A semantic matchmaking approach to empower human decision-making in Manufacturing-as-a-Service scenarios

Fragile and unreliable supply chains, due to environmental disasters or other disruptions are a challenge for modern production companies. The concept of Manufacturing-as-a-Service (MaaS) marks a shift from traditional manufacturing, focusing on shared, networked infrastructures. In MaaS environments, effective management of demand for manufacturing capabilities and supply of production capacity is crucial, while final decisions remain with human operators. The EU project ACCURATE (Achieving Resilience through Manufacturing-as-a-Service, Digital Twins and Ecosystems) aims to create a distributed MaaS ecosystem that offers a collaborative, human-centered Decision Support System (DSS) for robust planning and resilient operations. A primary challenge is aligning services from suppliers with the demand for physical goods, which includes transportation, warehousing, and information, in addition to manufacturing. Semantic approaches and ontologies can describe these services comparably. This paper introduces a semantic matchmaking concept in MaaS networks to empower human decision makers in supply chain management. To support this, related concepts of service-oriented manufacturing concepts are analyzed and a working definition of MaaS is derived. Based on this, an approach is presented that matches supply and demand for manufacturing services while considering product process requirements. Importantly, this is not a standalone decision-making tool but a foundation for informed choices, enabling users, like order fulfilment managers, to receive tailored offers from suitable providers based on recommendations from the semantic matchmaking service.