Orchestration of Services in Smart Manufacturing Through Automated Synthesis

Abstract

In recent decades, manufacturing practices have undergone a significant transformation, with the integration of computers and automation playing a central role. Concurrently, there has been a growing interest in utilizing intelligent techniques to effectively manage manufacturing processes. These processes entail the seamless integration of various activities across the supply chain. Given the diverse range of actors in a supply chain, each one with distinct characteristics such as cost, quality, and probability of failure, task assignment becomes a crucial challenge. In such a complex scenario, manual decision-making becomes impractical, necessitating the adoption of automated techniques to effectively address these challenges in a resilient and adaptive manner. This article proposes a service-oriented approach to model each manufacturing actor within the supply chain. Furthermore, it categorizes automated synthesis approaches for smart manufacturing on the basis of i) the characteristics of each actor, which are retrieved by their Industrial API, and ii) the goal(s) of the manufacturing process. Finally, the article evaluates three distinct approaches that implement automated synthesis techniques for composing services and generating operational plans.