Linked Semantic Model for Information Resource Service Toward Cloud Manufacturing

Information resource services are the key element for resource sharing in cloud manufacturing. Traditional resource service models focus on modeling the attributes, interfaces, and descriptions of the resources into resource information services. Such resource services are suitable for local environment but suffer semantic heterogeneities in open cloud environment. Recently, well-designed ontologies are applied in resource service models to unify the schema and eliminate the semantic heterogeneities among the services. However, the effectiveness of ontology-based models mainly depends on the expertise of the ontology experts in ontology designing. Moreover, it is difficult to catch the dynamic changes in the cloud once the ontology has been embedded. In this paper, a semantic model is presented for information resource service modeling that uses semantic links instead of ontologies. The model takes advantage of semantic links to enable automated integrating and distributed updating in resource service cloud. In the experiment, the model is applied on practical manufacturing resources from a wheel manufacturing company. The case study and experimental results show that the proposed model is suitable for modeling manufacturing resources into cloud services and enables the flexible and distributed manipulation on resource services in the cloud environment.