ManuHub: A Semantic Web System for Ontology-Based Service Management in Distributed Manufacturing Environments

This correspondence paper presents a prototype Semantic Web system called ManuHub (i.e., Manufacturing Hub) that administers distributed manufacturing services provided by ubiquitous virtual enterprises and allows a function of exploration with friendly graphical user interfaces. ManuHub is practical and useful in creating local manufacturing service hubs via ontology- and constraint-based modeling of the distributed manufacturing services and semantic annotation of the acquired manufacturing services. In particular, ManuHub facilitates efficient, accurate, and automatic retrieval of the required manufacturing services derived from the semantic matchmaking of manufacturing service capabilities. In other words, ManuHub functions as the “binding glue” between collaborative enterprises in order to achieve seamless manufacturing interoperability. The prototype system was built and evaluated with an example illustrated from manufacturing industries so as to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach.