Requirements and Concept for a Manufacturing Service Management and Execution Platform for Customizable Products

Cloud manufacturing provides solutions for a number of tasks concerning the integration of manufacturing resources and production networks. Through it, new possibilities also arise for increasing product individualization. The paper describes how cloud manufacturing concepts allow an Internet marketplace to be established for flexible manufacturing services, which can be used to provide customized products. To do this, first of all use cases related to an appropriate IT infrastructure are analyzed with special regard to the management of manufacturing services which are used to represent manufacturing resources from a technical, financial, logistical, and contractual perspective. Furthermore, requirements on the platform which have to be fulfilled during execution of manufacturing services in a manufacturing cloud are explained and concepts and an architecture for realization of both are described.