C-MARS-ABM: A Deployment Approach for Cloud Manufacturing

Cloud manufacturing is defined as a resource sharing paradigm thatprovides on-demand access to a pool of manufacturing resources and capabilities aimed at utilising geographically dispersed manufacturing resources in a service oriented manner. These services are deployed via the Industrial Internet of Thingsand its underlying IT infrastructure, architecture models, as well as data and information exchange protocols and standards. In this context, interoperability has been identified to be a key enabler for implementing such vertically or horizontally integrated cyber-physical systems for production engineering. Previously, the authors proposed an interoperability framework called C-MARS (Cloud ManufacturingResource Sharing System) to enable error free and non-ambiguous information transfer between the various components and layers of a typical cloud manufacturing system. The main contribution of this paper concerns the identification of the key process parameters for deploying cloud manufacturing processes via ageneric and costing-based operation and deployment model (CMARS-ABM) usedto simulate interoperable cloud-based manufacturing scenarios for parts of different complexity, varying production numbers, and service composition setups typical to SMEs of varying sizes. Initial results confirm that Cloud Manufacturing is not a one-size-fits-all solution, and that there are indeed a number of driving parameters that need to be analysed to determine whether or not an investment in cloud manufacturing may be financially beneficial and advisable given a specific scenario.