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Due to rapidly changing market needs and an increasing demand for customisable products, an upgrade in the flexibility of supply chain integration throughout production networks is an essential need for future manufacturing environments. Based on the ideas of cloud manufacturing and Manufacturing-as-a-Service, this paper shows an approach on how to interconnect factory-IT systems in flexible production networks by means of extraction and request of manufacturing services, requirements on manufacturing service descriptions which are to be used therefore, and a suggestion for an appropriate service description syntax which includes technical and product related contents as well as business and logistics information

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Today information technology is one of the main enablers of efficient production due to its ability to support manufacturing planning, execution, and optimization. However, most of the tools that provide these features are extremely complex and require on-site installation, individual configuration, administration, maintenance, etc. In many cases, the costs and efforts involved are too high for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to bear. As a result, such companies are often unable to exploit the full potentials of manufacturing-related software systems. To overcome this problem, an IT infrastructure has been developed at Fraunhofer IPA which makes it easier to access manufacturing IT. The associated IT services, which are also accessible to SMEs, offer features for product tracking, process monitoring and control, etc., and are embedded in a cloud-based infrastructure, configurable to specific factory demands and accessible via apps (e.g. mobile devices). This paper addresses the relevant infrastructure requirements, such as security, equipment integration, IT service management, workflow management and execution as well as user-specific app configuration. The basic architecture of the developed infrastructure is then discussed on the basis of these. The concept of engineering apps is taken as an example to underline the main benefits of such an infrastructure.

Cloud manufacturing provides solutions for a number of tasks concerning the integration of manufacturing resources and production networks. Through it, new possibilities also arise for increasing product individualization. The paper describes how cloud manufacturing concepts allow an Internet marketplace to be established for flexible manufacturing services, which can be used to provide customized products. To do this, first of all use cases related to an appropriate IT infrastructure are analyzed with special regard to the management of manufacturing services which are used to represent manufacturing resources from a technical, financial, logistical, and contractual perspective. Furthermore, requirements on the platform which have to be fulfilled during execution of manufacturing services in a manufacturing cloud are explained and concepts and an architecture for realization of both are described.