Bringing Cloud-based Rapid Elastic Manufacturing to Reality with CREMA

Abstract

In order to meet the demands of today´s manufacturing industry, ICT systems need to be able to support highly flexible and scalable inter-organisational manufacturing processes. One recent approach to achieve this is to bring forward well-known principles from the field of Cloud Computing to the manufacturing domain, thus achieving Cloud Manufacturing. To realise this concept, it is necessary (i) to allow leasing and releasing of manufacturing assets in an on-demand, utility-like fashion, (ii) to facilitate rapid elasticity through scaling leased assets up and down, if needed, and (iii) to enable pay-per-use through metered service. While the basic principles of Cloud Manufacturing are self-evident, there is a lack of holistic frameworks providing the underlying basic functionalities. Therefore, it is the goal of the EU H2020 Research and Innovation Action CREMA (Cloud-based Rapid Elastic Manufacturing) to provide exactly such a holistic framework. Within this paper, we will present the basic conceptual approach as well as some preliminary results of CREMA.