Ontology of collaborative manufacturing: Alignment of service-oriented framework with service-dominant logic

The transformation from a goods-based economy to a services-based economy suggests that firms need to redirect the production and marketing strategy that they have adopted for manufactured goods. A fundamental shift in worldview from goods-dominant (G-D) logic to service-dominant (S-D) logic has been proposed to match the analogous shift in the economy. At the same time, service computing is one of the new information technology (IT) paradigms that is transforming the way corporations organize their information resources. Because of the differences and relationships between service computing and service management, the different role of service computing technologies and service-oriented management logic deserves attentions. In this paper, we first discuss the relationship between service-oriented architecture and service-dominant logic based on strategic alignment model. Then, we propose an ontology of service-oriented collaborative manufacturing to organize the concepts and knowledge on a fit between service-oriented architecture and service-dominant logic. This ontology provides an understanding of the collaborative manufacturing domain from a service orientation perspective, which is important for successful Business-IT alignment. Furthermore, this ontology will increase the level of automation in service discovery, invocation, composition and interoperation. A case study based on a customized bicycle buying scenario is used to provide a preliminary validation and design evaluation of this ontology. The case study shows the improvement and benefit of our approach, which can lead to promising new business opportunities. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.