Development of a cloud-computing-based equipment monitoring system for machine tool industry

This paper aims to present the design of a cloud computing-based equipment monitoring system (EMS), called CCEMS, for the CNC machine tool industry to illustrate the paradigm shift of EMSs from basing on the Internet to basing on the cloud. In the CCEMS, Graphical User Interface (GUI) plays an important role that allows users to interact with the system for controlling and operating equipment, monitoring equipment performance and statuses, detecting and diagnosing equipment faults, conjecturing production quality and precision of equipment, and so on. To overcome the shortcomings of traditional Web GUIs, this paper proposes a novel Web application implementation framework, called NWAIF, for the CCEMS, by using Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Rich Internet Application (RIA) technology. Finally, a paradigm CCEMS for monitoring CNC machine tools is constructed and used to validate the efficacy of the CCEMS and NWAIF. Testing results show that the paradigm CCEMS meets the desired functional requirements and the GUIs created by using the proposed NWAIF is superior to traditional Web-based GUIs in terms of shorter response times to complete the testing operations.