Product Platform Design Services Architecture and Key Technologies Based on
Cloud Computing
Hai Ji 1, Qian-jin Yang1, Xin-min Han1
1
China Academy of Machinery Science & Technology, Beijing, China
( jihai83@163.com )
Abstract - A new product design mode, product platform
design service mode based on cloud computing, is proposed.
It can effectively integrate enterprise product development
resources, and respond to dynamic and unpredictable
market demands by creating serialization, personalized,
diversified and high-quality products. The research
background, characteristics, connotations of the platform
design service is briefly described. Attention is concentrated
on platform service application model. The emphasis is also
placed on the technical architecture and design service
process. Some key technologies, such as realization method,
service describe, service discovery, message communication
and services organization are discussed. The purpose for this
study is to improve the utilization efficiency of distributed
enterprise product development resources, and to strengthen
the service collaboration capabilities for integrating product
design resources.
Keywords – Cloud computing, product platform design,
web service
I. INTRODUCTION
In a global marketplace, intense, and dynamic
competitive environment, the development of new
products and processes has become a focal point of
attention for many companies. Many companies are
utilizing product platform and product families design
method to increase variety, improve customer satisfaction,
shorten lead-time, and reduce costs. It will form
serialization, personalized, diversified and high-quality
products to meet market demands by designing a group
modules or subsystems to create rational planning product
families [ 1]. However, with the expanding of enterprise
manufacturing scale and the deepening of market
segmentation degree in the changing process from largescale manufacturing to mass customization, the number of
product platform modules and the amount of product
families’ resources are gradually increasing, which result
in reducing controllability and scalability of product
platform, and increasing complexity of platform structure,
so that inhibit the development of new products because
companies face challenges in platform management and
product diversity.
On the other hand, it is an important trend that
production manufacturing shift to service-oriented
manufacturing in global manufacturing. With the
developments of network technologies, especially the
developments of cloud computing technologies, which
have significant impact on manufacturing and speed up
transformation of manufacturing services. Cloud
Project supported by the National High Technology Research and
Development Program of china (Grant No.2011AA040503)
computing is a special distributed computing model by
resource virtualization to form physical dispersion but
logic unified resource pool. Cloud computing not only
provides application services, but also provides software
services based on database center known as Software as a
Service, hardware and software in database center is
called cloud[2]. This article propose a new product design
mode, product platform design services mode based on
cloud computing, which integrate virtualization, serviceoriented computing and grid computing technologies to
build enterprise product platform service model and
architecture in order to strengthen the integration of
product design resources, collaboration and service
capabilities.
II. CONNOTATION AND APPLICATION MODE OF
ENTERPRISE PRODUCT PLATFORM DESIGN
SERVICES BASED ON CLOUD COMPUTING
Product platform design services mode based on
cloud computing is a network extension of enterprise
product platform that supports distributed product
platform development. In the context of enterprise
development needs and based on cloud computing
concept, platform design services is utilizing availability,
capacity, performance and cost advantages of platform
resources to manage it runtime and dynamically, and to
select, sharing and integration of distributed product
platform resources to optimize allocation of resources and
work together to support completion of product
development tasks. It provides an environment to build
virtual product design center that supports product
development resource sharing and development
collaborative. Because product platform development
includes planning, designing, analysis, management,
supply chain and many other aspects[3], enterprise product
platform design services based on cloud computing are
divided into three services application mode: product
design and simulation cloud service mode, virtual
manufacturing enterprises dynamic alliance collaboration
cloud service mode and public manufacturing platform
cloud service mode. As Figure 1 shown is a services
application model of enterprise product platform design
based on cloud computing.
A. A Cloud Service Mode for Product Designing and
Simulation
Product designing and simulation cloud service is
mainly for large-scale computing and storage capacity
requirements in the process of enterprise product platform
planning, designing and simulation evaluation. It focus on
decomposing internal host computing center into
independent heterogeneous systems and integrating
external networks, resources and services to achieve
cross-organizational collaborative product design. The
important of this mode is product designing, simulation
virtualization deployment for computing resources and
resources scheduling.
Client
Product Planing
Services
Product Design
Services
Product
Delivery
Dynamic Alliance Servies
Product
Demands
Project Management
Services
Process Services
Request
Visualization Services
Response
Request
Portal Configuration
Designer
Cloud Service Center
Response
Manager
Product Simulation
Services
Billing Services
Application deployment
Knowledge Services
Resource
Provide
Virtual Storage Services
Service
Excution
Resource Provider
Comunication
Resources
Model
Resources
Data
Resources
Equipment
Resources
Storage
Resources
Design and
Anaalysis
Tools
Knowledge
Resources
Other
Resources
Fig.1 A services appliaction model of enterprise product platform
design based on cloud computing
B. A Cloud Service Mode for Virtual Manufacturing
Enterprises Dynamic Alliance Collaboration
Virtual manufacturing enterprises dynamic alliance
collaboration cloud service is mainly to solve distribution,
heterogeneous, dynamic, autonomous and synergistic
problems of inter-enterprise supply chain network in
product development process. It supports competent
enterprises, cooperative enterprises and third-party
companies to achieve business collaboration and share
product development information. It can fully apply
product development resources scattered in different
regions to establish a virtual manufacturing enterprise for
sharing resources of supply chain, which can develop
coordination and control mechanism to overcome the
distance in space and heterogeneous resistance to
enterprise collaboration obstacles.
C. A Cloud Service Mode for Public Manufacturing
Platform
Public manufacturing platform cloud services
integrate resources in existing enterprise product platform
to establish an open service application mode, so that it
supports the collaboration for distributed and
heterogeneous enterprise product platforms to solve the
secure access and sharing problems of resources in
heterogeneous platform environments and create a virtual
product development environment with a unified platform
service model and portals to provide product platform
development business service applications. It not only
includes application software systems, such as supply
chain management, order management, inventory, human
resources management, and virtual storage, but also
includes the professional services applications for product
designing, simulation, mold design, model negates.
III. THE ARCHITECHTURE OF ENTERPRISE
PRODUCT PLATFORM DESIGN SERVICES BASED
ON CLOUD COMPUTING
The enterprise product platform design services based
on cloud computing apply service- oriented to support
processes of enterprise product development and integrate
platform resources by service package to complete
product development task through transparent retrieval of
product development services and scheduling and
dynamic reorganization of self-organization services. The
architecture of enterprise product platform design services
is shown in Figure 2.
A. Physical Resource Layer
Physical Resources Layer is generalized distributed
resources related product platform development including
hardware resources and software resources. Hardware
resources include a variety of computing resources and
equipment resources, and software resources such as data
resources, software resources, knowledge resources,
storage resources. These resources are divided into online
and offline forms, which can connect to platform by
resource adapter that a virtualization description and
packaging resources [4], and provide a unified access
interface to achieve transparent access and globally shared
resources by shield resources heterogeneity.
B. Virtualized Resource Layer
Virtualized Resource Layer manage virtualized
resources to direct manipulation of resources and optimal
scheduling, such as resource definition, publishing,
discovery, scheduling, subscription, billing and
monitoring
through
network
infrastructure,
communication protocols, software, tools. The network
infrastructure provides a basis for communication among
platform resources and platform network environment.
Resources run on resource container that monitor and
management resources’ real-time status in the runtime
environment.
C. Core Services Layer
Core Services Layer is a cross-platform application
service run-time environment developed by a series of
cloud computing middleware that build cloud computing
services functions to provide develop, deploy, and
manage cloud computing core services including process
management, information management, data management,
resource management, service development and
management, service operations management, service
security management and service operation and
management and so on. Process management for product
platform development process to provide process
management, task management, service composition and
operation monitoring; Information management can
monitor and manage user information, node information,
operation information of product platform service system;
Data management can manage, access and update data
resource, and resources in data transmission system, and
provide copies of data management services and data
integration services.
Portal
Layer
Service portal
Enterprises Dynamic
Product Design and
Alliance
Application
Collaboration Cloud Simulation Cloud Service
Service Layer
Service
Servicer
Interface Layer
Enterprise
applications
A. Description and Packaging of the Product Platform
Resource Virtualization
Product platform
management
process service
Service
extension
Cloud service description interface
Core support services
deployment
Core
Services
Layer
search
Development
environment
Physical
Resource
Layer
Combination
Run
Monitoring
running environment
Resource
management
Statistics and
analysis
Service Level
Management
Development platform
Definition Tool
……
Virtual
Resource
Layer
consists of virtualized resources. System organizes
distributed resources to complete product development
tasks and need to descript product development process
and effectively control, monitor and deal with possible
exceptions. Product platform execution process is shown
in Figure 3.
Process
Management
Data Management
Safety
Management
Information
management
License
Management
billing
testing
Operating environment
operation management
Tenants billing
application monitoring
……
……
Cloud resource access
Resource
definition
Resources
released
Resource
scheduling
Resource
Retrieval
Adapter
Adapter
Adapter
Computing
Software
Data
Resources
subscribe
Resource
virtualization
Resource
accounting
Resource
virtualization
Resource
virtualization
Adapter
Adapter
Adapter
Equipment
Storage
Human
……
Physical
resources
Fig.2 The architecture of enterprise product platform design services
based on cloud computing
D. Services Interface Layer
Service interface layer provides a set of interfaces for
service-oriented applications to achieve product
development services, business process modeling,
restructuring and management.
E. Application Service Layer
Application Service Layer provides application tools
for product development process in specific areas, such as
applications of product platform planning, product design,
product simulation, process and supply chain.
F. Portal Layer
The entrance of product platform design service
system, which integrates product platform development
tools to provide a service delivery platform for a variety
of applications, and user use a variety of tools to achieve
service calling.
IV. THE EXECUTION PROCESS OF ENTERPRISE
PRODUCT PLATFORM DESIGN SERVICES BASED
ON CLOUD COMPUTING
Enterprise product platform design services support
collaborative product development among different
enterprises under the coordination of product platform
design services system. Users submit tasks and objectives
of product development, and then system can build a
virtual organization dynamically, which achieve resource
sharing and collaboration to complete product
development tasks. While the task is completed, the
collaborative relationship in the virtual organization will
come to disintegration. The basis of product platform
design services system is a shared resource pool that
Product platform design services based on cloud
computing use object-oriented modeling approach to
describe resource properties and operations, which
includes resource properties, resource relations and
resource operations. Resource properties require inherent
characteristics of abstract description of resources and
status information. Resource operations are abstract
shared use of resources. Resource relationship requires
describe relationships in resources. Product platform
design services encapsulate resources to form sharing
resources pool.
B. Product Platform Resources Registration
Product platform resources deploy on different
organizations nodes in the platform design service system.
Services registered into platform service registry center in
accordance with UDDI, and resources property
description can be extended according to the needs of
service retrieval.
C. Product Design Process Choreography
Product platform service system mainly consists of
two phases: building product design process phase and
product design process choreography phase. First, in the
phase of building product design process, process should
be defined according to business objectives and
requirements of product design development, and be
decomposed into multiple sub-tasks that have a clear
description of design objective, input and output
parameters. Second, in the product design process
choreography phase, a design task will be completed by
service portfolio, which is a procedure that a task request
is mapped to specific product design services and
combine them into a complete process.
D. Retrieve Product Platform Resources
Retrieve product platform resources is a process
forming result set by developing constraints such as
designing constraints, deadline, economic budget, service
quality and content. The search process is to select the
best node based on constraints to search resource nodes
for forming a collection of resources, and then sort the
nodes according to the quantization value by evaluating
them.
E. Product Design Process Deployment
After completing product design processes definition,
processes will be deployed into process engine and drive
by it [5]. The engine is always running, and cannot be
restarted when a new process deployed.
Service
functions
directory
3.Service
Lookup
Service
subscriber
Product
platform
planning
4(1)
Service
request
4(2)
merge
rules
4(3)
Split rules
Process
engine
Product
family
design
5.Search and
discovery
10.Service
response
Product
simulation
Service Registry
and Discovery
Service tasks
6.Service process choreography
8.Dispatch
……
2.Resource Registry
resource
service
directory
Service
resources
Service
resources
Resource
providers
Computing
resources
Registered
enterprises
clusters
Software
resources
Service
resources
Service
resources
9.
Service task
execution
1.
Resource
virtualization
Physical
resources
7.Submit
Service
registry
center
Process
design
Service
consumer
Product platform design service
system based on cloud computing
Service
demand
list
Service
demand
queue
Data
resources
Equipment
resources
Storage
resources
Human
Resources
C. Product Platform Resource Services Registry and
Addressing Discovery Technologies
……
……
enterprise1
enterprise2
enterprise3
which is about resource service details and calling
information. The product platform resource service
description mainly includes two parts: resource services
interface definition and resource services realized.
Resource services interface definition is a structure of
Web Service interface definition, including service
operation, operating parameter, abstract data types, web
service XML message protocol, message data type
information, transmission protocol, binding information,
resources service address information. Resource service
realized binds interface to specific network addresses,
protocols and data structures. Resource services client can
be bound to a specific and call resource services.
enterpriseN
Fig.3 The execution process of enterprise product platform design
services based on cloud computing
F. The Implementation of Product Design Process
The product design processes are performed under
control of process engine through the analysis process
description in design process file, and then completing
design workflow tasks by according to combinational
logic of design process to achieve design services calling.
In the implementation process, to monitor the
implementation of the process logic, including the view of
the implementation process and hangs, recovery and
suspension of the implementation of state control
operations.
V. THE KEY TECHNOLOGIES OF ENTERPRISE
PRODUCT PLATFORM DESIGN SERVICES BASED
ON CLOUD COMPUTING
A. SOA-Based Technology Services Architecture
The product platform design services based on cloud
computing architecture is loosely coupled, standardsbased and protocol-independent distributed computing
architecture. This article realize service functions of cloud
computing platform through SOA architecture extend it to
the cloud computing service platform to integrate product
platform resources outside enterprises, not only call a
single function services in local function services but also
integrated to create complex applications or phase of the
business process [6]. The product platform design services
architecture is shown in Figure 4.
B. Product Platform Resource Services Modeling and
Description Techniques
Resource services can be described by WSDL based
on XML. There are three types of resource service
description information: first, business information, which
is about resource provider and service implementation
information; second, service information, which is the
characteristics of resources; third, technical information,
Product platform resource services provide cataloging
and management mechanisms and apply UDDI
technology to register resource services and classify
product design resources in accordance with resource
classification methods. SOAP protocol is applied as
transport layer, so that requester can communicate with
UUDI registration service center by SOAP-based XML
technology and find services matching with demands.
UUDI registration service center maintains a list of
services, including three components: basic information,
classified information, and capacity information of
resource services. The basic information described
address, contact information and other contact
information of resource services. Classified information is
based on resource classification to classify information.
Capacity information is about resource services’ ability
information of business [7]. State resource in product
platform resource services has three characteristics: first,
state resource is a specific state data set, and expressed by
XML document defining a resource type; second, state
resource has a well-defined identity and life cycle; third,
one or more resource services can be found and to operate
state resources. Construction and representation of state
resource is realized by web service resource framework
(WS-RF) in product platform design services, and WSAddressing implied resource pattern is implemented by
state resources to associate with Web Service message
exchange [8]. Web Service and a combination of state
resources called WS-Resource, and the status of resource
is implemented as an XML document known as resource
properties document.
D. Reliable message delivery mechanism
The product platform design services use SOAP
protocol as a message transfer protocol and the protocol is
extended in order to establish a reliable messaging
mechanism. Message reliability is mainly reflected in
three aspects: first, Messaging and transport protocolindependent; second, high quality service; third, reliability
of message delivery. This paper apply WS-Reliable
Messaging mechanism in Web services technology to
ensure reliability for message and eliminate duplication of
SOAP message, and ensure same order that message send
and receive[9]. WS-Reliable Messaging mechanism can
work together with WS-Addressing protocol to achieve
cross-platform interoperability. Product platform design
services based on cloud computing in designing message
reliability around three core elements: first, message
sequence, a sequence present in the messaging between
two end points and each message in message exchange is
given a unique serial identifier; second, message sequence
number, message sequence number set in ascending mode
that can be easier to detect lost or duplicate messages, and
to simplify the generation and processing of received
confirmation; third, message receive confirmation, receive
a confirmation that a message has been successfully sent
to a destination.
<WSDL>
…
<WSDL>
Service requestor
Client
application
Subscribe
Request /
response
Subscribe
SOAP
Distributed
Enterprise
Service Bus
XML
Transfer Protocol（HTTP、TCP/IP）
UDDI service
Registration
center
Service container
Addressing and calls
Endpoint
Web Sevice
Agent
Request /
response
Reliable asynchronous /
synchronous and safe
messaging
Endpoint
Service container
Endpoint
Endpoint
Endpoint
Binding
Binding
Return Services
Web Service
interface
Description
State resources
Notice
Referenc
e
propertie
Webs Service
Addressing
Resource
properties
document
WS-RF
Factory mode
Create
Endpoint
Endpoint
Binding
Web Service
interface
<WSDL> Services
Description
…
<WSDL>
Web Service
Web Service
BPEL process
Execution
Deploy choreography
Deploy
Execution
WS-Resource
Resource virtualization services
REFERENCES
Client
application
Code
generator
Web Sevice
Agent
Endpoint
Service requestor
Service provider
platform development environment as a service mode. It
is focus on application mode, implementation processes
and technology architecture of platform services
architecture and finally a framework of key technologies
were discussed. Next phase of work include: First, in the
application service layer, we will research product
platform development application services such as
product platform planning application services, product
family design application services, application services of
modular design, simulation and technology application
services; second, in the core service layer, we will
research resource optimization scheduling algorithm to
support distributed enterprise resource coordination
optimization.
Service
implementation
Product platform process service
Fig.4 The SOA technology architecture of enterprise product platform
design services based on cloud computing
E. A integration mode of distributed enterprise service
bus
The enterprise service bus mode can solve the
problems of heterogeneity and unmatched information
model to implement, deploy and manage resource service
solutions, or assemble, deploy and manage distributed
service-oriented architecture [10]. Enterprise Service Bus
provides service container to assemble and bind services
to external resources and provides them to any other
services on the bus. As shown in Figure 4, endpoints
provide a abstraction of physical destination and
connection information to realize an asynchronous and
reliable communication among service containers based
on reliable messaging protocol. Because resources in
product platform design services architecture is highly
distributed, enterprise service bus is distributed, a single
event-driven service is inserted into backbone of
enterprise service bus if needed.
V. CONCLUSION
In order to enhance availability of product platform
design resources, and integrate distribute product platform
resources, this paper has built a product platform design
service architecture based on cloud computing concepts
and Web services technology to provide a product
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