Service-driven Web manufacturing: A Roadmap from Methodology to Applications

This invited talk deals with studying a service-driven web manufacturing methodology and exploring its potential applications in industry. In the aspect of methodology, basic equipment e-service model, manufacturing executive system configuration, and system running in the context of real-time information scheduling, sharing and tracking mechanism are three key issues that should be solved in advance. On the basis of our bottom-up research strategy, first of all, an e-service fundamental model attached to any a CNC machine tool is put forward. It is actually a server front-end of the machine tool and is able to provide online service functions including machining data sampling and handling, process quality control, machining operations visualization, collaboration, etc, through three modes, that is, access mode, subscription mode and broadcast mode. In terms of connecting all server front-ends with each other, secondly, we establish a web-based manufacturing executive system referring to decomposing the manufacturing tasks and allocating necessary manufacturing resources by means of using both BOM and Gantt charts. Furthermore, this web-based manufacturing executive system in a "Browser/Server/Web Database" three-tire architecture can run under the control of real-time information scheduling, sharing and tracking mechanism based on a time-dependent instantiated template net (TIT-net). As methodology verification, we use an industrial case to demonstrate the methodology mentioned above. The further potential applications in industry are also discussed in detail in this invited talk.