This EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) project will evaluate the limitations of the current Internet structure and protocols, and begin to characterize what changes or enhancements are needed so that future manufacturing systems can be set up as quickly and easily as today's e-commerce systems.A cyberinfrastructure for manufacturing systems does not yet exist, and it is not clear how the current Internet Web-based service structure could be applied to manufacturing systems. The project will evaluate several different frameworks, standards, and architectures that have been developed both for Internet/e-commerce systems and for manufacturing systems. Commonalities between the two as well as significant gaps will be exposed. The project will lead to new understanding of the fundamental limitations of the current Internet web-based service structure when applied to manufacturing systems. Gaps in the current state-of-the-practice will be identified, and future directions for research and development will be outlined that would enable better interoperatiblity, openness, and scalability of manufacturing systems.
Cyberinfrastructure has the potential to create a paradigm shift in the design and operation of manufacturing systems. A manufacturing cyberinfrastructure with the right functionality can enable the creation of virtual manufacturing communities, distributed across diverse physical locations, connected digitally by the Internet and physically by logistics. This cyberinfrastructure can facilitate emergent efforts to produce a new product on a small or large scale. The results of this research have the potential to enable small-scale businesses to break into new markets.
Cyberinfrastructure has the potential to revolutionize the design and operations of manufacturing systems, however many questions remain on what such a cyberinfrastructure would look like, and what are its specific goals and requirements. In this project, manufacturing engineers and computer scientists worked together to understand the limitations of the current web-services structure, and identify the needs of a manufacturing cyberinfrastructure in terms of protocol, architecture, and semantics. The goal of the project was to evaluate several different frameworks, standards, and architectures that have been developed both for Internet/e-commerce systems and for manufacturing systems. Commonalities between the two as well as significant gaps were studied. The project considered a number of questions that are relevant in this area, as well as defining new questions. The outcome of the project was a report (published as a conference paper in the 2012 International Symposium on Flexible Manufacturing Systems) to help define the needs and opportunities in the area of cyberinfrastructure for manufacturing systems. After the report was published, the project considered the possibilities for upgrading a small testbed at the University of Michigan to become a testbed for the future vision of manufacturing system cyberinfrastructure. A plan was developed to retrofit the existing control systems with a unified networking architecture, to enable future experimental work on distributed and networked systems. The intellectual merit of this project lies in the new understanding that has been achieved of the fundamental limitations of current web-based protocols, architectures, and semantics, when applied to manufacturing systems. While this small, exploratory project did not develop any new protocols, architectures, or semantics, it has identified some of the limitations in the current state-of-the-practice, and pointed out future directions for research and development in this domain that would enable better interoperatiblity, openness, and scalability of manufacturing systems. The broader impacts of this project include recommendations on future research directions in the area of cyberinfrastructure for manufacturing systems. In the longer term, the results of research in this direction have the potential to revolutionize the way that future manufacturing systems are designed and configured, enabling small-scale businesses to break into new markets.
