Johan C. Wortmann - Böcker

This work explains the information infrastructure needed by manufacturing enterprises in order to share information and to co-ordinate decisions and control. This infrastructure should feature common methods and integrated applications for shop floor control, order processing, contract negotiation and co-operation in product and process development. The volume addresses five main topics: the co-ordination and systemization of information processing requirements and their synthesis into comprehensive conceptual models; the development of information infrastructures, amalgamating the conceptual models with computing, communication and storage technologies; the design of control architectures for interfacing information infrastructures with advanced machine tools and skillful people; conceptual modelling for extended enterprises and product life cycles; and the definition of information and communication services for enterprises co-operating in engineering and manufacturing processes.

The business environment throughout the world is going through rapid and far-reaching change. Business managers are analysing their business processes and scrutinising ways to make their systems more streamlined and competitive in order to meet the challenges posed by the global economy. Forming close alliances and integrating the operational processes with the key suppliers and customers is the mantra every one is embodying. Just as no man is an island, so no business can operate without being part of a network of businesses proactively collaborating and sharing information for mutual success. This book presents some of the most up-to-date thinking on collaborative systems by bringing together the works of experts who share their ideas on the state of the art research and development.

Together these developments have yielded a tremendous amount of new knowledge and will continue to offer us new challenges and opportunities well into the future.

On the verge of the global information society, enterprises are competing for markets that are becoming global and driven by customer demand, and where growing specialisation is pushing them to focus on core competencies and look for partnerships to provide products and services. Simultaneously the public demands environmentally sustainable industries and urges manufacturers to mind the whole life span of their products and production resources. Information infrastructure systems are anticipated to offer services enabling and catalyzing the strategies of manufacturing companies responding to these challenges: they support the formation of extended enterprises, the mastering of full product and process life cycles, and the digitalization of the development process. Information infrastructure systems would accommodate access to and transformation of information as required by the various authorized stakeholders involved in the life phases of products or production resources. Services should be available to select and present all relevant information for situations involving any kind of players, during any life phase of a product or artifact, at any moment and at any place.