Development of a Product Configuration System for Cloud Manufacturing

摘要

For Configure-to-Order manufacturing firms, Product Configuration System (PCS) is one of a key components. PCS has been introduced for decades and its technology has matured, providing the industry with a set of usability standards and best practices. However, even the state-of-the-art PCS performs poorly in terms of connectivity, customisation freedom management and implementation. In this regard, this paper first reviews the impact of manufacturing paradigms on product customisation and take Cloud Manufacturing, a nascent manufacturing model, as a disruptive technology to surmount existing obstacles. Then, a general architecture of PCS for Cloud Manufacturing (CM-based PCS) is proposed to conduct configuration reasoning based on cloud-sourced configuration knowledge, to diversify configurable options by introducing proper Cloud Manufacturing services and to fulfil configuration orders through a cloud-based design and manufacturing platform.