Depicting additive manufacturing from a global perspective; using Cloud manufacturing paradigm for integration and collaboration

Globalization is one of the widely considered factors in today’s manufacturing industries. This paradigm may be adopted for new technologies such as additive manufacturing. Additive manufacturing has been identified as an innovative manufacturing technology in recent years. The characteristics of this manufacturing technology, especially its support for quick design to manufacturing, have dominated it as an efficient generation of manufacturing techniques for today’s global manufacturing paradigm. This article discusses the requirements and necessities of additive manufacturing with respect to a globalized perspective. Considering the two major requirements studied as integration of manufacturing operations and enabling collaboration in distributed manufacturing networks, this article proposes an idea as an enabler of additive manufacturing in the global paradigm. This idea proposes the application of Cloud manufacturing paradigm as one of the recent researches for global manufacturing environments. The capabilities of the Cloud manufacturing to fulfill the requirements and necessities of additive manufacturing in global paradigm are discussed and elaborated through a comprehensive case study. The case study uses the recent researches of the authors for an integrated and collaborative distributed Cloud manufacturing platform named XMLAYMOD platform. This article discusses the different aspects of the Cloud manufacturing–based solution for additive manufacturing systems.