such a system, the resources (i.e. production capabilities) have to be designed to support collaboration throughout the whole production network, including their adaption to customer-specific production. The flexible service composition as well as the appropriate IT services required for its realization show many analogies with common cloud computing approaches. For this reason, this paper describes the motivation and challenges that are related to cloud-based manufacturing and illustrates emerging technologies supporting this vision byestablishing an appropriate Manufacturing-as-a-Service environment based on manufacturing service descriptions.