A system architecture for production-oriented manufacturing grid

One of the key issues in advanced manufacturing systems is to improve the performance and efficiency of production processes in terms of control, evaluation, and maintenance in a proper system architecture. However, existing manufacturing grid-based architectures rarely address the requirements of production processes. Therefore, based on grid technology, a production-oriented manufacturing grid (PMGrid) is proposed to solve the problem. Its key middleware components, architecture, as well as the production manufacturing resource (PMR) are suggested. In a case study for crankshaft manufacturing, functionalities of PMGrid such as PMR description/encapsulation and task submission and execution are discussed to show the practicability and effectiveness of the proposed system architecture.