Title: Establishing a factory simulation system for cloud-based simulation services

Authors: Tin-Chih Toly Chen; Yu-Cheng Wang; Abbas Al-Refaie

Addresses: Department of Industrial Engineering and Systems Management, Feng Chia University, No. 100, Wenhua Rd, Taichung City 407, Taiwan ' Department of Aviation Mechanical Engineering, China University of Science and Technology, No. 200, Zhonghua St., Hengshan Township, Hsinchu County 312, Taiwan ' Department of Industrial Engineering, The University of Jordan, Amman 11942, Jordan

Abstract: Simulations are effective tools for enhancing factory competitiveness. However, performing simulations requires a considerable amount of expertise, time, effort, and a large budget. Thus, many factories are resorting to cloud-based simulation services as an alternative. To facilitate realising this trend, this study established a factory simulation system for cloud-based simulation services. The proposed system imports factory and simulation scenario data in extensible markup language (XML) format through a cloud service provider (CSP), and an output report is generated in XML for export onto the CSP. An experimental simulation system was established to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed methodology. The experimental results support its effectiveness. The proposed methodology also facilitated the transfer of a factory simulation task to a simulation cloud that was more available and had stronger computation capability.

Keywords: cloud manufacturing; cloud computing; factory simulation; cloud services; XML.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIMS.2015.074588

International Journal of Internet Manufacturing and Services, 2015 Vol.4 No.1, pp.62 - 72

Received: 31 Oct 2015
Accepted: 09 Nov 2015
Published online: 06 Feb 2016 *

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