The Management of Manufacturing-Oriented Informatics Systems Using Efficient and Flexible Architectures

Industry and in particular the manufacturing-oriented sector has always been researched and innovated as a result of technological progress, diversification and differentiation among consumers' demands. A company that provides to its customers products matching perfectly their demands at competitive prices has a great advantage over its competitors. Manufacturing-oriented information systems are becoming more flexible and configurable and they require integration with the entire organization. This can be done using efficient software architectures that will allow the coexistence between commercial solutions and open source components while sharing computing resources organized in grid infrastructures and under the governance of powerful management tools.Manufacturing-Oriented Informatics Systems, Open Source, Software Architectures, Grid Computing, Web-Based Management Systems

INTEGRATION VERSUS DEDICATION IN ROMANIAN MANAGEMENT SUPPORT SYSTEMS

The technologies supporting future business must be intuitive from a user standpoint, flexible from design standpoint and highly productive. As an answer to many requirements, analysts recommend the inclusion of SOA and ESB in the IT management strategies, since these tend to become mainstream, overcoming their abstract vision status in the last decade. In this paper, we provide a study regarding the attitude of companies from north-western Romania with respect to this transition and the SOA&ESB models. Our analysis targets attributes such as: level of understanding, knowledge and concern in adopting such technologies, the management involvement in the company IT strategy, the added value of the new technologies and risk factors for the migration towards an SOA&ESB architecture.integration,enterprise applications,web applications,SOA,ESB,framework

The Management of Manufacturing-Oriented Informatics Systems Using Efficient and Flexible Architectures

Industry and in particular the manufacturing-oriented sector has always been researched and innovated as a result of technological progress, diversification and differentiation among consumers' demands. A company that provides to its customers products matching perfectly their demands at competitive prices has a great advantage over its competitors. Manufacturing-oriented information systems are becoming more flexible and configurable and they require integration with the entire organization. This can be done using efficient software architectures that will allow the coexistence between commercial solutions and open source components while sharing computing resources organized in grid infrastructures and under the governance of powerful management tools

Information Systems in University Learning

The authors of this article are going to bring into light the significance, the place and the role of information systems in the university education process. At the same time they define the objectives and the target group of the subject named Economic Information Systems and state the competence gained by students by studying this subject. Special attention is given to the curriculum to be taught to students and to a suggestive enumeration of a series of economic applications that can be themes for laboratory practice and for students’ dissertation (graduation thesis).Information System, Academic Partnership, Curriculum, General Competence, Specific Competence, Open Systems

Process optimization of service-oriented automation devices based on Petri nets

Best paper award.This paper introduces a novel method for the specification and selection of criteria-weighted operation modes for the orchestration of services in industrial automation using Petri nets. The objective is to provide to the internal decision support system of a service-oriented automation device or of another applicable computational system the capability to select the best path in a Petri net orchestration model considering different criteria to evaluate the quality of services, such as the time, energy efficiency and reliability. The transition-invariants obtained from the Petri net represent the set of possible modi operandi and these are then weighted with decision criteria. The result will be afterwards evaluated in order to select the optimal modus operandi to be executed by the device. Based on the experiments, this method permits the dynamic optimization of processes in real-time, considering available parameters from devices and other resources.The authors would like to thank the European Commission and the partners of the EU FP6 project “Service-Oriented Cross-layer infrastructure for Distributed smart Embedded devices” (SOCRADES) and the EU FP7 project “Cooperating Objects Network of Excellence” (CONET) for their support

Agent-based real-time assembly line management for wireless job shop environment

Recent developments in wireless technologies have created opportunities for developing next-generation manufacturing systems with real-time traceability, visibility and interoperability in shop floor planning, execution and control. This paper discusses how to deploy wireless and intelligent technologies to convert physical objects in manufacturing systems into smart objects to introduce and improve the interoperability and visibility between them and thus with manufacturing decision support systems. A reference architecture for wireless manufacturing (WM) is proposed where three types of smart objects are identified. At the same time, the concept of smart object agent (SOA) is presented and the corresponding framework of smart objects management system (SOMS) is constructed. Under this framework and the concept of SOA, a SOA-based WM environment is studied and demonstrated using a near real-life simplified product assembly line for the collection and synchronization of the real-time field data from manufacturing workshops. © 2010 IEEE.published_or_final_versionThe IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation (ICMA) 2010, Xi'an, China, 4-7 August 2010. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation, 2010, p. 2013-201

A high level e-maintenance architecture to support on-site teams

Emergent architectures and paradigms targeting reconfigurable manufacturing systems increasingly rely on intelligent modules to maximize the robustness and responsiveness of modern installations. Although intelligent behaviour significantly minimizes the occurrence of faults and breakdowns it does not exclude them nor can prevent equipment’s normal wear. Adequate maintenance is fundamental to extend equipments’ life cycle. It is of major importance the ability of each intelligent device to take an active role in maintenance support. Further this paradigm shift towards “embedded intelligence”, supported by cross platform technologies, induces relevant organizational and functional changes on local maintenance teams. On the one hand, the possibility of outsourcing maintenance activities, with the warranty of a timely response, through the use of pervasive networking technologies and, on the other hand, the optimization of local maintenance staff are some examples of how IT is changing the scenario in maintenance. The concept of e-maintenance is, in this context, emerging as a new discipline with defined socio-economic challenges. This paper proposes a high level maintenance architecture supporting maintenance teams’ management and offering contextualized operational support. All the functionalities hosted by the architecture are offered to the remaining system as network services. Any intelligent module, implementing the services’ interface, can report diagnostic, prognostic and maintenance recommendations that enable the core of the platform to decide on the best course of action.manufacturing systems, platform technologies, maintenance

Composition of Petri nets models in service-oriented industrial automation

In service-oriented systems, composition of services is required to build new, distributed and more complex services, based on the logic behavior of individual ones. This paper discusses the formal composition of Petri nets models used for the process description and control in service-oriented automation systems. The proposed approach considers two forms for the composition of services, notably the offline composition, applied during the design phase, and the online composition, related to the synchronization of Petri nets models on the fly. An experimental case study is used to illustrate the proposed composition approach.The authors would like to thank the European Commission and the partners of the EU FP6 project “Service-Oriented Cross-layer infrastructure for Distributed smart Embedded devices” (SOCRADES) and the EU FP7 project “Cooperating Objects Network of Excellence” (CONET) for their support