Wise-ShopFloor: An Integrated Approach for Web-Based Collaborative Manufacturing

This paper presents an integrated approach for Web-based collaborative manufacturing, including distributed process planning, dynamic scheduling, real-time monitoring, and remote control. It is enabled by a Web-based integrated sensor-driven e-ShopFloor (Wise-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. The objective of this research is to develop methodology and algorithms for Web-based collaborative planning and control, supported by real-time monitoring for dynamic scheduling. 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 collaborative manufacturing.