Implications of Web-Based Technology for Intelligent Equipment Sharing Over the Networked Manufacturing System for SMEs

Manufacturing industry worldwide has been facing unprecedented challenges brought by global competition and rapidly customer requirements which cause major changes in the production style and configuration of manufacturing enterprises. Networked Manufacturing enables rapid and efficient product development by equipment sharing which is a key component of networked manufacturing platform. The problems of poor transparency and low efficiency that the traditional way of equipment sharing faces, effectively overcome by leveraging the Internet, This paper proposes architecture for equipment sharing over the networked manufacturing platform involving the layer of resource sharing and the cooperative layer. An experimental case study has been carried out in a firm in the die-casting industry in order to demonstrate the features and the potential industrial application of the equipment sharing systems outlined in the current paper.