Contextual self-organizing of manufacturing process for mass individualization: a cyber-physical-social system approach

Under the tendency of mass individualization demands, social manufacturing has been proposed as a new paradigm. This paper proposes a contextual process configuration model for realizing the mass individualized manufacturing. The Social Internet of Things (SIoT) strategy is introduced to boost sociality and narrow down the contextual computing complexity based on situational awareness in a cyber-physical-social connected space. SIoT monitors spatiotemporal situations in a spontaneous social network of relationships and interactions, and induces relevant smart machines depending on prosumers’ individual demands. Four key enabling techniques of SIoT are detailed, and then a demonstrative implementation together with a case study are presented to address the decentralized intelligence in proactive decision making for mass individualization. It is expected that this study can help readers to gain more understanding on the characteristics and configuration logics of contextual self-organizing of manufacturing process for mass individualization.