A web service application to support distributed manufacturing

manufacturing as an industrial activity that starts with the conceptual project and ends with proper material disposal or its reuse has evolved from a centralized to a distributed process. the several components of the process are distributed according to space and time. this evolution was possible due to the support of information technology, which allows manufacturing data management. however, this evolution happened in an independent way in each process phase, creating isolated solutions and consequently a high heterogeneity in data management. the development of a federative factory data management offers a solution of a transparent support to the users who need to obtain information from different proprietary systems. as an example of a service that demonstrates the possibility of federative management of manufacturing data in service oriented architecture within a heterogeneous and flexible environment, this article presents the estimated calculation of the manufacturing time for a complex surface.