Ontology Based Approach of Automated Service Chaining for Manufacturing Grid

This paper focused on an ontology based and function oriented approach of automated service chaining, which aimed at selecting fabricating MG services into concrete workflow skeletons. MG ontology was constructed by means of integrating two sub-ontologies, which were manufacturing domain-specific ontology and grid service ontology. Three well-formed ontologies-STEP integrated resource for product data, TOVE for enterprise, and PSL outer core for manufacturing process were employed to implement the former sub-ontology. The latter sub-ontology was implemented by an OWL-S extension towards grid. MG service function was modeled by a 4-ary tuple of input, output, precondition and effect (IOPEs), which was described by the MG ontology. Then, a forward expansive chaining algorithm was proposed, which can automatically produce service chains satisfying the IOPEs requirements of a user goal. A prototype system is implemented, and experimental results on the machining of a part have verified the approach and show that the algorithm is efficient.