A Methodology for identifying Web Services in electronic manufacturing systems

The adoption of the Service-Oriented paradigm for controlling production systems made of discrete components has shown advantages over traditional control systems in terms of flexibility, reconfigurability, and reusability. Nevertheless, the full exploitation of this paradigm by equipment manufacturers, system integrators, and end users will not be achieved unless there exist clear guidelines and methodologies for helping to understand how to implement the newly introduced concepts. This paper presents a methodology for identifying Web Services for equipment used in the electronic manufacturing industry. Furthermore, a use case is provided in which the application of the methodology is exemplified by creating Web Services for a material handling system.