<title>Integrating manufacturing softwares for intelligent planning execution: a CIIMPLEX perspective</title>

Abstract

Recent developments have made it possible to interoperate complex business applications at much lower costs. Application interoperation, along with business process reengineering can result in significant savings by eliminating work created by disconnected business processes due to isolated business applications. However, we believe much greater productivity benefits can be achieved by facilitating timely decision-making, utilizing information from multiple enterprise perspectives. The CIIMPLEX Enterprise Integration Architecture is designed to enable such productivity gains by helping people to carry out integrated enterprise scenarios. An enterprise scenario is triggered typically by some external event (e.g., delay of a shipment). The goal of an enterprise scenario is to make the right decisions considering the full context of the problem. Enterprise scenarios are difficult for people to carry out because of the interdependencies among various actions. One can easily be overwhelmed by the large amount of information. We propose the use of software agents to help gathering relevant information and present them in the appropriate context of an enterprise scenario. The CIIMPLEX enterprise integration architecture is based on the FAIME methodology for application interoperation and plug-and-play. It also explores the use of software agents in application plug-and-play.

Agent-based approach for manufacturing integration: The ciimplex experience

“…If accepted, the message is entered into the Distributor [4], an internal blackboard for message distribution. The Distributor [5] in turn tries to match the message with any pending requests in order of a specified priority. Ideally, a match is found, and the message is placed in the appropriate queue or queues [6].…”

“…The primary goal of the consortium is to develop technologies for intelligent enterprise-wide integration of planning and execution for manufacturing (Chu et al, 1996). Our vision of a successful integrated P/E system for manufacturing would has the following features.…”

An agent-based infrastructure for enterprise integration

“…The Consortium for Intelligent Integrated Manufacturing Planning-Execution (CIIMPLEX), consisting of several private companies and universities, was formed in 1995 with the primary goal of developing technologies for intelligent enterprise-wide integration of planning and execution for manufacturing [8]. CIIMPLEX has adopted as one of its key technologies the approach of intelligent software agents, and has experimented with several multi-agent systems (MAS) for various difficult tasks involved in enterprise integration.…”