Machine availability monitoring and machining process planning towards Cloud manufacturing

Cloud manufacturing as a trend of future manufacturing would provide cost-effective, flexible and scalable solutions to companies by sharing manufacturing resources as services with lower support and maintenance costs. Targeting the Cloud manufacturing, the objective of this research is to develop an Internet-and Web-based service-oriented system for machine availability monitoring and process planning. Particularly, this paper proposes a tiered system architecture and introduces IEC 61499 function blocks for prototype implementation. By connecting to a Wise-ShopFloor framework, it enables real-time machine availability and execution status monitoring during metal-cutting operations, both locally or remotely. The closed-loop information flow makes process planning and monitoring feasible services for the Cloud manufacturing. (C) 2013 CIRP.