A PROCESS MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR COLLABORATIVE MANUFACTURING

摘要

A new approach to enacting processes "on the fly" by the participants is proposed for collaborative manufacturing. This approach allows the selection and planning of processes at a higher level as mutiple participants around the world can theoretically engage in planning the processes. Reconfigurable manufacturing system in such scenario means the selection of an appropriate sequence of processes, the process planning of the selected processes and the assignment of appropriate resources to carry out the processes. To achieve that, it resquires a new method of representing, sharing and executing process information. In addition, the representation of organizations providing the services and their resources is the prerequisite to the problems we intend to resolve. Thus, rather than applying it to develop a new process planning, this paper proposes this system to connect, share, and reconfigure the network of manufacturing and design companies who are collaborating for a common project. Our system called MIDAS provides functionalities for the representation of processes including alternatives, the planning of resources and the execution of process. Moreover, MIDAS uses XML to encode the process grammar, constraints and other business, design and manufacturing logic, facilitating scalability required for large-scale collaboration.