ORIGINAL ARTICLE

A system architecture for production-orientedmanufacturing grid

Peng Hu & Zude Zhou & Ping Lou & Quan Liu

Received: 6 December 2007 /Accepted: 26 October 2011 /Published online: 15 November 2011# Springer-Verlag London Limited 2011

Abstract One of the key issues in advanced manufacturingsystems is to improve the performance and efficiency ofproduction processes in terms of control, evaluation, andmaintenance in a proper system architecture. However,existing manufacturing grid-based architectures rarely ad-dress the requirements of production processes. Therefore,based on grid technology, a production-oriented manufac-turing grid (PMGrid) is proposed to solve the problem. Itskey middleware components, architecture, as well as theproduction manufacturing resource (PMR) are suggested. Ina case study for crankshaft manufacturing, functionalities ofPMGrid such as PMR description/encapsulation and tasksubmission and execution are discussed to show thepracticability and effectiveness of the proposed systemarchitecture.

Keywords Production process . Manufacturing grid .

Production-oriented manufacturing grid . Productionmanufacturing resources

1 Introduction

With the intense competition in the global market, currentmanufacturing industry is quite different from the situation

a decade ago. For example, the product life cycle becomesshorter, the lead time is shorter, while the product qualityrequirement is higher [1]. With such a background, moreand more manufacturing enterprises, in particular the oneshaving globally distributed manufacturing departments,have realized that bringing market with well-designed andwell-manufactured new products at competitive priceswithin a short lead time is imperative to survive in thecompetitive global environment [2–4].

Information technology has been the driving force to theproduction process. As an example, the rise of gridtechnology has greatly enhanced the manufacturing indus-try. With grid technology, a manufacturing grid (MGrid) [5]has been a promising approach and enabler for the knownnetworked manufacturing systems, where flexible andloosely coupled manufacturing resources can be seamlesslyintegrated. The essential topics in MGrid such as discoveryand publication architecture [6] and the quality of service(QoS) issues [7–9] have attracted intensive attention in theliterature. However, the current work seldom focuses on thespecific requirements of production processes, such as theproduction control, production monitoring, productionevaluation and analysis, etc.

In this paper, in order to fill in the gap between MGridstudies and the production process requirements, wepropose a production-oriented manufacturing grid(PMGrid), which leverages the efficiency of productionprocess in terms of effective control, monitoring, andanalysis for a manufacturing enterprise with geographicallydistributed manufacturing plants/units connected by net-works (e.g., internet/intranet). The specific requirements ofPMGrid, distinct from general MGrid, are shown in threeaspects: (1) it mainly solves the problem of effectivelycompleting production tasks; (2) the production manufac-turing resource (PMR) is introduced and adopted as

P. Hu (*) : Z. Zhou :Q. LiuSchool of Information Engineering,Wuhan University of Technology,122 Luoshi Rd.,Wuhan 430070, Chinae-mail: penghu@whut.edu.cn

P. LouSchool of Automation, Wuhan University of Technology,122 Luoshi Rd.,Wuhan 430070, China

Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2012) 61:667–676DOI 10.1007/s00170-011-3735-2

essential execution nodes (e.g., devices or equipment), inproduction execution; and (3) the monitoring of the task isconsidered as the feedback coordination of PMGrid.Besides, since PMGrid is partly based on MGrid (e.g.,some components in PMGrid may invoke the basic servicesfor information sharing from MGrid), it can be recognizedas a specific extension of MGrid. Because there are quite afew discussions about MGrid in the literature, to focus onour topic, we ignore the detailed discussion of MGridcomponents, such as the ones for information sharing andresource notification and discovery.

The remainder of the paper is organized as follows:Section 2 introduces the related work of grid-basedtechnologies in manufacturing; Section 3 analyzes the needof grid technology for production processes; Section 4discusses the PMGrid system architecture; Section 5 vali-dates the proposed architecture with a case study ofcrankshaft manufacturing for a global motorcar production;and Section 6 concludes the whole paper and presents thefuture work.

2 Related work

Current grid technology makes possible the resourcessharing and integration, in particular for the manufacturingresources. With grid technology, the information architec-ture can be virtualized, autonomic, and open [10]. There aresome state-of-the-art studies addressing grid-based technol-ogy in manufacturing, where grid technology can beapplied to enhance the industry applications, such asproduct data management (PDM), collaborative design,and virtual organizations [8]. Furthermore, since themanufacturing departments, sales departments, and customersare distributed worldwide, they can be virtually connected bygrid technology [11].

There are several grid-based information system studiesregarding manufacturing. Xie et al. [4] have developed anextensible markup language (XML)-based approach toaccessing and exchanging product model data (STEP) filesthrough the internet. In 2003, Muto [12] studied anintegration method using XML to access the equipmentstatus and perform operation through a web interface.

Furthermore, with a suitable information architecture, acollection of distributed information will be managed in anintegrated manner and perform autonomic management andinteroperable operations. In [13], a grid-based cooperativeprocess management system was developed based on gridtechnology to support cooperative process management inmanufacturing enterprises. Deng et al. [8] proposed ascheduling system for manufacturing resources in a virtualenterprise based on grid technology. In order to addressresource sharing and collaborative work in collaborative

design, the functional requirement of collaborative designgrid (CDG) was analyzed during the product design stageand simulation process by Li et al. [14]. In [14], a four-tierarchitecture for CDG was proposed based on the gridmiddleware, where grid services in CDG were realizedusing Globus Toolkit (GT) and a grid portal was developedto encapsulate grid services. The CDG technology mayprovide advanced grid services and user-friendly interfacesfor designers distributed in different locations, and thereforerealize the resource sharing and cooperative work inmanufacturing enterprises. He et al. [15] proposed a grid-based collaborative manufacturing framework to supportcollaborative manufacturing among enterprises. Turk [16]described the important role of how grid technology can beapplied in the engineering processes for collaborativeenterprises, but the work discussed a high-level architecturefor grid-based engineering services and tools.

Apart from the studies in grid-based manufacturingapplications, the architecture or framework for MGrid hasbecome an active research area. In 2005, Pu and Zhu [17]discussed the connotation and application of MGrid, andthey suggested an information integration framework basedon grid technology. A model with five-layer applicationbased on grid technology was proposed for virtualorganizations in order to improve efficiency of manufac-turing resource sharing. Shi et al. [18] suggested aframework of MGrid and its resource modeling technologybased on the architecture and paradigm of the gridcomputing. In their study, a manufacturing resourcehierarchy model was proposed and realized by web servicetechnologies, which can be used to implement the resourcesharing in manufacturing industry. Meng et al. [19]presented a solution for resources sharing among manufac-turing enterprises and proposed an MGrid, where a peer-to-peer system and distributed hash table are utilized toresolve the issues of resource sharing, searching, andpublishing. Li et al. [20] proposed a collaborative manu-facturing grid, where resource sharing and cooperativework was addressed. Zhang et al. [21] proposed aninterface model for the whole-life manufacturing resourcesharing based on the model of virtual organization usingSTEP standard and open grid services architecture (OGSA).Wang et al. [22] presented a grid-based method ofmanufacturing resource sharing in the application serviceprovider platform.

Moreover, in order to improve guaranteed quality in grid-based manufacturing information systems or MGrid systemsfor production processes, QoS issues need to be addressed.GARA [11] is a classical QoS framework that providesprogrammers a convenient way to access end-to-end QoS,having advance reservations with uniform treatment tovarious types of resources such as networks, computers,and disks. The grid QoS management (G-QoSM) [8]

668 Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2012) 61:667–676

framework can leverage the OGSA, perform grid servicediscovery based on QoS requirements, support policy-basedadmission control for advance reservations, and execute gridservices with QoS constraints. Furthermore, specific QoSrequirements for MGrid were addressed because it cannotcompletely be inherited from a general grid technology. MG-QoS [9] initially suggested a QoS management system forMGrid. However, the authors of [9] mainly discussed theconceptual architecture with some QoS requirements inMGrid, while specific requirements were not included.Besides, for the resource publication and encapsulationstrategy in MGrid, Tao et al. [6] categorized the manufac-turing resources into nine classes in MGrid, one ofwhich, for example, is the equipment resources class,including the machine tools, computer numerical control(CNC)/numerical control (NC), clamp, etc. Nevertheless,how to dispose the resources like CNC/NC has not beeninvestigated. Besides, other important research topicssuch as resource selection and task scheduling havebeen studied in [23–25].

In summary, the aforementioned MGrid-related stud-ies are mostly conceptual and not specialized forproduction processes. For example, the aforementionedMGrids aim to share all kinds of manufacturingresources distributed over the internet/intranet. Theseresources include different kinds of information includ-ing software resources, numerical controllers, machinetools, instruments, etc. Therefore, these MGrids cannotbe directly applied to production processes. In addition,most of grid-based technologies in manufacturing havenot addressed the characteristics of production processes,which make them unsuitable for a manufacturingproduction application.

In this paper, we discuss a specialized system architec-ture for production process based on a classical MGrid forglobal manufacturing enterprises. The specific requirementsand differences will be considered. To focus on the keyrequirements in the production process, we propose aPMGrid architecture for production processes, includingsome components and essential elements for the productionprocess. Compared to the classical MGrid, the proposedPMGrid aims to provide the architecture for effectiveproduction, which includes PMRs management, the pro-duction task management (i.e., decomposition and sched-uling), tools management, production data management,remote diagnosis, etc.

3 Production process and grid technology

The production process can be considered as a flow processhaving a range of inputs and outputs on demands.Generally, there are three types of production processes

[26], i.e., job production, batch production, and flowproduction. In [26], job production is considered uniquebecause the project is seen as a single operation. Batchproduction is continually processed through each machinebefore moving to the next operation process. The differentjob types in the method are held as work-in-progress statesbetween the various stages of production. In the flowproduction, units work upon each operation and then passthe results to the next work stage without waiting for thecompletion of batch process.

Therefore, a production process requires:

1. Quick responses to customer orders,2. Low work-in-progress levels,3. Management assistance to reduce costs in labor and

production, and4. Easy supervision and inspection of production tasks.

These requirements can be solved by components in gridtechnology, such as monitoring, analysis, control, and datamanagement. Moreover, grid technology has been appliedto industrial applications such as collaborative design,virtual enterprises, and PDM [8]. For example, in order todemonstrate the case that important elements are lacked inthe classical production process, we can see Fig. 1, where aspecific dynamic production control as a part of thecompany’s production process [27] is shown. Furthermore,it is easy to see that the traditional knowledge bases (KBs)or databases (DBs) have no communications between each

Design

Order

Process Planning

Operation Planning

Execution, Control and Monitoring

Physical System

Dynamic Scheduling

Customer

Customer

Products

Production Control

Order acceptance/rejection

Design alternatives

Process planning alternatives

KB/DB

KB/DB

KB/DB

KB/DB

Simulated system

Fig. 1 The production process flow

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other. In this sense, decisions at each production stagecannot be made effectively. Therefore, the productionprocess can be enhanced by using the analytical andhistorical data in an automatic way, which are not addressedin the traditional production process. Moreover, we may needto store and transmit these analytical and historical datatransmission to the KB/DB.

For today’s global manufacturing enterprises, there areusually more than one manufacturing plants/units in-volved in order to handle multiple production activities.If we take the virtual organization as an example,manufacturing plants/units in a virtual organization aregeographically distributed among regions. The challengesof production process in this virtual organization includethe control, monitoring, and management for the manu-facturing resources. As an example, for an airplanemanufacture, the production processes are made globally,where different parts of an airplane are manufactured bydifferent manufacturing units. Customer orders fordifferent parts are dispatched to corresponding manufac-turing plants/units. In this sense, some concurrentproduction tasks in each manufacturing plant/unit mayoccur.

Therefore, a grid-based system architecture is required tosolve the abovementioned challenges. Figure 2 gives anexample of a networked enterprise for global manufacturingwith PMGrid, where production tasks need to be processedin a global production activity. PMGrid is able to processdifferent tasks and jobs from distributed manufacturingunits. Thanks to PMGrid, tasks are able to be executed andmonitored in a networked environment, so the networkingissues for manufacturing equipment and devices need to beconsidered. For example, for networked NCs, we needeffective and responsive monitoring, control, and analysisfor the execution of manufacturing resources. Zhou et al.[28] have proposed the software and hardware architecture

for an embedded networked NC, which is applicable to thenetworked manufacturing environment. Furthermore, thenetworked environment requires information exchangeamong various individual production manufacturingresources, including work centers, machine tools, moldbases, CNCs/NCs, etc. As such, production tasks are ableto be operated through the networked NC by PMGrid. Inthe next section, we will discuss how the proposedPMGrid can solve the problems in production processand provide extensible and loosely coupled functions.

4 The production-oriented manufacturing grid

PMGrid mainly aims to solve the problems of productionprocesses, such as how to effectively monitor theexecution and perform diagnosis, how to improve thequality of decision making for production process, andproduction manufacturing resources management. Al-though PMGrid has an open and extensible architecture,we will focus on the discussion of the key functions inPMGrid.

Furthermore, we can make two assumptions before wediscuss about PMGrid:

1. The latency caused by the data transmission is notconsidered, where this issue can be solved by theappropriately chosen network. In fact, for the high-precision production task, the high-quality networkshould be provided.

2. The time consumption spent on invoking the serviceof MGrid is not considered, because it is comparablysmall in an ideal network condition. For a time-critical production task, the time consumption shouldbe solved by choosing a high-efficiency algorithm,hardware, etc.

Task

Job 1

Job 2

Job k

Job 3

Internet/Intranet

ManufacturingPlant/Unit

ManufacturingPlant/Unit

ManufacturingPlant/Unit

ManufacturingPlant/Unit

ManufacturingPlant/Unit

PMGrid

Fig. 2 An example of a globalmanufacturing enterprise. Theproduction process is taskoriented, and production taskprocess is the main objective ofthe manufacturing plants. Onetask can be split into severaljobs in PMGrid

670 Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2012) 61:667–676

Besides, we can see that, as there will be a large amount ofdata transmission involved, a low-speed network will limitPMGrid to achieve desired performance.

4.1 System architecture

The system architecture of PMGrid is proposed as shown inFig. 3. PMGrid contains some essential components,compatible with standardized languages to describe manu-facturing resources and able to encapsulate them into gridservices. The production activities can be uniformly man-aged by PMGrid and conveniently utilized to satisfy differentapplications, such as production task monitoring andscheduling, manufacturing resource monitoring and diagno-sis, etc. The architecture has five tiers shown in Fig. 3,consisting of a PMGrid portal tier, an application tier, anPMGrid middleware component tier, a general MGridmiddleware component tier, a grid infrastructure tier, and amanufacturing resources tier.

4.2 Detailed discussion of PMGrid components

The PMGrid components address the basic functions inproduction process. We will discuss each component shownin Fig. 3 in the following. First we introduce three types ofmanufacturing resources.

4.2.1 Manufacturing resources

In order to focus on the monitoring and diagnosing of theexecution process, we categorize the manufacturing resour-

ces into three classes: PMRs, virtual manufacturingresources (VMRs), and other normal MRs. PMRs are theexecution nodes, which execute the tasks or jobs (subtasks)during a production process. PMRs include the machiningtools, machining center, NC/CNC, or other devices.Moreover, each VMR is resided with the PMR agentsoftware on each manufacturing execution unit, able torespond to the control command from the PMGrid middle-ware and extract the proper data correspondingly. While theVMRs include the production-related software, DBs, KBs,inventories, files, information, etc. The other MRs cover therest of the above two classes, including the staff, ware-houses, etc.

A PMR contains a list of properties (see Table 1),such as capacity, running status, completion time, etc. Infact, manufacturing resources have been described in [29],we categorize the properties in three classes (i.e., runningstatus, physical info, and capacity), the running statusclass is suggested and it is essential to the proposedsystem and analysis. With this classification, we candescribe the PMR in XML schema syntax. The metric isused to be processed by a conversion program in theXML schema format, ready to be processed andexposed to PMGrid.

Note that the completion time varies from task to task, sothe completion time should be calculated from some relatedproperties. We can denote the property of a PMR usingsome basic property elements by a set PMR_Basic anddenote additional extended properties by a set PMR_Ext.The relationship between the two sets can be mapped by acertain function f as

f PMR Basicð Þ ! PMR Ext

In fact, we can use web services resource framework(WSRF) specifications in [30] for the publication andencapsulation of PMRs.

4.2.2 PMGrid portal tier and application tier

PMGrid portal provides a series of user-friendly interfacesand tools, such as consumer input for the order, manufac-turing task composition, operation monitoring, and manu-facturing task visualization. The application tier providesproduction-oriented applications based on the keycomponents in PMGrid, of which the related servicesare invoked in a convenient and integrated way.

4.2.3 PMGrid middleware component tier

PMGrid middleware components tier has some keycomponents related to production processes. We willdiscuss them in the following.

PMGrid Portal

PMGrid Middleware Components

PMR Data Management

Tool Infomation Management

Manufacturing Resources

Virtual manufacturing resources (VMRs)(database, inventory, STEP files, etc.)

Production manufacturing resources (PMRs)(NC, turning center, cutter machine, etc.)

Program Code Management

Maintenance Management

Production Data Management

Remote Diagnosis Task Management

PMR Evaluation

. . .

Other manufacturing resources (MRs)

Grid Infrastructure

General MGrid Middleware Components

PMGrid Applications

Fig. 3 The PMGrid architecture

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The PMR data management component contains twofunctions:

1. PMR status monitoring and2. PMR data management.

PMR status monitoring function takes in charge ofmonitoring the running time, error, completion status etc.,while PMR data management involves the operation ofrelated PMR data, such as store, backup, retrieval forthe use in an error identification application, a routinesynthesis, or an invoking procedure by other applications.

The PMR evaluation component contains two functions:

1. Single PMR analysis and2. Group PMR analysis.

Single PMR analysis function includes the error analy-sis, utilization analysis, etc. Group PMR analysis functionprovides the advanced analysis for a group of PMRs.

The tool information management component containsthree functions:

1. Tool data recording and exchanging,2. Tool planning, and3. Tool analysis.

Time spent in machining processes to ensure the smoothproduction may be significant and thus requires managementefforts. If the cost of tools is expensive, a careful planning andanalysis is required. As an essential part in production, thiscomponent is necessary to the production process.

Tool data recording and exchanging function records thehistorical data for the tool usage, ready for the synthetic analysisand planning in the other two functions. Tool data exchangemay occur when a distributed machine tool, considered as aPMR, transmits the tool information to the central tooldatabase. Then, tool planning function will utilize the historicaltool data, as well as the cost and time spent in a machiningprocess, in order to comprehensively decide what kind of toolshould be used. Moreover, it will store decision-making results

for tool planning into a KB/DB, e.g., a relational database likeMySQL. Tool analysis provides not only intelligent decisionfor the tool planning, but also the complicated and detailedanalysis report to an operator. Besides, with a user interface inthe PMGrid portal tier and applications tier, statistics can beaccessible to the authorized operator.

Production data management component contains twofunctions:

1. Production process analysis and2. Product data management.

Production process analysis uses necessary data retrievedfrom other components and aims to provide the compre-hensive analysis services for the overall production process.Moreover, it can perform error analysis, able to find errorsand congestions during the production process. Through anapplication in PMGrid portal, an operator will be notifiedby the real-time monitoring for the process. In this sense,the efficiency of the production process can be greatlyimproved. Product data management function, as animportant tool in product life-cycle management (PLM),is able to control check-in and checkout of the product dataover multiple users. It can build and manipulate the bill ofmaterials of a product for assemble purposes and assist inconfiguration management of products. Moreover, it canenable automatic reports on product costs to aid the orderstep or process planning step in Fig. 1.

In fact, the PDM system can be integrated and exposed asthe VMR described in web services description language(WSDL) syntax.

Maintenance management component contains threefunctions:

1. Automatic maintenance planning,2. Backup and archive of maintenance tasks, and3. Overall maintenance tools.

Because the overall statistics and performance of thePMRs are important to production execution and therefore

Table 1 An example of PMR description and encapsulation

Class Resource property Metrics Description

Running status Name String CVDF315OM-001

Status Enum: fine/warning/congested/off Fine

Job list Array: part name, production time part 01, 60 ms

Completion time Integer: ms 6,000

Physical info Outline dimension Decimal: m3 7.2×2.8×3.9

Gross weight Integer: kg 2,600

Capacity Diameter error of rod journal Decimal: mm 0.02

Turning diameter Integer: mm 380

Production length Integer: mm 550

Cutting speed Integer: m/min 350

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have influence to the whole production process, theirmaintenance and status are important. Automatic mainte-nance planning function can generate maintenance plans forPMR maintenance, so the maintenance management com-ponent is able to perform these plans. Through a PMGridportal interface for automatic maintenance planning func-tion, a manager can assign a proper staff member to operatethe maintenance tasks, and the results can be notified by theautomatic maintenance planning function. Then, backupand archive of maintenance tasks function can facilitate themaintenance tasks. Furthermore, overall maintenance toolsprovide several tools such as statistics data, reports, anddecision-making functions for the production process ondemands, a manager can have a comprehensive informationduring to the whole production process.

Program code management component contains twofunctions:

1. Management of program code transmissions and2. Maintenance of program codes.

The program code management component in PMGrid hasmore functions than the management of NC programs in thegeneral PDM system. First the program code managementcomponent provides the transmission, backup, and archive ofprogram code. This component manages and maintains allkinds of program codes for production execution, such asprogrammable logic controller (PLC) codes (e.g., STEP7 SCLcodes, SFC codes, etc.), APT codes, and G-code, and it willhandle the management and transmission of productionexecution programs for the PMRs, including direct NC,CNC, networked NC, PLC, etc.

During the transmission period of program codes, themanagement for program code transmissions function dealswith issues such as transmission security, reliability transmis-sion, and efficiency. Transmission security includes the dataencryption of program code transmissions. Equally importantis the transmission efficiency, in particular for time-criticaloperations for some PMRs, and therefore it involves how totransmit the program code in a constraint time.

Maintenance of program codes function can store theprogram codes and categorize them if other components orapplications invoke the codes. Furthermore, it covers thebasic functions as an original PDM system.

Remote diagnosis component contains three functions:

1. Remote monitoring, diagnosis, and control;2. Data transmission services for diagnosis messages

exchanges; and3. Diagnosis data management.

Remote diagnosis component provides essential servicesfor the PMR monitoring, diagnosis, and control. Since thediagnosis data will transmit through the network, thediagnosis data transmission is necessary for the final

analysis process, which will be displayed for authorizedusers. Moreover, diagnosis message exchanges occur whena local computer or embedded server, which controls localPMRs, attempts to provide the fused data to the server.Diagnosis data management function provides the manage-ment services to obtain diagnosed data.

Task management component contains three parts:

1. Task planning and decomposition and2. Task scheduling.

Task planning and decomposition function first split themajor production tasks into smaller ones, i.e., jobs (orsubtasks). Then, through by task scheduling function, thesejobs will be processed by the specialized production taskscheduler, aiming to provide an optimum task scheduling.

4.2.4 General MGrid service tier

This tier provides the basic and general services andinterfaces for the manufacturing resource sharing, accesscontrol, data management, and execution management, aswell as the necessary grid runtime environment. In order tofocus on the topic in this paper, the related discussion inthis layer is ignored, which can be found in the state-of-the-art research field.

4.2.5 Grid infrastructure tier

The grid infrastructure tier provides a toolkit to implementPMGrid. For example, GTcan be used in this tier, because it iswidely accepted and used and it conforms to theWSRF-relatedspecifications [31], compatible with the fully fledged webservices with a clearer and more well-organized modules thanthose defined in the old OGSI [32] specifications.

5 Case study

A case study of the global manufacturing for the motorcaris carried out to demonstrate how the proposed PMGrid canenhance the geographically distributed manufacturing withgood responsiveness and efficiency for the productionprocess. The production process with PMGrid for motor-cars is shown in Fig. 4, where different production tasks forthe motorcar, such as ties and engines, are dispatched todifferent manufacturing plants/units. For simplicity but notlosing generality, the production process for crankshaftmanufacturing is discussed in the case study. Furthermore,in Fig. 4, we can see the production process flow for thecrankshaft, along with key PMGrid components such as theapplication interfaces in grid portal tier (see the upper leftpart of the figure) and the relationship between keycomponents (connected with dotted arrows) in the PMGrid.

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The crankshaft production mainly involves the roughmachining and superfinishing. In order to focus on ourdiscussion, we start from the production planning process asindicated in Fig. 1. We suppose the manufacturing plant usesthe CVDF315OM, by BOEHRINGER Co. Ltd., to performthe high-speed external crankshaft milling, and the grindingmachine is used for grinding the crankshaft. Furthermore, wesuppose that the whole production line contains 13 machin-ing devices (i.e., 13 PMRs) consisting of two types ofmachines (i.e., milling machine and grinding machine), aswell as a bundle of related VMRs and MRs in the designprocess, assemble/dissemble process, and sales process. Wecan show the PMR properties for that milling machine, namedCVDF315OM-001, in Table 1, while the corresponding WS-Resource Property document for describing PMR properties,which is actually used in GT4.2 together with publication instandard WSDL syntax, is shown in Fig. 5.

The above document can be used as a template duringthe resource data exchanging, updating, and notificationprocedures. We adopt the WS-Resource Property in WSRFspecifications to represent the PMR properties, which is

different from the resource description method in [29]. Thedescription for VMRs and MRs can be very similar to thisPMR description document. Note in this document that theother parts about web services declaration are ignored forclarity, which can be referred to [30]. Therefore, PMRs,VMRs, and MRs can all be encapsulated and ready to beinvoked by PMGrid key components (see Fig. 4) andapplications.

5.1 The production task submission and scheduling

The submission of production task can use the latest WS-GRAM, which is in charge of providing secure job sub-missions to many types of job schedulers for users who haveproper authorizations to access a job hosting resource in a gridenvironment. The production task is then decomposed andprocessed by the task management component.

A production task document is shown in Fig. 6. Withthis document, a production task will be submitted to aproper task scheduler in grid infrastructure tier, which is outof scope of this paper.

Motorcar

Motor engine

Design

Order

Process Planning

Customer Order acceptance, rejection

Design alternatives

PMR Data Management

Tool Infomation Management

Program Code Management

Maintenance Management

Production Data Management

Remote DiagnosisTask Management

PMR Evaluation

Production Task Scheduling

. . .

Customer

Physical Products

Illustrative possible relationships among key components in PMGrid

Status monitoring, control, etc.

Status monitoring, control, etc.

Product

Custom

er

resp

onse

s

. . .

Other MR Other MR . . . VMR . . .VMRManufacturing Resources

PMR

PMR

Age

nt

PMR

PMR

Age

nt

PMRPM

R A

gent

PMR

PMR

Age

nt

PMR

PMR

Age

nt

PMR Analysis Application Interface

An Analyzing Result Interface

Crankshaft

Fig. 4 Illustration of a PMGrid application in global manufacturing for motorcars

674 Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2012) 61:667–676

5.2 Collaboration between PMGrid middlewarecomponents

In Fig. 4, the arrows between the order stage and PMGrid,arrows between process planning stage and PMGrid, andarrows between design stage and PMGrid mean representthat bidirectional information flow is allowed as a feedbackat the order stage, design stage, and process planning stage,respectively. Furthermore, the results in these steps will bestored in the KB for the use of components in PMGrid.

Similarly, the single-headed arrows between PMGrid andcustomer mean that the customer feedback will be stored tothe KB for the future improvement of production process.

After the production task planning stage, the PMRdescription and publication will cooperatively monitor,diagnose, and analyze the production data. For instance,the PMR data management component will retrieve therunning status from the PMRs. The secure transmission ofstatus data is occurred and protected by its PMR datamanagement component. Then, the remote diagnosiscomponent will coordinate the production activities forcrankshaft production tasks. By the analysis applicationwith a user-friendly interface in the PMGrid portal (seePMR Analysis Application Interface in Fig. 4), anauthorized user or operator can check the status of a millingmachine and grinding machine. Furthermore, a user cansubscribe services in PMGrid. By subscribing the servicesavailable in the maintenance management component, anauthorized operator or manager can get the analysis data ofthe production process. Since all the data in eachcomponent can be stored in the KBs/DBs for analysis andperformance evaluation in maintenance management com-ponent and other related components, the decision-makingquality, responsiveness, and efficiency in the crankshaftproduction process can be improved.

6 Conclusion

We discuss the grid technology for production processesand propose a PMGrid architecture with technical detailsfor its key components. PMGrid focuses on the require-ments in production process. Compared to the classical

<xsd:schematargetNamespace="http://whut.edu.cn/digimanu"...><!-- Resource property element declarations --><xsd:element name="name" type="xsd:string"/><xsd:element name="status" type="xsd:string"/><xsd:simpleType><xsd:restriction base="xsd:string"><xsd:enumeration value="Fine"/><xsd:enumeration value="Warning"/><xsd:enumeration value="Congested"/><xsd:enumeration value="Off"/></xsd:restriction></xsd:simpleType></xsd:element><xsd:element name="job_list"/><xsd:complexType mixed="true"><xsd:sequence><xsd:elementname="production_name" type="xsd:string"/><xsd:elementname="production_time" type="xsd:integer"/>

</xsd:sequence></xsd:element><xsd:elementname="completion_time" type="xsd:integer"/><xsd:elementname="outline_dim" type="xsd:decimal"/><xsd:elementname="gross_weight" type="xsd:integer"/><xsd:elementname="diameter_err" type="xsd:decimal"/><xsd:elementname="turning_diameter" type="xsd:integer"/><xsd:elementname="production_len" type="xsd:integer"/><xsd:elementname="cutting_speed" type="xsd:integer"/><!-- Resource properties document declaration --><xsd:element name="PMRProperties"><xsd:complexType><xsd:sequence><xsd:element ref="tns:name"/><xsd:attribute ref="tns:status"/><xsd:attribute ref="tns:job_list"/><xsd:element ref="tns:completion_time"/><xsd:element ref="tns:outline_dim"/><xsd:element ref="tns:gross_weight"/><xsd:element ref="tns:diameter_err"/><xsd:element ref="tns:turning_diameter"/><xsd:element ref="tns:production_len"/><xsd:element ref="tns:cutting_speed"/></xsd:sequence></xsd:complexType></xsd:element>...</xsd:schema>

Fig. 5 An example of PMR description document in WSDL syntax

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><job><factoryEndpoint><wsa:Address>https://202.114.85.88:8443/wsrf/services/TaskFactory</wsa:Address><wsa:ReferenceProperties><!-- Type of Scheduler --><gram:ResourceID>PMGridScheduler</gram:ResourceID></wsa:ReferenceProperties></factoryEndpoint><!-- Task name --><argument>Production Task01</argument><!-- Process name --><argument>rough machining</argument><!-- Duration(s) --><argument>6</argument><!-- Task number --><argument>6</argument><!-- Result output --><stdin>$(PMGrid_HOME)</stdin><stdout>stdout</stdout><stderr>stderr</stderr><!-- Repeated number --><count>1</count></job>

Fig. 6 Production task description document

Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2012) 61:667–676 675

676 Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2012) 61:667–676

MGrid, the proposed PMGrid addresses the detailedrequirements for an entire production process. Moreover,PMGrid is extensible and covers the following aspects: (1)PMGrid addresses the specific requirements of MGrid forproduction process; (2) PMGrid defines different manufac-turing resources required by the production process; (3)PMGrid integrates PMR management, control, and moni-toring based on grid technology; (4) PMGrid can employ amathematical mapping model for the production manufac-turing resources; (5) PMGrid is flexible for the massproduction or mass customization for an enterprise; and(6) The PMGrid architecture is extensible and can takeadvantage of multi-agent system (MAS)-based methodolo-gy. This work is just an initial study in the productionprocess management based on grid technology, and thefuture work involves the software framework studies forPMGrid.

Acknowledgment The work is in part supported by NSFC (GrantNo. 50620130441) and in part supported by NSFC (Grant No.50675166).

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