In this new industrial wave, the manufacturing industry is supported by new technologies, i.e. Internet, analytics, and also integrated with assets, i.e.
machines, facilities, and fleets. IT and related smart technologies are enabling a major transformation in the manufacturing industry. Cloud computing is one such technology. NIST defined cloud computing as (Mell & Grance 2009):
“a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g. networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”
The key characteristics of cloud technologies are available in distributed environment and dynamically reconfigurable. Adopting companies can request the cloud resource to meet their demand. Under this everything-to-cloud (i.e.
X2C) trend, everything is virtualized as a service (i.e. XaaS), e.g. SaaS, PaaS and IaaS.
Cloud computing is the evolution of several technology trends, such as Internet delivery, ‘pay-as-you-go/ use’ utility computing, elasticity, virtualization, distributed computing, storage, content outsourcing, Web 2.0 and grid computing, and so on. Because it is a multidisciplinary research field, the business oriented evolution should be consider as well (Foster et al 2008).
Implementing cloud computing means a paradigm shift of both the business and IT infrastructure (Xu 2013).
In reality, many companies are struggling to achieve cost effective manufacturing strategies. Cloud computing gradually becomes one of the major enablers for the manufacturing industry to achieve their business goal in high-level collaboration.
It is reasonable and possible for manufacturing businesses to embrace the concept of cloud computing to give rise to the manufacturing version of cloud computing, i.e. ‘cloud manufacturing’ (Xu 2013). Cloud computing can transform the traditional manufacturing business model to produce an innovation business model with the help of intelligent factory networks. Naturally, the distributed manufacturing resources can be also virtualized and encapsulated as manufacturing services that be managed centrally. This service model can easily integrate and provision everything at low cost, and achieve high automation with flexibility (Xu 2013; Wang & Xu 2013; Chen, Chen & Hsu 2014).
Of course, Downing & Schultz (2015) point out that the benefits of cloud computing tend to be more than simply cost saving, but focus on more strategic topics, for instance, supporting collaboration, making the manufacturing more agile and adaptable, providing more possibilities of mobility, making it easier to supply IT support for operations from a central location, etc. (Field 2015). Cloud computing can give two competitive advantages to manufacturing: cumulative economic benefits and innovative technological benefits, as shown in Table 1.
Table 1. Economic and technological benefits of cloud computing to manufacturing industry
Economic benefits
Cost efficiency: no duplication of software/hardware and no unnecessary IT investment
Ren et al. 2014;
More responsive business solution: continuous availability, easy access to information and easy to accommodate the business needs
Parker 2011
Business model transformation: a new service delivery model, strong alignment with business capabilities and business model transformation
Qanbari et al.
2014; Parker 2011;
Talerico 2014 Increased visibility: not only internal visibility but also
across companies boundaries, particularly when different partners are involved
Shacklett 2010
Technological benefits
Standardized communication: it can be achieved by a flexible and scalable virtual platform
Chen, Chen & Hsu 2014; Ren et al.
2014 Consolidated infrastructure: enabling data integration and
centrally managed IT resources, and eliminating geographical constraint
Field 2015;
McDonald 2014
Connection with shop floor: creating a virtualized layer based on physical resources at shop floor layer and integrating the distributed product lines to enable collaborations
Qanbari, Li &
Dustdar 2014;
Qanbari et al. 2014
In addition to all the benefits brought above by cloud computing for manufacturing, a main contribution is its collaboration support capabilities. It is important to create an understanding of cloud computing in the manufacturing industry as a technological innovation.
Cloud computing is a disruptive technology that leverages many other existing technologies, such as utilities computing, parallel computing, and virtualization (Wu et al. 2014). All these technologies jointly support the IT atmosphere of cloud-enabled manufacturing, and also act as a catalyst to enable business transformation. Big data is another concept profoundly influence the development of the manufacturing industry. Big data refers to the management
of massive data collected from the manufacturing assets, such as sensors and microchips, and transforming these valuable data to decision making information. Big data analytics can support activities related to IoT and also CPS.
IoT technology can virtualize and control the physical world by effectively connecting and communicating, while CPS connects the physical world with cyber systems. Big data analysis is used to tackle most of the data relevant challenges and issues. Big data is a new method for business intelligent and resource sharing (Tao et al. 2014). In a recent study on supply chain trends, about 60% of the respondents actually had planned to invest in big data analytics in product lifecycle management within the next five years (Handfield et al.
2013).
Cloud computing and big data have both been widely studied and applied in the manufacturing sector. At the same time, HPC, SOA, virtualization technology, embedded technology, etc., have provided new methods to address the bottlenecks faced by the existing manufacturing industry. All the important technologies and their impact on the manufacturing industry are listed in Table 2.
Table 2. Relevant technologies Relevant
Technologies
Impacts on Manufacturing Industry References
Cloud computing
It is the most essential and fundamental concept in cloud-based manufacturing, and provides both IT infrastructure and a new business model.
Xu 2012
Big Data It deals with an enormous amount of data collection generated by IoT connections and CPS activities. IoT connects smart devices in the manufacturing industry and enables the interconnection of different objects, while CPS integrates computation and physical processes in manufacturing. The emerging of big data ensures that the manufacturing
resource/capabilities are instrumented.
Wang et al.
HPC is used to solve large-scale and complex manufacturing issues and carry out parallel collaborative manufacturing. Currently, grid computing and parallel computing are
expanding the capability of HPC, and providing more technical possibilities for distributed manufacturing activities.
It is an architectural approach to cloud-based manufacturing, and provides a collection of technologies, i.e. web service, ontology, and semantic web for the construction of a virtual manufacturing and service environments. In cloud-based manufacturing, all the
manufacturing resource/capabilities are provided as services. This architecture can ensure the communication between different services through standard interfaces and protocols.
Tao et al.
2011a
Virtualization It is a key enabler in cloud-based
manufacturing. This intelligence technology provides a virtualized service to users, and the
Wu & Yang 2010
services are generated based on the physical manufacturing resources/capabilities.
Virtualization can enable sharing,
management, and collaborative activities.