Standards Framework for Intelligent Manufacturing Systems Supply Chain

ISBN 979-953-307-708-5 http://www.intechopen.com/articles/show/title/standards-framework-for-intelligent-manufacturing-systems-supply-chain#referenceThe global market is striving to increase competitiveness among organizations and networks. Nowadays, management of supply chains does not only consider business processes in the traditional value chain, but also processes that penetrate networks of organisations. Indeed, the formation of cooperation and collaboration partnerships between several small organizations can be, in multiple cases, more efficient by comparison with big companies (Rudberg et al., 2002). This way, the research on supply chain management has turned from an intra-enterprise focus towards an inter-enterprise focus with companies looking for enhanced interoperability between computer systems and applications. Supply chain networks are characterized by different structures such as, business processes and technological, organizational, topological, informational, and financial structures. All are interrelated but following their own dynamics. Thus, in order to ensure a high responsiveness level, the supply chain plans must be formed robustly and extremely quickly in relation to all the structures (Gupta & Maranas, 2003). In fact, with regards to supply chain in the advent of globalization, one of the difficulties enterprises are facing is the lack of interoperability of systems and software applications to manage and orchestrate the different structures involved (Jardim-Goncalves et al. 2006; Panetto et al., 2006; Farinha et al., 2007). The increasing need for cooperation and collaboration together with the rapid advances in information and communication technology (ICT) have brought supply chain planning into the forefront of the business practices of most manufacturing and service organizations (Gupta & Maranas, 2003). Moreover, there has been a growing interest and research in e-business solutions to facilitate information sharing between organisations in the supply chain network

Web service for knowledge management in e-marketplaces

A common strategic initiative of organizations engaged in electronic business (e-business) is the development of synergistic relations with collaborating value-chain partners to deliver their value proposition to customers. This requires the transparent flow of problem specific knowledge to partner organizations over highly integrated information systems. Transparent exchange of information and knowledge across collaborating organizations requires technological foundations for integrating business processes using software architectures built upon industry standards. The unambiguously interpretable flow of knowledge to inform online business processes is a challenging task with significant competitive benefits for organizations that take technical initiative. Infomediary organizations can serve the e-business need for exchange of knowledge and information through value-added knowledge services to participating firms in the value chain through intelligent software systems integrated with the Web Services Architecture. We define knowledge services as the "exchange of problem domain-specific knowledge to inform decision activities of specific e-business processes, facilitated by an infomediary using intelligent software systems and the Web Services Architecture." This research presents a knowledge services framework, founded on the Web Services Architecture, to enable the transparent exchange of knowledge between intelligent software systems that manage processes of organizations engaged in e-business in the knowledge-based economy. The objective is to enable informed and knowledge-based discovery of business partners from among the multitude online, and to support knowledge-rich e-business processes that cut across the value chain and deliver the value proposition to the customer

Enterprise extension through extensible markup language

An extended enterprise is comprised of multiple linkages between and amongst a company and its suppliers, distributors, customers and others. Linkages are long term collaborative agreements based on synergies and the ability to create value. An extended enterprise eliminates wasteful transaction costs and removes redundancies, delays and inefficiencies from the supply chain. This is accomplished through the coordination of demand forecasting, production planning, deployment and transportation as well as creating organizational and process links with seamless information flows between them. Extended enterprise is enabled by developments in technology, especially information technology. Sharing information about sales forecast, production schedules, inventory, etc. makes an extended enterprise a win/win situation. Extended enterprise networks have used information technology systems such as electronic data interchanges, enterprise resource planning, and the Internet with different degrees of success. The Integrated Manufacturing Technology Initiative has identified several information technology criteria as critical to the success of future enterprises. Based on these criteria, this paper discusses XML’s contribution to the extended enterprise paradigm. Dell’s direct sale model is used to illustrate the role of XML in enterprise extension.Una empresa extendida está compuesta de varios enlaces entre una compañía y sus proveedores, distribuidores, clientes y demás. Estas uniones son acuerdos a largo plazo basados en la sinergia y en la habilidad de crear valor. Una empresa extendida elimina los costes de transacción innecesarios y retira las redundancias, atrasos e ineficiencias de la cadena de suministros. Esto se consigue mediante la coordinación de la demanda, la planificación de la producción, desempleo y transporte así como crear procesos organizativos y enlaces con información que fluye a través de estas partes. Una empresa extendida es posible gracias al Desarrollo en tecnología, especialmente la de la información. Compartir información sobre las ventas, el calendario de producción, el inventario, etc, permite a la empresa situarse en una situación de beneficio. Sus redes de trabajo han empleado la tecnología de la información como intercambios de datos electrónicos, planificación de recursos, y el internet con diferentes grados de éxito. La Iniciativa Artesana de Tecnología Hecha a Mano ha identificado ciertos criterios que resultan críticos para el éxito de las siguientes operaciones y empresas. Basados en estos criterios, este artículo discute la contribución de XML al paradigma de las empresas extendidas. El modelo de ventas directo de Dell se utiliza para ilustrar el papel de XML a la extensión de empresas

E-business framework enabled B2B integration

Standards for B2B integration help to facilitate the interoperability between organisations. These standards, often called e-business frameworks, guide integration by specifying the details for business processes, business documents and secure messaging. Extensible Mark-up Language (XML) is used in modern e-business frameworks instead of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) formats. Having XML as the data format is not enough for integration, but e-business frameworks are needed to guide how XML is used. This work analyses the many partly competing and overlapping e-business frameworks how they differ in support for business processes, documents and secure messaging. In addition, the effect of standardisation organisation to the outcome of the e-business framework is studied. In this work, one e-business framework, RosettaNet, is used to tackle the challenges of product development (PD) integrations. A proof-of-concept implementation of a RosettaNet integration is provided to support PD and the lessons learned are discussed. The current specifications lack good processes for PD integrations, while they fail in specifying the concepts needed for document management. Furthermore, there are interoperability problems due to a lack of expressivity of the schema languages to encode the business documents, and the current setup of integration takes a very long time. RosettaNet has a lot of flexibility in the specifications, and thus just supporting the same standard process is not enough for interoperability. With semantic technologies, many shortcomings of the current standards for B2B integration can be solved, as they make it possible to present constraints the current technologies have problems with. This work presents a practical case of B2B integration with semantic technologies and describes the benefits of applying such technologies.Standardit tukevat organisaatioiden välistä järjestelmäintegraatiota. Integroinnin standardit määrittelevät organisaatioiden välisiä liiketoimintaprosesseja, -dokumentteja sekä määrittelevät turvallisen tavan kommunikoida. Nykyaikaiset standardit ovat XML-perusteisia vanhemman EDI-formaatin sijaan. XML:n käyttö ei ole riittävästi takaamaan integraation onnistumista, vaan tarvitaan tarkempaa sopimista, miten XML:ää käytetään integraatiossa. Joukko yritystenvälisen integroinnin standardeja määrittelee tämän. Tässä työssä analysoidaan useaa, osittain kilpailevaa, yritystenvälisen integroinnin standardia ja tutkitaan miten ne tukevat liiketoimintaprosessien, -dokumenttien ja turvallisen viestinvälityksen määrittelyjä ottaen huomioon myös standardointiorganisaation vaikutuksen lopputulokseen. Tässä työssä RosettaNet-standardia sovelletaan tuotekehitykseen liittyvissä integroinneissa. Työssä esitetään prototyyppi tuotekehitystiedon integroinnista RosettaNetin avulla ja keskustellaan saavutetuista kokemuksista. Nykyiset spesifikaatiot tuotekehitysprosesseille ovat tarpeisiin riittämättömiä, koska tuki dokumenttien hallinnan käsitteistölle on puutteellinen. Myös RosettaNetin käyttämien XML-skeemakielien puutteellinen ilmaisuvoima aiheuttaa ongelmia dokumenttien yhteentoimivuudelle. Lisäksi integraation tekeminen on hidasta verrattuna tyypillisen tuotekehitysprojektin kestoon. RosettaNetin tarjoamissa spesifikaatioissa on paljon joustavuutta, joten saman standardiprosessin tukeminen ei tarkoita, että järjestelmät ovat yhteentoimivia. Nykyspesifikaatioissa ja niissä käytettyjen skeema-kielten ilmaisuvoiman puutteet voidaan osittain paikata käyttämällä semanttisia teknologioita. Tämä työ esittää, miten integraatioissa voidaan saavuttaa semanttisia teknologioita käyttämällä parempi yhteentoimivuus.reviewe

Role of Semantic web in the changing context of Enterprise Collaboration

In order to compete with the global giants, enterprises are concentrating on their core competencies and collaborating with organizations that compliment their skills and core activities. The current trend is to develop temporary alliances of independent enterprises, in which companies can come together to share skills, core competencies and resources. However, knowledge sharing and communication among multidiscipline companies is a complex and challenging problem. In a collaborative environment, the meaning of knowledge is drastically affected by the context in which it is viewed and interpreted; thus necessitating the treatment of structure as well as semantics of the data stored in enterprise repositories. Keeping the present market and technological scenario in mind, this research aims to propose tools and techniques that can enable companies to assimilate distributed information resources and achieve their business goals