EAGER: Cybermanufacturing: Enabling Production as a Service (PaaS)

生产即服务（PaaS）定义了一种新的制造模式，允许新产品的设计师查询现有的制造设施，并接收有关制造能力和生产可用性的信息。对零件成本、零件质量和生产时间等信息的访问将有助于新产品快速原型化和规模化，同时也使现有的制造设施能够从未充分利用的设备和劳动力中受益。PaaS框架将包括用户的前端查询接口和后端分析组件。该接口旨在将用户与小型，中型和大型制造设施连接起来，而调度和路由算法将提供所需的灵活性和安全协议，以确保整个设施的运营和生产安全。利用PaaS框架的制造商将获得满足客户在成本、质量、准时交付方面需求的潜力，同时对不断变化的市场力量做出反应。由于制造业占GDP的12%，这项早期概念的探索性研究资助（EAGER）项目所带来的制造业运营改进有可能对国家底线产生重大影响。PaaS平台的目标是使分布式制造工厂能够在一个工厂位置内以及跨工厂位置有效地协调，以实现灵活的服务接口，从而支持生产管理。这项研究的智力价值在于将在面向服务的架构中创建现有科学和技术的扩展，以实现分布式生产，同时保留制造系统的专有信息。实现这一创新的关键软件抽象来自对众所周知的API的扩展，以捕获复杂的查询逻辑和各种生产需求，以满足用户需求。将通过利用制造设施中所有组件当前状态的全局视图来优化路由和调度决策。为了展示可扩展性并确保跨多个设施的隐私保证，将使用分层抽象来隐藏低级别细节和专有信息。PaaS框架将改变制造企业与新兴高价值市场互动的方式;提供推动创新的架构，使美国各地的小型、中型和大型制造企业能够在公平的竞争环境中竞争新产品业务。

Production as a service (PaaS) defines a new paradigm in manufacturing that will allow designers of new products to query existing manufacturing facilities and receive information about fabrication capabilities and production availability. The access to information such as part cost, part quality, and production time will help new products to be prototyped and scaled-up quickly, while also allowing existing manufacturing facilities to benefit from underutilized equipment and labor. The PaaS framework will include both a front-end query interface for the users and a back-end analysis component. The interface will be designed to connect users with small-, mid-, and large-sized manufacturing facilities, while the scheduling and routing algorithms will provide the flexibility and security protocols needed to guarantee operational and production safety across the range of facilities. Manufacturers that utilize the PaaS framework will reap the potential of meeting customer needs in terms of cost, quality, on-time delivery, while being reactive to changing market forces. With 12 percent of the GDP represented by the manufacturing industry, the manufacturing operational improvements that will result from this EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) project have the potential to make a significant impact in the national bottom line. The aim of the PaaS platform is to enable distributed manufacturing plant locations to efficiently coordinate both within one plant location as well as across plant locations to realize a flexible service interface for supporting production management. The intellectual merit of this research lies in the extensions that will be created to the existing science and technology in service-oriented architectures to enable distributed production, while preserving proprietary information of the manufacturing systems. The key software abstraction that enables this innovation comes from the extension to the well-known APIs to capture the sophisticated query logic and diverse production requirements to meet user needs. Routing and scheduling decisions will be optimized by leveraging a global view of the current state of all of the components in the manufacturing facilities. To demonstrate scalability and ensure privacy guarantees across multiple facilities, hierarchical abstraction will be used to hide low-level details and proprietary information. The PaaS framework will transform the way manufacturing companies interact with the emerging high-value market; providing the architecture to drive innovation and enable small-, mid-, and large-scale manufacturing companies across the U.S. to compete for new product business on an even playing field.