A Novel Collaborative Planning Approach for Digital Manufacturing

The objective of this research is to develop methodology and algorithms for web-based digital manufacturing, supported by real-time monitoring for dynamic scheduling. This paper presents in particular an integrated approach for developing a web-based system, including distributed process planning, real-time monitoring and remote machining. It is enabled by a Wise-ShopFloor (

W

eb-based

i

ntegrated

s

ensor-driven

e-ShopFloor

) framework targeting distributed yet collaborative manufacturing environments. Utilizing the latest Java technologies (Java 3D and Java Servlet) for system implementation, this approach allows users to plan and control distant shop floor operations based on runtime information from the shop floor. Details on the principle of the Wise-ShopFloor framework, system architecture, and a proof-of-concept prototype are reported in this paper. An example of distributed process planning for remote machining is chosen as a case study to demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach toward web-based digital manufacturing.