Cloud-Based Materials and Product Realization—Fostering ICME Via Industry 4.0

Facilitating integrated computational materials engineering (ICME) in the digitized world necessitates facilitating a network of participants (material scientists, systems designers, software developers, service customers) to share material/product/manufacturing process/market data, information, knowledge, and resources instantly and collaborate so as to facilitate a cost-effective co-creation of value supporting open innovation. Industry 4.0, a transformative industrial revolution with its new product development paradigms like cloud-based design and cloud-based manufacturing, supports this need. In this paper, we present the architecture and functionalities of a cloud-based computational platform to facilitate mass collaboration and open innovation thereby supporting integrated material and product realization to institutionalize ICME in industry. We illustrate the efficacy of the proposed cloud-based platform using a hot rolling example problem to produce a steel rod. Using this example, we illustrate the utility of the cloud-based platform in seamless, yet controllable, information, knowledge, and resource sharing thereby supporting the integrated design of materials, products, and manufacturing processes.