Keywords

1 Introduction

With the development of economic globalization, industrial specialization and social division of labor, some industries in the world have undergone big changes, and the development of industries has shown a trend of horizontal integration [1]. More and more enterprises attach importance to and adopt the enterprise information service system based on the Internet, and the production and operation activities of enterprises are increasingly affected by enterprise informatization [2], including ceramic industry.

Collaborative design service system based on ceramic cloud service platform, as the important component of the design service system of the ceramic cloud service platform, using the designing ideas of workflow engine, deploying and running with the architecture of sub-platform middleware, can fulfil the requirements of collaborative service task release and management. It is more friendly and intuitive to show the basic situation of the main task and sub-task, dividing a main task into several sub-tasks according to the need, selection, acceptance and payment for the sub-task. At the same time, it can support graphical operation interface. The system runs in the form of middleware or sub-platform, which is easy to be compatible with all kinds of heterogeneous systems, with beautiful interface, easy expandability, stable and reliable system.

The goal of collaborative design service system based on ceramic cloud service platform is to solve the cross-regional system-based collaborative design management of ceramic products, i.e., to build collaborative design process control based on workflow, to integrate the whole process of collaborative design about ceramic products based on system into system management, and to provide document sharing, information or task process control for all design service participants of collaborative design service tasks, so as to realize the monitoring and management of completion process for the expected design tasks.

In this system, the principle and technology of workflow are applied to the collaborative design process control and management of ceramic products based on cloud platform, to achieve the cross-regional designers or teams supported by based on the collaborative design platform to be involved in the same product design, and to achieve the whole process management of ceramic product design.

Based on the principle and mode of the workflow, the collaborative design process management function is realized.

  • Users with design requirements register at the platform to complete the registration of collaborative design task in the system, and then the collaborative design service is divided into several collaborative sub-tasks to release into the system;

  • All collaborative design tasks need to be approved by the system collaborative design task before they are released to the ceramic cloud service platform;

  • The design service units, designers or design teams registered in the platform can receive or access tabular data of collaborative design in time in the cloud platform, and can participate in real-time bidding collaborative design tasks for product collaborative design;

  • After the designer of the winning bid has completed the collaborative design tasks, he can submit the final design plan in the system and the collaborative design process will be completed after the collaborative design publisher audit. The designer makes further improvement for the design according to the revised suggestions made by the publisher and approved by the other party;

  • Paying for the design cost through the system.

The main functions of the system include: collaborative design task management, user management, financial management task, model management and other related functions.

2 Design of the Collaborative Design Service System

2.1 Workflow-Driven Collaborative Design Module

Workflow is one part of computer-supported collaborative work. The concept originated in the field of production organization and office automation. It is a concept for the daily work with fixed program activities. The purpose of it is to break down the work into well-defined tasks or roles, according to certain rules and procedures to carry out these tasks and monitor them so as to achieve the purpose of improving work efficiency, better control of the process, enhance customer service, effective management of business processes [3]. When the user places the demand of product integrated design, the service demand of product integrated design is decomposed under the support of the platform [4,5,6], and the product collaborative design process is entered. After the demand timing bidding, the winning designer (platform dynamic service resource) is confirmed, and the dynamic design service resource (professional designer) designated in the platform is activated to complete the corresponding function design in time. As soon as all the functions represented by the process nodes of the workflow have been designed, the final product design service is completed. With the support of the work engine, the platform can put the scattered dynamic design service resources into a complete application combination, and accomplish the complex design service collectively [7, 8].

  1. 1)

    Business process model of Collaborative design service

Order \( \varOmega = \{ \omega_{1} ,\,\varpi ,\, \ldots ,\,\varpi_{n} \} \),\( \varPsi = \{ < i,j > |\left( {0 < i \le n \wedge 0 < j \le n} \right) \wedge i \ne j\} \)

Platform user zone \( \varGamma = \{ \gamma_{1} ,\gamma_{2} , \ldots ,\gamma_{l} \} \), Area of WF \( \Delta = \{ \delta_{1} ,\delta_{2} ,\delta_{3} , \ldots \} \)

Action zone of WF \( \varSigma = \{ \sigma_{1} ,\sigma_{2} , \ldots ,\sigma_{m} \} \)

Node action (trigger) sequence zone \( {\text{O = \{ }}\left( {\sigma_{i} ,t_{j} } \right)|1 \le i \le m,\,j \ge 1\} \)

So platform collaborative design business process model WF can be expressed as:

$$ \begin{aligned} W_{f} = \left( {N,\,F} \right) \hfill \\ f_{k} = < l,m > |1 \le \{ l,m\} \le n,f_{k} \in F,F \subseteq \varPsi \hfill \\ n_{i} = \left( {\delta_{i} ,O_{i} } \right),\delta_{i} \in \Delta ,n_{i} \in N,N \subseteq\Omega ,O_{i} \subseteq {\text{O}} \hfill \\ \end{aligned} $$
(1)

Platform collaborative design business process model WF can be shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1.
figure 1

Collaborate design business processes

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  1. 2)

    Collaborative design process instances

When the users and designers of the platform participate in collaborative design business based on WF, the equivalent mapping between the user and the role in the process WF will be established by the users and the winning designers according to its different uses in the collaborative business to realize the collaborative design business under the control of platform users participating in WF.

Business process instance I is Eq. (2):

$$ \begin{aligned} I = \left( {P,W_{f} ,S} \right) \hfill \\ P \subseteq \varGamma \hfill \\ S = \{ E\left( {P_{i} ,\delta_{j} } \right)|p_{i} \in P \wedge \delta_{j} \in \Delta \} \hfill \\ \end{aligned} $$
(2)

Among them, p, as the platform designers participating in this collaborative design business, is a subset \( P \subseteq \varGamma \) of the platform user space, including the collaborative design sponsors. S maps the user p of the platform to the user (operator) δ in the workflow engine by means of the user, role mapping (matching) in the business process, such as \( \left( {p,\,\delta } \right) \), so that the designers and the sponsors can participate in the collaborative design under the control of the related business process through the user δ of the workflow engine (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2.
figure 2

The instance of collaborative design process

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3) \( p - \delta \) mappings

\( p - \delta \) mapping refers to the specific collaborative design instance I. Platform users p participate in collaborative design in a way that plays a specific role δ in the workflow WF.

When designing a collaboration, one must design specific collaborative business processes for the workflow engine \( w_{f} \), and specify the business bearers(\( \delta \)) in the \( w_{f} \) (\( w_{f} \in W_{f} \)) for the business process nodes.

Platform collaborative design completing is supported by collaborative design instance \( i\left( {i \in I} \right) \). The problem is how the collaborative design platform user \( p \) establishes equivalent mapping relationship with business bearers in workflow engine.

The collaborative design platform user \( p \) undertakes the equivalent mapping with the business bearer \( \delta \) in the workflow engine, which involves the one timely to respond to the data information responded by workflow to the platform user \( p \), and the other is to send the trigger event information of the node trigger \( \sigma \) in the engine to the user \( p \) and give the user response information to the event as a feedback to the engine to activate and ensure the correct operation of the business process \( w_{f} \).

The equivalent mapping E of Collaborative design user \( p \) and workflow engine role \( \delta \) are made up of three parts is Eq. 3. As shown in Fig. 3.

Fig. 3.
figure 3

The equivalent mapping relationship between the user and the workflow engine role in collaborative design service system

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$$ E\left( {p,\delta } \right) = \left( {\left( {p,\delta } \right),g\left( x \right),S} \right) $$
(3)

\( (p,\delta ) \) -means matching between users and roles. \( g\left( x \right) \) -is the data transformation channel for user p and process, to realize the data transfer between user and role \( \delta \). S- transfers the task and triggered response of the role \( \delta \) in the workflow engine to p end of the platform user, and makes the user have all the functions of the role \( \delta \) in the business process, to realize the platform user \( p \) participate in the collaborative design based on the workflow engine.

2.2 Architecture of the Collaborative Design Service System

The collaborative design service system based on ceramic cloud service platform is mainly composed of server and client, which are the subsystems of ceramic cloud service platform. The development and implementation of the system require a strong scalability and flexibility of the system to adapt to various complex situations. The system of system design has clear levels, clear function modules and independent modules. Based on the above requirements, the collaborative design system of ceramic products based on Internet is implemented by three-tier architecture, which mainly consists of client-side presentation layer, server-side business logic layer and data storage persistence layer.

The system communicates with the data through the data access interface and server. The data is analyzed and displayed on the client side through the task object management module, so system module mainly includes task object management module, user object module, information object module and style object module. The server-side business logic layer includes: data supply service layer, business logic processing, task object, user object, consulting object, workflow engine, data access interface, etc. As shown in Fig. 4.

Fig. 4.
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System structure diagram

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2.3 Collaborative Design Engine

The function of the collaborative design process management engine is to automatically match the collaborative design process with the same applications and tasks according to the type of collaborative design task, and to manage the progress of each collaborative design task in the system [9, 11]. First, a collaborative requirement task is issued by the user. Then, the sub-task is selected and completed by the design unit, and finally the whole task is completed.

In the collaborative design process, the collaborative design engine consists of one or more workflow executors. Workflow executors are actually task schedulers for collaborative design processes and allotters for designing resources. The main functions of the workflow executor are to explain the process definition, to be responsible for debugging the operation of the process, to create and manage the operation of the process instances, to schedule the operation of the activity and to create the work items to be processed, and to maintain the workflow control data and related data and the work list of the users [10, 12]. As shown in Fig. 5.

Fig. 5.
figure 5

Architecture of collaborative design engine

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3 Implementation and Application of Collaborative Design Service System

3.1 Collaboration Instances

Cases of the case analysis come from the ceramic product cloud design service platform [13, 14], which is developed and operated by Jiangxi Ceramic Enterprise Information Engineering Technology Research Center [15], and is a comprehensive cloud platform developed for collaborative design services between upstream and downstream enterprises in the ceramic industry chain. The business scope of the platform covers the business processes of material design, product design, design and processing among enterprises, mainly realizing the design business interaction and collaborative service management among enterprises. At present, there are more than 400 enterprise users of ceramic cloud service platforms, which are divided into four categories: ceramic generation and manufacturing enterprise, art design service enterprise, art design studio and individual distributor.

Collaborative design service instance of ceramic products under the control of collaborative design engine based on ceramic cloud service platform can be shown in Fig. 6.

Fig. 6.
figure 6

An example of cooperative design service for ceramic products

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3.2 Realization of Collaborative Business Process

  1. 1)

    Users Publish Tasks.

After users log in to the system, task requirements can be published (Fig. 7).

Fig. 7.
figure 7

Publishing collaborative design tasks

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  1. 2)

    Administrator review tasks.

After requirement users publish the requirement task, the administrator needs to audit the task in the background (Fig. 8).

Fig. 8.
figure 8

Administrator review tasks

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  1. 3)

    Designer Participate in Collaboration.

First, the designer needs to log in to the system. Then the task instructions can be seen in the task hall. Finally, Once the subtasks have been designed, one just needs to click “I want to hand in the manuscript”. After submission, the user that requires release will review and propose further amendments (Fig. 9).

Fig. 9.
figure 9

Designers participate in collaborative design services

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3.3 Application Effect of the System

The collaborative design service system based on ceramic cloud service platform tackles with the cross-regional collaborative design management of ceramic products. Based on the collaborative design process control of workflow, it integrates the whole process of ceramic product collaborative design into system management, provides document sharing, information or task process control for all design service participants of collaborative design service task, and realizes the monitoring and management of the completion process of the expected design task.

It not only greatly improves the collaborative design efficiency of ceramic products and promotes the development of ceramic product design field, but also solves the problem of insufficient design ability of many small and medium ceramic enterprises.

4 Conclusion

Based on the analysis of workflow-driven collaborative design and the research of the design service system, this paper presents a collaborative design service scheme combining ceramic cloud service platform. The scheme adopts the design idea of workflow engine and runs with the architecture of sub-platform middleware. It can meet the requirements of collaborative service task release and management. It is more friendly and intuitive to show the basic situation of the main tasks and sub-tasks. It can also divide a main task into several sub-tasks according to need, selection, acceptance and payment for the sub-tasks, and can support graphical operation interface. This paper is based on the actual project research. The research process is aimed to solve the problem of collaboration between modern design services with the help of open source workflow flexibility, scalability and other powerful functions. The focus of this stage is to design the collaborative design system into a third-party service platform and the next stage will be the expansion of the system providing a standard interface for new information systems.