Combining with the emerged technologies such as cloud computing, the Internet of things, service-oriented technologies and high performance computing, a new manufacturing paradigm – cloud manufacturing CMfg – for solving the bottlenecks in the informatisation development and manufacturing applications is introduced. The concept of CMfg, including its architecture, typical characteristics and the key technologies for implementing a CMfg service platform, is discussed. Three core components for constructing a CMfg system, i.e. CMfg resources, manufacturing cloud service and manufacturing cloud are studied, and the constructing method for manufacturing cloud is investigated. Finally, a prototype of CMfg and the existing related works conducted by the authors' group on CMfg are briefly presented.

Cloud manufacturing: a new manufacturing paradigm

Rapid advances in industrial information integration methods have spurred tremendous growth in the use of enterprise systems. Consequently, a variety of techniques have been used for probing enterprise systems. These techniques include business process management, workflow management, Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), grid computing, and others. Many applications require a combination of these techniques, which is giving rise to the emergence of enterprise systems. Development of the techniques has originated from different disciplines and has the potential to significantly improve the performance of enterprise systems. However, the lack of powerful tools still poses a major hindrance to exploiting the full potential of enterprise systems. In particular, formal methods and systems methods are crucial for modeling complex enterprise systems, which poses unique challenges. In this paper, we briefly survey the state of the art in the area of enterprise systems as they relate to industrial informatics.

Enterprise Systems: State-of-the-Art and Future Trends

Climate change and environmental monitoring and management have received much attention recently, and an integrated information system (IIS) is considered highly valuable. This paper introduces a novel IIS that combines Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud Computing, Geoinformatics [remote sensing (RS), geographical information system (GIS), and global positioning system (GPS)], and e-Science for environmental monitoring and management, with a case study on regional climate change and its ecological effects. Multi-sensors and Web services were used to collect data and other information for the perception layer; both public networks and private networks were used to access and transport mass data and other information in the network layer. The key technologies and tools include real-time operational database (RODB); extraction-transformation-loading (ETL); on-line analytical processing (OLAP) and relational OLAP (ROLAP); naming, addressing, and profile server (NAPS); application gateway (AG); application software for different platforms and tasks (APPs); IoT application infrastructure (IoT-AI); GIS and e-Science platforms; and representational state transfer/Java database connectivity (RESTful/JDBC). Application Program Interfaces (APIs) were implemented in the middleware layer of the IIS. The application layer provides the functions of storing, organizing, processing, and sharing of data and other information, as well as the functions of applications in environmental monitoring and management. The results from the case study show that there is a visible increasing trend of the air temperature in Xinjiang over the last 50 years (1962-2011) and an apparent increasing trend of the precipitation since the early 1980s. Furthermore, from the correlation between ecological indicators [gross primary production (GPP), net primary production (NPP), and leaf area index (LAI)] and meteorological elements (air temperature and precipitation), water resource availability is the decisive factor with regard to the terrestrial ecosystem in the area. The study shows that the research work is greatly benefited from such an IIS, not only in data collection supported by IoT, but also in Web services and applications based on cloud computing and e-Science platforms, and the effectiveness of monitoring processes and decision-making can be obviously improved. This paper provides a prototype IIS for environmental monitoring and management, and it also provides a new paradigm for the future research and practice; especially in the era of big data and IoT.

An Integrated System for Regional Environmental Monitoring and Management Based on Internet of Things

As quality requirements play a crucial role in supply chain management (SCM), enterprises require appropriate information architecture to address evolving supply chain needs. Information architecture for supply chain quality management has drawn much attention from the research community and the industry in recent years. Recent research explores the role of service-oriented architecture (SOA), RFID, agent, workflow management, and the Internet of Things (IoT) as an enabler of real-time quality management and control in the supply chain. This paper attempts to analyse the current state of the art in information management for supply chain quality management, reviewing the current research and development in information architecture for supply chain quality management, and highlighting some of the key technologies that have the potential to significantly improve the performance of supply chain quality management. It is our hope that this paper will motivate the supply chain quality management community in d...

Information architecture for supply chain quality management

Supply chain collaboration has received increasing attention from scholars and practitioners in recent years. However, our understanding of how enterprise information technology facilitates supply chain collaboration is still very limited, especially with regard to Chinese enterprise ownerships such as state-owned firms, joint-venture firms and local village-owned firms. This paper extends the theory established in enterprise information technology (IT) and supply chain collaboration literature and relates it with coordination in China-linked supply chain. Drawing upon an empirical study from 177 Chinese companies, we provide three major findings: (i) uncovered the importance of leveraging enterprise IT through supply chain collaboration; (ii) identified the relationship between enterprise ownership and enterprise technology use and supply chain collaboration in China-linked supply chain and (iii) illustrated effects of supply chain collaborative activities on operational and market performance.

Effects of enterprise technology on supply chain collaboration: analysis of China-linked supply chain

Knowledge is considered as an enterprise's invisible assets. Surviving in today's highly competitive and ever expanding global economy requires efficiently managing corporate knowledge. Increasing requirements for extended enterprises have stimulated the integration of knowledge management (KM) function into ERP systems for knowledge asset management. So far enterprise information systems such as ERP systems are developed and implemented for mainly managing physical assets of an enterprise since 1990s. Due to the fact that both types of assets need to be properly managed, the integration of KM and ERP becomes a strategic initiative for providing competitive advantages to enterprises. This paper discusses how to deploy KM and ERP concurrently in the framework of enterprise information systems, with a discussion of the interaction of KM and ERP systems in systems perspectives. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Zhongzhi Shi

Papers

Integrating knowledge management and ERP in enterprise information systems