Production as a service: A centralized framework for small batch manufacturing

Abstract

We present a Production as a Service (PaaS) framework that connects users (product developers) who have small batch production needs, with existing manufacturing facilities that have underutilized resources. PaaS is a web-based framework based on the service oriented architecture (SOA) design that breaks down the manufacturing of a product into several steps, or services, to incorporate various manufacturers with available capability in fulfilling the production request. Preservation of intellectual property (IP) is a major concern with SOA based manufacturing systems. Presented work aims to address this issue by using abstracted features to describe a product design, which enables manufacturers to provide quotations for the manufacturing steps without the need for the detailed technical data of the product. The paper also presents the optimization approaches employed to find feasible solutions based on the collected quotations for a production request by relaxing the precedence constraints on the manufacturing processes or the components. A case study is provided to illustrate the functionalities of the proposed framework. A detailed description of the PaaS architecture and the required APIs for its implementation are also provided.