Manufacturing Service Management in Cloud Manufacturing: Overview and Future Research Directions

Abstract

As a new service-oriented manufacturing paradigm, cloud manufacturing (CMfg) has experienced rapid development in the past five years. The research on its theories, key technologies, developments, and applications still keeps attracting attentions from more and more researchers. One of the most important issues to its improvements and quality of service (QoS) is the manufacturing service management (MSM). CMfg aims to realize the full-scale sharing, free circulation and transaction, and on-demand use of various manufacturing resource and capabilities in the form of manufacturing service. Without the effective operation and technical support of MSM, the implementation of CMfg and its aim cannot be achieved. It is therefore necessary to summarize the existing works and technologies on MSM in CMfg. This paper first provides a brief overview of CMfg and then focuses on the problem of MSM in CMfg from the service lifecycle perspective. The advances on MSM technology from eleven aspects are investigated and summarized. Finally, future research directions are identified and discussed. It is evident that the future MSM in CMfg is closely related to Internet of things (IoT), big data, and cloud computing.