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.