Towards product customization and personalization in IoT-enabled cloud manufacturing

Customized/personalized products are gaining more shares in today’s product market. Such products need collective efforts from consumers, manufacturers and third parties. This requirement has not been well addressed due to both market and technology factors. On the other hand, the Internet of Things (IoT) provides real-time sensing/actuating ability and fast transmission capability of data/information, so that remote operation of manufacturing activities and efficient collaboration among stakeholders are greatly facilitated. This provides great opportunities to address the requirement mentioned above. Thus we propose a full-connection model of product design and manufacturing in the IoT-enabled cloud manufacturing environment. The proposed model uses social networks to connect multiple parties and facilitate open innovations, and use IoT to glue physical space to cyber space and cloud manufacturing to provide various elastic services, so that the on-demand workspace, interaction, information sharing or collective problem solving are enabled. We also propose a supporting infrastructure for this model using the latest information and communication technologies. Finally, we present a case study of an RFID enabled production system for customized and personalized product with the ability to enable a new paradigm of “dynamic processes and close collaborations among different roles” and ensure robust production.