Ontology-based dynamic alliance services (ODAS) in production service system

Production service system (PnSS) is an innovative service-driven business model that recently emerged in the dynamic manufacturing environment. It aims to integrate distributed manufacturing-oriented services (MOSs) so that all the participants can efficiently collaborate to respond to market opportunities. This manufacturing mode is called as service-oriented manufacturing (SOM), which is physically formed and operated in a similar way as the dynamic alliance. This article develops a service-oriented framework, called dynamic alliance services (DAS), which practically enables the participants to take advantage of SOM. Four services are developed in the framework. (1) The ontology service is used to provide ontology-based manufacturing-oriented services that are described and discovered through the Internet; (2) the MOSP service is used by the manufacturing-oriented services provider (MOSP) to transform manufacturing resources into MOSs; (3) the MOSC service is used by the manufacturing-oriented service consumer (MOSC) to specify their requirements; (4) the partnership service is used for MOSP evaluation and selection by adopting a variety of different indices to express preference for individual MOSCs, an integrated workflow to assess MOSC preference, and a partnership evaluation method to rank MOSP. DAS, as a logic whole of all the aforementioned services, enables all the PnSS stakeholders to make effective and efficient MOSP decisions for suitable production solutions.