An evaluation framework for deploying Web Services in the next generation manufacturing enterprise

In today's competitive manufacturing environment, the ability to effectively and efficiently manage the flow of information is a vital competency. Manufacturing enterprises must be able to integrate their internal business processes horizontally and vertically, and they are increasingly required to support federated business processes with other members of their respective virtual value chains. Web Services, an emerging form of service-oriented architecture for distributed computing, have the potential to serve as a key enabling technology to support these requirements. Leveraging the inherent interoperability of Internet and Worldwide Web technologies, they enable cooperative processing across heterogeneous computing environments. This paper presents a framework for evaluating the viability of Web Services technologies to be incorporated into enterprise information architectures to support the business needs and requirements of next generation manufacturing enterprises. It examines economic, technical, and organizational contexts that will influence the ability of manufacturing-related enterprises to deploy advanced information architectures based on Web Services to support the complex business processes needed to collaborate with suppliers, customers, and other stakeholders in virtual enterprise environments.