Service Takt: A collaboration mechanism for service-oriented manufacturing

Industrial Internet and modern manufacturing technologies have enabled distributed manufacturing resources to be virtualized as services and dynamically organized into a virtual ally to meet market opportunities. When services orchestrate together, they are expected to coordinate in cycle time, cost as well as information, etc. to obtain optimal performance. However, the distribution, diversity, and uncertain factors often make services face unpredictable disturbances and hinder them to collaborate effectively. In this paper, a mechanism of Service Takt is proposed for services collaboration. By analyzing the typical characteristics of service-oriented manufacturing, the attributes of Service Takt and related collaboration elements are elaborated, and then the calculating processes and feasibility of Service Takt are illustrated with three application cases. By taking into account the managerial requirements as constraints in service collaboration, the adaptability of the proposed mechanism is enhanced to suit various manufacturing scenarios. Based on the interaction between the static and dynamic Service Takts, a closed-loop management model of the manufacturing system is constructed. The experimental results show that the overall efficiency can be improved when services execute in a sound rhythm through this mechanism.