Shop-floor resource virtualization layer with private cloud support

Large scale emergence of mature cloud solutions, ranging from software-as-a-service based solutions for business management, to very sophisticate private cloud solutions; offer the building blocks for constructing extremely flexible enterprise systems that can respond to environmental changes with great agility. Manufacturing enterprises need to adopt these new technologies to advance in a new era of mass customization where flexibility, scalability and agility are the differentiating factors. In this context, this paper introduces the virtualized MES and shop floor architecture as an intermediate layer in the manufacturing stack and discusses the advantages offered by this approach for manufacturing enterprises. A classification of MES and shop floor devices is presented focusing on the virtualization techniques suitable for each device type, considering the level of distributed intelligence and the virtualization overhead. Shop floor virtualization through shop floor profiles is presented and discussed underlying the flexibility of the solution. A pilot multi-agent implementation for virtual shop floor configuration based on the CoBASA reference architecture is presented and discussed. The shop floor profiles which define the virtual layout and mappings of the robotized manufacturing system are also provided in this context. The pilot implementation using six Adapt robots and a IBM CloudBurst 2.1 private cloud, is described and virtualization overhead in terms of event propagation delays is measured and presented in several scenarios of resource workload collocation on physical cloud blades     

Enterprise systems and demand chain management: a cross-sectional field study

Increased product variety, compressed cycle times, supply chain network based competition and the uncertainty in business environment are forcing organizations to shift their emphasis towards demand chain management. Though enterprise systems and supply chain management software solutions are well in place in most of the large enterprises in Australia, their ability to support demand chain management approach is not yet known. This paper investigates the adoption of demand chain management in Australian organizations using cross-sectional qualitative field study. It found that the adoption is limited despite the organizational capabilities and sound digital platforms. Standardization, integration, visibility and control of processes and information, enabled by enterprise systems, are helping the organizations in improving their ability to sense and shape market demand and customer needs, and build agility into their decision making processes. Attempts to synchronise operating and finance cycles and collecting market intelligence and sharing of that across the supply chain are some of the initiatives that have started showing benefits. Adopting the demand chain management initiatives such as establishment of market intelligence mechanism, building agility into decision making processes, sophisticated usage of optimization tools embedded in software solutions, and process frameworks such as Supply Chain Operations Reference are helping organizations to achieve both agility and control simultaneously.     

Implementation of intelligent systems, enabling integration of SMEs to high-value supply chain networks

In the face of increasing competition from low-cost economies, European manufacturing companies are focusing on optimisation of operational activities to remain competitive. Previous work has identified how companies can optimise implementation of specialist technology to improve production capability; however increasing demands in service requirements such as customisability and flexibility are often negating the localised gains in capability.Supply chain management has become an increasingly important aspect of operations improvement to ensure support throughout the product realisation process. The key to creating a supply chain capable of this rapid response and high level of adaptability is integration of intelligent systems and management capabilities.A site-visit-based survey and characterisation of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), comprising actual or potential supply chain components, reveals that even those with well developed capabilities and attitudes to adopting production technologies are largely not proactive with technology adoption targeting these needs.A review of requirements for SMEs to achieve such competitive supply chain capabilities reveals a hierarchy of technical expertise to be developed. This is presented as an implementation strategy for staged introduction of these tools and techniques with a view to establishing high-value supply chains capable of withstanding business pressures from developing economies.     

A distributed architecture for reconfigurable control of continuous process operations

This paper considers a new distributed approach to reconfigurable control of continuous process operations such as in chemical plants. The research is set on a premise that emerging business pressures of product customization and industrial globalization will lead to increased need for reconfigurability in process plants. The ability of processes to support dynamic and smooth reorganization of process schemes in tandem with the changing requirements of supply chains will become important in future. Conventional control approaches based on hierarchical architectures are limited in dealing with such emerging requirements due to their inflexible structures and operating rules. Instead, more distributed approaches are required which can support increased level of reconfigurability in control systems, especially at the lower levels in hierarchy where the visibility to disturbances remains high. In this paper, one such distributed approach is considered based on the concepts of holonic manufacturing and supply chain management. The proposed approach distributes the functionality of process control into several reconfigurable process elements. These elements, while having a stand-alone capability for making their own control decisions, are also able to reconfigure themselves into alternative process schemes which evolve with the changing requirements of production. An analogy between process plants and so-called dynamic supply networks or virtual enterprises is used in this paper to define the composition of reconfigurable process elements and their operations. The proposed approach is shown to offer improved process control system reconfigurability and a control architecture which is compatible with the supply chain management needs at the next higher level. The purpose of this paper is qualitative and motivational. It is aimed to propose a new research direction in the field of reconfigurable process control.     

集成化供应链中信息的安全性和敏捷性问题研究

对供应链企业中存在的信息安全性问题和敏捷性问题做了初步的研究，分析了为解决这两个问题企业必须做哪些努力，需要哪些资源，以及它们之间存在着怎样的矛盾，并针对信息的安全性和敏捷性的矛盾提出了参考的解决方案。     

支持动态联盟的车间控制信息系统框架模型

随着世界市场的不断变化与市场竞争的加剧, 动态联盟将成为新的企业组织形态,动态联盟环境下企业间信息流的管理和控制问题越来越 受到人们的重视．车间控制器的设计和开发也必须适应动态联盟的需要．本文对敏捷制造信 息系统（AMIS）和车间的信息流程进行了分析和探讨,结合现有的网络技术、代理技术以及 分布工作流技术,提出了支持动态联盟的车间控制信息系统框架模型．     

Applications of agent-based systems in intelligent manufacturing: An updated review

Agent technology has been recognized as a promising paradigm for next generation manufacturing systems. Researchers have attempted to apply agent technology to manufacturing enterprise integration, enterprise collaboration (including supply chain management and virtual enterprises), manufacturing process planning and scheduling, shop floor control, and to holonic manufacturing as an implementation methodology. This paper provides an update review on the recent achievements in these areas, and discusses some key issues in implementing agent-based manufacturing systems such as agent encapsulation, agent organization, agent coordination and negotiation, system dynamics, learning, optimization, security and privacy, tools and standards.     

Change factors requiring agility and implications for IT

The current highly dynamic business environment requires businesses to be agile. Business agility is the ability to swiftly and easily change businesses and business processes beyond the normal level of flexibility to effectively manage unpredictable external and internal changes. This study reports on a cross-industry analysis of change factors requiring agility and assesses agility gaps that companies are facing in four industry sectors in the Netherlands. A framework was constructed to measure the perceived gaps between the current level of business agility and the required level of business agility. The questionnaire and in-depth interviews held reveal that today's businesses perceive to lack the agility required to quickly respond to changes, whose speed and requirements are difficult to predict. The paper presents rankings of generic and sector-specific agility gaps. These show that although some generic change factors requiring agility exist, the change factors requiring agility that cause agility gaps differ across industry sectors. Among the factors that enable or hinder business agility, the existence of inflexible legacy systems is perceived to be a very important disabler in achieving more business agility. A number of basic principles and directions are discussed to transform Information Technology from barrier into key enabler for increased agility in organizations and business networks.     

Decision-enabled dynamic process management for networked enterprises

Enterprises in today’s networked economy face numerous information management challenges, both from a process management perspective as well as a decision support perspective. While there have been significant relevant advances in the areas of business process management as well as decision sciences, several open research issues exist. In this paper, we highlight the following key challenges. First, current process modeling and management techniques lack in providing a seamless integration of decision models and tools in existing business processes, which is critical to achieve organizational objectives. Second, given the dynamic nature of business processes in networked enterprises, process management approaches that enable organizations to react to business process changes in an agile manner are required. Third, current state-of-the-art decision model management techniques are not particularly amenable to distributed settings in networked enterprises, which limits the sharing and reuse of models in different contexts, including their utility within managing business processes. In this paper, we present a framework for decision-enabled dynamic process management that addresses these challenges. The framework builds on computational formalisms, including the structured modeling paradigm for representing decision models, and hierarchical task networks from the artificial intelligence (AI) planning area for process modeling. Within the framework, interleaved process planning (modeling), execution and monitoring for dynamic process management throughout the process lifecycle is proposed. A service-oriented architecture combined with advances from the semantic Web field for model management support within business processes is proposed.     

Re-thinking diagnosis for future automation systems: An analysis of current diagnostic practices and their applicability in emerging IT based production paradigms

With the advent of the Internet and the progressive development and consolidation of a wide range of web standards and technologies as well as the advances in distributed artificial intelligence (DAI), namely the multi agent system concept, new opportunities have emerged for conceiving, modelling and enhancing shop floor's performance and response.Modern IT-supported production paradigms denote a common concept where the shop floor is a lively entity composed by interacting intelligent modules whose individual and collective function adapts and evolves ensuring the fitness and adequacy of the organization, owning the system, in tackling profitable but volatile business opportunities.The self-organizing and peer to peer nature of these systems renders a collective behaviour and dynamics that are fundamentally new. Conventional diagnostic methods and tools have not been designed targeting the envisioned systems therefore lack the required support. In this paper the emerging IT-based production paradigms are surveyed as well as the existing diagnostic methods whose adequacy is analysed. The resulting requirements and characteristics are exposed to stress the need for rethinking current diagnostic practices in future automation systems.     

企业组织与过程的优化重构

可重构性是企业管理系统复杂性和响应环境变化 ,以及同其它企业竞争与合作的核心能力 .由于企业是一个复杂的社会 -技术系统 ,组织与过程的优化重构是制造资源优化配置的基础 .本文首先讨论了企业组织重构的影响因素和企业之间组织重构基本形式 .然后 ,本文讨论企业过程优化重构中渐变 /突变方式、建模问题和关联性分析方法 .企业组织与过程的优化重构技术将有效促进供应链管理、动态联盟和网络化制造等的发展     

Multi-behavior agent model for planning in supply chains: An application to the lumber industry

Recent economic and international threats to western industries have encouraged companies to increase their performance in all ways possible. Many look to deal quickly with disturbances, reduce inventory, and exchange information promptly throughout the supply chain. In other words they want to become more agile. To reach this objective it is critical for planning systems to present planning strategies adapted to the different contexts, to attain better performances. Due to consolidation, the development of integrated supply chains and the use of inter-organizational information systems have increased business interdependencies and in turn the need for increased collaboration to deal with disturbance in a synchronized way. Thus, agility and synchronization in supply chains are critical to maintain overall performance. In order to develop tools to increase the agility of the supply chain and to promote the collaborative management of such disturbances, agent-based technology takes advantage of the ability of agents to make autonomous decisions in a distributed network through the use of advanced collaboration mechanisms. Moreover, because of the highly instable and dynamic environment of today's supply chains, planning agents must handle multiple problem solving approaches. This paper proposes a Multi-behavior planning agent model using different planning strategies when decisions are supported by a distributed planning system. The implementation of this solution is realized through the FOR@C experimental agent-based platform, dedicated to supply chain planning for the lumber industry.     

基于Agent面向软件重用的敏捷供应链模型

敏捷性和快速响应性是现代企业成功的关键因素，供应链管理正成为现代企业提高竞争力而采取的有效的先进手段，它要求敏捷化的信息系统支持，满足企业快速构造供应链的需要，因此，如何实现供应链系统的软件重用，就具有非常重要的现实意义，提出了将企业的商务逻辑与具体事务处理分开的思想，建立基于agent的敏捷化供应链管理模型，通过对商务逻辑的规则模型和软件代理的活动行为模型建立，利用ECA规则协调多代理系统的活动，从而有效地支持供应链动态建立，过程重组，增强供应链系统信息分布处理，软件可重用和规模可扩展能力。     

Information technology, operational, and management competencies for supply chain agility: Findings from case studies

Given the growing emphasis on the need for supply chain agility to sustain competitive advantage, this study explores the impact of the relationship between supply chain competence and supply chain agility on firm performance. Although the influence of supply chain agility on firm performance has been acknowledged, this study further articulates the relationship from the perspective of inter-organizational collaboration. We develop a conceptual model based on the resource-based view and employ a multi-case study method in this exploratory research. Our findings highlight the importance of distinguishing the difference between supply chain agility and supply chain competence and their impact on firm performance. This study contributes to the growing body of conceptual and empirical literature on supply chain agility and adds to the understanding of the complexity of supply chain competence.     

石化企业内部供应链业务流程分析及建模仿真

石化企业是典型的流程型企业,是石化供应链的核心企业,其内部业务流程管理对整个石化供应链运作性能具有决定性作用。以某石化公司为研究对象,分析其内部供应链原有业务流程,建立相应的概念模型;为了优化原有企业内部供应链业务流程,引入SCOR建模框架;采用AnyLogic仿真平台,分别建立采用SCOR框架前后企业内部供应链的仿真模型。仿真分析表明,采用SCOR框架改进业务流程,可以有效改善企业内部供应链性能。     

Human‐computer interaction and lean production: The shop floor example

The approach in industrial engineering to computer‐integrated manufacturing (CIM) proved not to be the concept needed for the majority of German companies. At the moment, lean production is the focal point of discussion about production engineering. It tries to combine concepts such as human‐centered organization, internationalization of business, decentralization of decisions, increased development times, total quality management, and process‐oriented business management. There are a variety of implementation areas for lean production. One implementation has been the shop floor‐oriented production support concept as developed by the Fraunhofer Institute IAO in Stuttgart. It focuses on functions such as Computer Numeric Control (CNC) machine tool programming, shop floor control, quality assurance, and resource management, and it aims at decentralized work organization, comprehensive work contents, and support for highly skilled workers on the shop floor. This support is provided by Information Technology (IT) systems that follow the ideas of work enrichment and work enlargement, and use a so‐called shop floor metaphor and graphical user interfaces with standard tool kits. In this way, the shop floor‐oriented production support concept represents a future concept that takes into consideration particularly human factors and human‐computer interaction.     

From trading to eCommunity management: Responding to social and contractual challenges

The increasing pressure for enterprises to join into agile business networks is changing the requirements on the enterprise computing systems. The supporting infrastructure is increasingly required to provide common facilities and societal infrastructure services to support the lifecycle of loosely-coupled, eContract-governed business networks. The required facilities include selection of those autonomously administered business services that the enterprises are prepared to provide and use, contract negotiations, and furthermore, monitoring of the contracted behaviour with potential for breach management. The essential change is in the requirement of a clear mapping between business-level concepts and the automation support for them. Our work has focused on developing B2B middleware to address the above challenges; however, the architecture is not feasible without management facilities for trust-aware decisions for entering business networks and interacting within them. This paper discusses how trust-based decisions are supported and positioned in the B2B middleware.     

基于Web Services的PDM系统与DNC系统集成解决方案

为了满足中小企业在网络化制造环境下实现企业间集成的需求,提出了基于WebServices经济的、可扩展的、松散耦合的PDM系统与DNC系统集成解决方案。该方案可为企业上层应用系统与车间底层控制系统的集成提供参考,适用于网络化制造环境下企业内部或企业间的制造信息集成。     

Specifying information systems for business process integration – A management perspective*

Supply chain management and customer relationship management are concepts for optimizing the provision of goods to customers. Information sharing and information estimation are key tools used to implement these two concepts. The reduction of delivery times and stock levels can be seen as the main managerial objectives of an integrative supply chain and customer relationship management. To achieve this objective, business processes need to be integrated along the entire supply chain including the end consumer. Information systems form the backbone of any business process integration. The relevant information system architectures are generally well-understood, but the conceptual specification of information systems for business process integration from a management perspective, remains an open methodological problem. To address this problem, we will show how customer relationship management and supply chain management information can be integrated at the conceptual level in order to provide supply chain managers with relevant information. We will further outline how the conceptual management perspective of business process integration can be supported by deriving specifications for enabling information system from business objectives. This work has been funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung), record no. 01HW0196.     

Implementing organisational interoperability—The SUddEN approach

Dynamic markets require enterprises to collaborate in organisational networks. Current support for automotive supply networks is limited to logistic aspects. In the European project SUddEN an approach to support coordination and organisational interoperability in supply networks is researched. These networks are seen as complex adaptive systems, with their structure changing permanently and dynamically. This has impact on the flow of materials and information across the network. Coordination and interoperability are important aspects that enable the required business performance in order to survive in today's global competing business environment. The SUddEN ICT approach supports collaborative performance measurement system development. This allows network partners to adapt their individual processes to improve organisational interoperability. For this approach, an architecture has been designed and a prototype has been implemented.