A Feature Based Method for Product-Oriented Representation to Manufacturing Resources in Cloud Manufacturing

In cloud manufacturing, resources are encapsulated into manufacturing services to be provided in the manufacturing cloud. Resources representation is the basis for resources encapsulation. However, traditional representation methods to manufacturing resources mainly focus on the static description and/or current status of equipment. Research in product-oriented representation to manufacturing capabilities is limited. As a result, the evaluation to resources in the manufacturing cloud is indirect which will complicate the decision making in service determination. This paper presents a feature based method for manufacturing resources representation. Machining features will be first extracted from the part model based on a predefined feature category. Then capabilities of resources linked by the manufacturing cloud to machine the part will be generated by computing the capabilities to machine the features based on a knowledge base composed of the rules to define resource capabilities. With this method, capabilities of manufacturing resources will be associated with certain product and the selection of service from the manufacturing cloud will be greatly facilitated.