The manufacturing industry is facing the impact of a dynamic market and intensive competition. Many companies are looking for a new approach to improve their business activities in a collaborat ive business ecosystem with other stakeholders. Cloud computing enables the sharing of manufacturing resources and capabilities between different stakeholders to support business and physical production. The purpose of this resea rch is to explore approaches moving towards a cloud manufacturing ecosystem and present possible implications for practice. To fulfil the research objectives, a multiple-case study was conducted within sheet metal manufacturing companies. Business and technology related requirements for cloud-based collaborative manufacturing porta ls were collected through interviews with industrial practitioners from the sheet metal manufacturing perspective. Based on analysis a prototype model of a CloudEcosystem was presented to demonstrate the essential features of the portals. This research found that there are three different porta l types for cloud manufacturing ecosystems depending on the value chain configuration. Close to real-time information provided by cloud-based platforms can create manufacturing ecosystems where machine owners, product designers and customers may collaborate and compete simultaneously. The CloudEcosystem designed in this research can provide a practical tool and technical solution to help manufacturers think about moving towards cloud manufacturing ecosystem s.Ecosystems, web porta l, cloud platform, business collaboration, cloud manufacturing.

This study evaluates the use of virtual reality (VR) platforms, which is an integrated part of digital factory for industrial training and maintenance system. The digital factory based VR platform provides an intuitive and immersive human-computer interface, which can be an efficient tool for industrial training and maintenance services. The outcomes from this study suggested that use of the VR platform for training and maintenance of complex industrial tasks should be encouraged and use of the VR platform for that purpose should be further evaluated. This paper highlighted the generic concept of the application of virtual reality technique within digital factory to industrial maintenance and to build a low-cost VR application for training and maintenance system. An application case on virtual reality technique in a power plant operations and maintenance is demonstrated within the scope of this research. Overall research implications on virtual reality concept in industrial applications are concluded with future research directions.

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