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Security and Privacy

E-Manufacturing: Methodology and Framework for Collaborative Virtual Manufacturing

The Methodology and Framework for Collaborative Virtual Manufacturing (e-manufacturing) collaborative research project began in August 2002 and is expected to end in August 2005.

The e-manufacturing project is a collaboration led by a team from the NRC Integrated Manufacturing Technologies Institute. It also involves several researchers from University of Western Ontario and domain experts working in Taiwan, more specifically at National Taiwan University and National Tai-Chan University (co-funded by Taiwan National Science Council).

The shift from made-to-stock to made-to-order has resulted in new manufacturing environments that require IT frameworks able to support this new dynamism. And collaborative manufacturing environments demonstrate considerable potential in responding to this need. As such, the e-manufacturing project aims to develop an appropriate framework (shown as below) for a common platform to enable distributed planning and control in manufacturing.

Figure 1 - Scope and Responsibility. The objective of this project is to develop a well-shaped framework and collaborative methodologies for virtual manufacturing in global supply chains, through a shared cyber workspace. There are six thrust areas of research. A cyber workspace environment is developed (task a) that provides a common platform for the other five tasks, which are supply chain planning and scheduling (task b), distributed process planning (task c), planning-scheduling integration (task d), remote monitoring and control (task e), and integrated security and privacy for collaboration (task f), respectively.

The developed system will allow dispersed engineering team members to work together productively, as if they were under one roof. The platform will meet the requirements for quicker, easier, secure and cost-effective collaborations for manufacturing.

In the e-manufacturing project, NRC-IIT is responsible for the security and privacy aspects of collaborative virtual manufacturing.

Researchers are investigating and solving the security and confidentiality issues associated with the proposed manufacturing framework. The work includes trust mechanisms among distributed partners and solutions for confidentiality protection for virtual manufacturing networks. The work also relates to digital rights management for accessing and sharing information.

NRC-IIT objectives in this collaborative research project include:

Developing approaches and demonstrating confidential networking that allow manufacturing partners to collaborate over the Internet without revealing either the nature or degree of collaboration or the location of the collaborators.
Researching and developing software prototypes to demonstrate mechanisms for automatically negotiating levels of confidentiality, security and trust for collaborators.

NRC-IIT researchers expect to provide effective security and privacy solutions to facilitate efficient collaborations and make manufacturers more competitive in the world market. Research results are expected to have an impact beyond e-manufacturing, especially in other areas of e-business and in critical infrastructure protection.

Opportunities

NRC-IIT welcomes inquiries on research collaboration where the potential domain involves ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), or SCM (Supply Chain Management). Researchers are also particularly interested in collaborating in specific application domains – such as e-commerce, e-learning– where security, privacy and trust provide must-have functions for electrical collaborative work.

The technology research results, including software components, system prototype, and research documents can be transferred to interested organizations to form novel services or techniques.

Research Contact

Larry Korba
Group Leader
Information Security
NRC Institute for Information Technology
1200 Montreal Road
Building M-50, Room 286A
Ottawa, ON K1A 0R6
Telephone: +1 (613) 998-3967
Fax: +1 (613) 952-7151
E-mail: Larry.Korba@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca

Business Contact

Dr. George Forester
Business Development Officer
Business Development Office, NCR
NRC Institute for Information Technology
1200 Montreal Road
Building M-50, Room 203
Ottawa, ON K1A 0R6
Telephone: +1 (613) 993-3478
Fax: +1 (613) 952-0074
E-mail: George.Forester@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca