Research on ASP-based manufacturing business service platform for the medium and small sized enterprises

Based on the philosophy of application service provider (ASP), an architecture of ASP-based manufacturing business service platform for medium and small sized enterprises is proposed. In addition, a series of application services including the capability description and procedure configuration of the services of manufacturing resources, and the contract-based project managing mode were described and integrated into this platform. The users can deal with their business in this platform by means of hiring the corresponding application services. According to the requirements of the clients, the optimal suppliers/manufacturers can be selected based on different levels, and the executing procedure of the project can be tracked based on the electronic contract-based project managing mode until the contract is finished. Finally, a case study was presented to demonstrate the prototype developed with above ideas. It is shown that this system can provide a new way for medium and small-sized enterprises to fully utilize their own resources and enhance the capabilities to respond to the global market quickly.