An Operating System for Cloud Manufacturing (OSCM)

Abstract

Factory technologies have evolved to incorporate a great deal of manufacturing flexibility. Programmable automation in the form of Computer Numerical Control (CNC) and (Programmable Logic Control (PLC) coupled with hardware and process innovations (quick-change tooling, for example) enable a high level of shop-floor flexibility. Possibly, the most inflexible part of a factory is the manufacturing information system. In this paper, we develop an approach to a flexible and extendible architecture for shopfloor information systems. The Operating System for Cloud Manufacturing (OSCM) is a full-stack, distributed platform that tracks and facilitates the interaction between manufacturing jobs and resources (physical machines, humans or software apps). It uses an event-based architecture and a message exchange/broker to enable flexible and configurable distribution of to capture, distribute, curate and store information about shop floor events. The event-based architecture makes it easy to provide context to data emanating from the shop floor, while the message broker gives it flexibility, scalability and extendibility. This paper describes the architecture of the operating system and its services. Further, it demonstrates how shop-floor data can be flexibly routed to manufacturing apps that need it before drawing up conclusions.