Supporting the entire life-cycle of the extended manufacturing enterprise

Abstract

Keywords:Extended manufacturing enterprise One-of-a-kind manufacturing Engineer-to-order environment Manufacturing reference model Manufacturing life-cycle framework a b s t r a c t This paper presents a framework to support the full life-cycle of extended manufacturing enterprises, from creation to operation and dissolution phases. The deployment and operation of such enterprises can be compared with the concept of 'plug-and-play', as the internal processes and legacy systems of the companies involved are smoothly integrated within an overall business process designed, validated and executed according to a specific business opportunity. During the plug phase, the specific business requirements are elicited and integrated with the design of the extended business processes. On the other hand, in the play phase, those predefined processes are executed in order to run the extended enterprise successfully. The paper describes an application case regarding an engineer-to-order and one-of-a-kind engineering product. This scenario is common to a large number of technology-driven SMEs, and illustrates the value of the framework to exploit business opportunities that require a combination of skills and resources that do not exist in-house. The case shows how the platform addresses the two main challenges in the deployment of an extended enterprise. The first challenge is finding the right set of partners to address a new business opportunity and the design of the underlying collaborative processes. The second challenge is mostly technical, and focuses on the integration of the legacy systems of the partners participating in the network so that cooperation can take place quickly and seamlessly.

An Optimization Model of Partner Selection of Joint Distribution Alliance Considering the Supply and Demand Matching Degree

“…According to the logistics process of JD, the task is divided into 12 subtasks, as shown in Figure 6, in which the line represents a subtask and the node represents a handover between subtasks. The candidate enterprise set for each subtask is: E 1 = e 1 1 , e 2 1 , e 3 1 , E 2 = e 1 2 , e 2 2 , e 3 2 , e 4 2 , E 3 = e 1 3 , e 2 3 , e 3 3 , e 4 3 , E 4 = e 1 4 , e 2 4 , . .…”

“…Today, the demand of the goods distribution is increasingly personalized and diversified, many small and medium-sized enterprises are becoming increasingly aware that they cannot cope with the huge distribution demand on the basis of their finite capacity, so have begun to take a collectivized approach to quickly adapt to the market change and improve their competitiveness [1]- [3]. In this context, joint distribution (JD) has gradually become one of the promising business strategies.…”

Lifecycle Information Systems: the concept, principles and an approach

“…In an inter-organizational manner Azevedo et al [2017] propose a framework for managing virtual manufacturing, allowing the complete information management of a given project performed by a group of firms. Regarding this, there are presented some recent approaches in the health context, which the purpose is to integrate health information between different organizations [Constantinescu, Kim & Feng, 2012;Li et al, 2008].…”

“…Despite these e-mail services allow the exchanging of digital documents, it is carried out in an informal way, lacking proper management of all information of an individual during its entire lifecycle, nor allowing a fine-grained management of information based on contexts, what is the purpose of the IS approach proposed in this article. Accordingly, it is noteworthy that the management of information about a given entity during its entire lifecycle will imply in the management of multiple types of documents [Azevedo et al, 2017;Ferreira et al 2017;Hedberg et al 2017]. Additionally, the entire life cycle of an entity normally involves the generation of data in different contexts where this entity will interact with others entities and generate new information [Fu 2016;Hedberg et al 2017;Pang et al 2015].…”

Engineering network operations for international manufacturing: strategic orientations, influencing factors and improvement paths

“…Furthermore, there are recommendations to integrating these two areas of operations through adopting an engineer-to-order business model for manufacturing (Azevedo et al, 2016) or an overall engineering framework for service-oriented intelligent manufacturing systems (Giret et al, 2016). Nevertheless, these studies are mainly focused on the technical aspects of network operations and hardly address the broader range of operations management matters which are critical to international production and innovation in the contemporary business environment (de Treville et al, 2017).…”