Xi Vincent Wang

DIMP: an interoperable solution for software integration and product data exchange

Today, globalisation has become one of the main trends of manufacturing business that has led to a world-wide decentralisation of resources amongst not only individual departments within one company but also business partners. However, despite the development and improvement in the last few decades, difficulties in information exchange and sharing still exist in heterogeneous applications environments. This article is divided into two parts. In the first part, related research work and integrating solutions are reviewed and discussed. The second part introduces a collaborative environment called distributed interoperable manufacturing platform, which is based on a module-based, service-oriented architecture (SOA). In the platform, the STEP-NC data model is used to facilitate data-exchange among heterogeneous CAD/CAM/CNC systems.

ICMS: A Cloud-Based Manufacturing System

Nowadays, Cloud Computing technology is providing a new way to do business by offering a scalable, flexible service over the Internet. It creates new solutions and opportunities to the modern enterprises, including the manufacturing industry. In this chapter, the essential features of Cloud Computing are discussed followed by a Cloud Manufacturing concept. In the second part, a service-oriented system called Interoperable Cloud-based Manufacturing System (ICMS) is proposed. ICMS provides a Cloud-based environment integrating existing and future manufacturing resources by packaging them using the Virtual Function Block mechanism and standardized description.

A cloud-based production system for information and service integration: an internet of things case study on waste electronics

ABSTRACT Cloud computing is the new enabling technology that offers centralised computing, flexible data storage and scalable services. In the manufacturing context, it is possible to utilise the Cloud technology to integrate and provide industrial resources and capabilities in terms of Cloud services. In this paper, a function block-based integration mechanism is developed to connect various types of production resources. A Cloud-based architecture is also deployed to offer a service pool which maintains these resources as production services. The proposed system provides a flexible and integrated information environment for the Cloud-based production system. As a specific type of manufacturing, Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) remanufacturing experiences difficulties in system integration, information exchange and resource management. In this research, WEEE is selected as the example of Internet of Things to demonstrate how the obstacles and bottlenecks are overcome with the help of Cloud-based informatics approach. In the case studies, the WEEE recycle/recovery capabilities are also integrated and deployed as flexible Cloud services. Supporting mechanisms and technologies are presented and evaluated towards the end of the paper.

A collaborative product data exchange environment based on STEP

In the modern manufacturing context, CAD/CAM and CNC solutions are normally provided by different vendors, which gives rise to a heterogeneous application environment. Despite many integration approaches developed in the last decades, software integration and product data exchange are still challenging issues that need to be addressed. In this article, a collaborative product data exchange mechanism is proposed for a Distributed Interoperable Manufacturing Platform (DIMP). In this platform, STEP (ISO 10303) and STEP-NC (ISO 14649) data models are utilised to support the data flow. A novel data exchange mechanism is developed to provide the right amount and right level of product data subset to the users based on these models. This mechanism enables the users to work with a reasonable scope of product data, without interfering others. To realise this concept, data-extracting algorisms are developed to provide a customised data domain, and meta-data model compliant with STEP is proposed to guarantee data tractability. Moreover, synchronisation is catered for after the data set is processed.

Cloud Manufacturing in Support of Sustainability

In a modern manufacturing business, collaborations not only exist among its own departments, but also among business partners. Cloud Manufacturing can assist this type of collaborations. As a new p ...

Virtualize Manufacturing Capabilities in the Cloud: Requirements and Architecture

In recent years, Cloud Manufacturing concept has been proposed by taking advantage of Cloud Computing to improve the performance of manufacturing industry. Cloud Manufacturing attempts can be summarized as two sectors, i.e. manufacturing version of Computing Cloud, and a distributed environment that is networked around Manufacturing Cloud. In this paper, manufacturing resource, ability and relevant essentials are discussed in the service-oriented perspective. The functional requirements of a Cloud Manufacturing environment are discussed, along with an interoperable manufacturing system framework. Cloud resource integration models are developed that are compliant with existing international standards. It is possible to achieve a collaborative, intelligent, and distributed environment via Cloud Manufacturing technologies.Copyright

Virtual Function Block Mechanism in the Cloud Manufacturing Environment

CManufacturing is a new manufacturing model that has evolved from Service-Oriented Architecture, networked manufacturing and CComputing. It provides intelligent, interoperable and distributed manufacturing model for the industry. This paper introduces a resource integration mechanism in the Cloud Manufacturing environment. Function Block technology is discussed from the Cloud Manufacturing perspective in detail. Next, a novel integration mechanism is proposed, namely the Virtual Function Block. Based on physical Function Blocks and software agents, Virtual Function Blocks are able to manipulate and integrate manufacturing resources via event states and data flows. During implementation, Creo Parametric was integrated as a Cloud Service with the help of VFBs to evaluate the mechanism.

A Smart Cloud-Based System for the WEEE Recovery/Recycling

Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is both valuable and harmful since it contains a large number of profitable and hazardous materials and elements at the same time. At component level, many parts of the discarded equipment are still functional and recoverable. Thus, it is necessary to develop a distributed and intelligent system to support WEEE component recovery and recycling. In recent years, the Cloud concept has gained increasing popularity since it provides a service-oriented architecture (SOA) that integrates various resources over the network. Cloud manufacturing systems are proposed worldwide to support operational manufacturing processes. In this research, Cloud manufacturing is further extended to the WEEE recovery and recycling context. The Cloud services are applied in WEEE recovery and recycling processes by tracking and management services. These services include all the stakeholders from the beginning to the end of life of the electric and electronic equipment. A Cloud-based WEEE recovery system is developed to provide modularized recovery services on the Cloud. A data management system is developed as well, which maintains the knowledge throughout the product lifecycle. A product tracking mechanism is also proposed with the help of the Quick Respond code method.

Scheduling in cloud manufacturing: state-of-the-art and research challenges

For the past eight years, cloud manufacturing as a new manufacturing paradigm has attracted a large amount of research interest worldwide. The aim of cloud manufacturing is to deliver on-demand manufacturing services to consumers over the Internet. Scheduling is one of the critical means for achieving the aim of cloud manufacturing. Thus far, about 158 articles have been published on scheduling in cloud manufacturing. However, research on scheduling in cloud manufacturing faces numerous challenges. Thus, there is an urgent need to ascertain the current status and identify issues and challenges to be addressed in the future. Covering articles published on the subject over the past eight years, this article aims to provide a state-of-the-art literature survey on scheduling issues in cloud manufacturing. A detailed statistical analysis of the literature is provided based on the data gathered from the Elsevier’s Scopus abstract and citation database. Typical characteristics of scheduling issues in cloud manufacturing are systematically summarised. A comparative analysis of scheduling issues in cloud manufacturing and other scheduling issues such as cloud computing scheduling, workshop scheduling and supply chain scheduling is also carried out. Finally, future research issues and challenges are identified.

Interoperability in cloud manufacturing: a case study on private cloud structure for SMEs

In recent years, cloud manufacturing has become a new research trend in manufacturing systems leading to the next generation of manufacturing paradigm. However, it also brings a new challenge which is caused by multiple cloud services and applications developed by different vendors in different platforms and programming languages. Based on the literature review, most of the cloud manufacturing research have focused on either the system or methodology level, and there are limited research works concentrating on the heterogeneous manufacturing environment and the related interoperability issues. Therefore, this research aims to tackle especially the interoperability issue in the cloud manufacturing environment. The interoperability research in computing is firstly reviewed, and the cloud manufacturing research is classified from an interoperability’s perspective. During cloud practice, the industrial users, especially Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), have demands on interoperability security, and safety. Therefore, in this research, the proposed cloud manufacturing system is particularly tailored as a private cloud to achieve data and service interoperability, where the demands from SMEs are also fulfilled. The proposed system is implemented in a private manufacturing cloud structure with mobile access. The system is validated and evaluated by a case study. The quantifiable results confirm the feasibility and advantage of the proposed system, compared with the performance of conventional IT solutions.