A semantic web service framework to support intelligent distributed manufacturing

As markets become unexpectedly turbulent with a shortened product life cycle and a power shift towards buyers, the need for methods to develop products, production facilities, and supporting software rapidly and cost-effectively is becoming urgent. The use of a loosely integrated virtual enterprise based framework holds the potential of surviving changing market needs. However, its success requires reliable and large-scale interoperation among trading partners via a semantic web of trading partners' services whose properties, capabilities, and interfaces are encoded in an unambiguous as well as computer-understandable form. This paper demonstrates a promising approach to integration and interoperation between a design house and a manufacturer that may or may not have prior relationship by developing semantic web services for business and engineering transactions. To this end, detailed activity and information flow diagrams are developed, in which the two trading partners exchange messages and documents. The properties and capabilities of the manufacturer sites are defined using DARPAAgent Markup Language (DAML) ontology definition language. The prototype development of semantic webs shows that enterprises can interoperate widely in an unambiguous and autonomous manner. This contributes towards the realization of virtual enterprises at a low cost.