Resource management framework for manufacturing grid

Based on open grid service architecture (OGSA) and Globus Toolkit 3. 0 (GT3), a manufacturing grid (MG) is proposed to realize resource sharing and collaborative working among manufacturing enterprises. Nevertheless, resource management in MG is much more complicated than that in other grid applications due to the geographically distributed manufacturing resources, which range from CAD, CAPP and CAE to various kinds of machine tools. With the interaction of manufacturing grid information service (MGIS, developed by ourselves) and globus resource allocation manager (GRAM, provided by GT3), a resource management framework is presented to perform the functions of resource encapsulation, registry, discovery and monitoring. Furthermore, the application architecture and an example are depicted to illustrate the utilization of the resource management system.

Multilevel manufacturing system of virtual enterprise based on manufacturing grid and strategies for member enterprise selection and task assignment

In order to improve efficiency of virtual enterprise, a manufacturing grid and multilevel manufacturing system of virtual enterprise is built up. When selecting member enterprises and task assignment based on the manufacturing grid, key activities are assigned to the suitable critical member enterprises by task decomposition, enterprise node searching and characteristic matching of manufacturing resources according to the characteristic matching strategy. By task merger, some ordinary activities are merged with corresponding key activities and assigned to corresponding critical member enterprises. However, the other ordinary activities are assigned to the related ordinary member enterprises with enterprise node searching and characteristic matching of manufacturing resources. Finally, an example of developing the artificial hip joint in the virtual enterprise is used to demonstrate that efficiency of the virtual enterprise is improved by using the manufacturing grid and the proposed strategies for member enterprise selection and task assignment.

Resources publication and discovery in manufacturing grid

In the manufacturing grid＇s architecture, Resources Management System （RMS） is the central component responsible for disseminating resource information across the grid, accepting requests for resources, discovering and scheduling the suitable resources that match the requests for the global grid resource, and executing the requests on scheduled resources. In order to resolve the problem of resources publication and discovery in Manufacturing Grid （MGrid）, the classification of manufacturing resources is first researched after which the resources encapsulation class modes are put forward. Then, a scalable two-level resource management architecture is constructed on the model, which includes root nodes, domain nodes and leaf nodes. And then an RIMS is proposed, and the resources publication and discovery mechanism are detailedly described. At last, an application prototype is developed to show the validity and the practicability of the proved theory and method.

Security Considerations Based on PKI/CA in Manufacturing Grid

In the manufacturing grid environment, the span of the consideration of security issues is more extensive, and the solutions for them are more complex, therefore these problems in manufacturing grid can＇t longer be addressed by existing security technologies. In order to solve this problem, the paper first puts forward the security architecture of manufacturing grid on the basis of the proposal of the security strategies for manufacturing grid; then the paper introduces key technologies based on public key infrastructure-certificate authority （PKI/CA） to ensure the security of manufacturing grid, such as single sign-on, security proxy, independent authentication and so on. Schemes discussed in the paper have some values to settle security problems in the manufacturing grid environment.

APL-based flexibility analysis of manufacturing grid

With the characteristics of diversity, randomness, concurrency and decomposability, tasks in manufacturing field are very complicated, and so manufacturing grid (MG) should have considerable flexibility to deal with this problem. With the definition of node and arc, MG structure is converted into a small-world network. Given construction cost constraint, the problem of shortest task waiting time is transformed into the constrained optimization problem, and a corresponding ?exibility analysis model based on average path length (APL) is proposed, and the premise of arc-length and node-distance are defined. The results of application example show that the analysis model is effiective.

Organizing of Virtual Enterprise for Customized Artificial Joint and Scheduling of Manufacturing Resources Based on Manufacturing Grid

In order to improve efficiency of developing customized artificial joint, a virtual enterprise is organized based on the manufacturing grid. The application-oriented framework of the virtual enterprise is created for organization of the virtual enterprise. The manufacturing system of the virtual enterprise is built up based on the exterior grid and manufacturing subsystems of member enterprises are set up based on the interior grid. Furthermore, according to characteristic matching of manufacturing resources, the scheduling flow is studied in detail and the related scheduling strategies are established. The scheduling procedure is divided into distributed scheduling stage and local scheduling stage.Based on the manufacturing grid, the organization of the virtual enterprise for customized artificial joint and the corresponding scheduling strategies can be utilized to shorten developing cycle and reduce produce cost.

A Multi-Agent Resource Selection Model in Manufacturing Grid Environment

A group of agents are intimately cooperated to set the assessment indices, establish the weight of each index in overall result of evaluation, collect the experts＇ scores given to each available resource, and the manufacturing resource whose overall assessment value is highest is taken as the optimal choice. Architecture of the proposed system is outlined and an example is offered to show the process of accomplishing the assessment.

Resource Encapsulation in Manufacturing Grid Environment

A feasible hierarchical structure of MG is introduced and an XML format to describe manufacturing resource, an embedded NC system is illustrated. An example of encapsulated resource sharing is given to demonstrate the processes involved in realizing a user＇s request for a CAD resource service through parallel design and computing.

Framework for Grid Manufacturing

With the development of networked manufacturing, it is more and more imminent to solve prob-lems caused by inherent limitations of network technology, such as heterogeneity, collaboration collision, and decentralized control. This paper presents a framework for grid manufacturing, which neatly combines grid technology with the infrastructure of advanced manufacturing technology. The paper studies grid-oriented knowledge description and acquisition, and constructs a distributed knowledge grid model. The pa-per also deals with the protocol of node description in collaborative design, and describes a distributed col-laborative design model. The protocol and node technology leads to a collaborative production model for grid manufacturing. The framework for grid manufacturing offers an effective and feasible solution for the problems of networked manufacturing. The grid manufacturing will become an advanced distributed manu-facturing model and promote the development of advanced manufacturing technologies.