A platform for optimisation in distributed manufacturing enterprises based on cloud manufacturing paradigm

The synergy of fundamental factors like changes in governmental policies, global expansions of the manufacturing industries and improvements in technology related to reliability of manufacturing information flow have created the global manufacturing revolution in the first years of the twenty-first century. Although the concept of global manufacturing enterprise has created benefits and opportunities for today’s manufacturing enterprises, it has enforced enterprises to endure costs to adopt the global manufacturing solutions. Besides, considering the researches aimed to enable the global manufacturing paradigm, there is still a need for efficient solutions to fulfil the global product development requirements. In this paper, the essential aspects and requirements of a global manufacturing approach are studied. Considering the essential requirements such as integration of manufacturing operations over the globe, maintaining manufacturing networks in distributed manufacturing enterprises, collaboration of global manufacturing agents within the networks and enabling the optimal solution systems in global manufacturing enterprises, the paper reviews the dominant researches for the global manufacturing solutions. Considering the new paradigm for global manufacturing called cloud manufacturing discussed in the latest works of the authors, the paper proposes a new manufacturing platform called STRATUS Cloud for today’s global manufacturing. The architecture of STRATUS Cloud is discussed based on the cloud manufacturing paradigm to fulfil the requirements of global manufacturing platform especially in enabling the global manufacturing for adoption of optimal solution systems. The STRATUS Cloud inherits capabilities from the recent authors’ researches such as collaboration support of distributed manufacturing agents over the globe and the integration of the manufacturing operation based on the STEP standard while extending its application and fulfilling STEP’s limitations. The STRATUS Cloud proposes a contribution for enabling the adoption of the optimal solutions through manufacturing processes. This contribution is achieved via a manufacturing cloud reconciled with the proposed platform structure. The capabilities of the STRATUS Cloud to enable optimisation systems are discussed in different case study scenarios.