An infrastructure to construct an individualized manufacturing information system for small and medium manufacturing enterprises

Abstract

Small and medium manufacturing enterprises (SMMEs) face many difficulties when introducing their manufacturing information systems because of realistic limitations such as the large initial investment needed to buy the system, the burden of maintaining staff to operate it, and continuous payment of maintenance costs, etc. However, most systems are not used properly due to the characteristic difference between SMMEs’ shop-floors and their functions, the lack of understanding concerning their many complex functions, and so on. To overcome the situation, we propose an infrastructure to support the construction of the individualized manufacturing information systems for SMMEs. The infrastructure consists of a Manufacturing Application (MfgApp), Plug-and-Play (PnP) Platform, and a Manufacturing Application Store (MfgAppStore) such as Apple’s business model. The MfgApp is a small-sized application software to treat specific manufacturing tasks and is performed only on a PnP Platform. The PnP Platform includes a PnP Developer which provides developers of MfgApps with a development toolkit containing a common database, user interface, and so on, and a PnP Browser which manages and executes MfgApps. The MfgAppStore is the online marketplace on the Internet to register new MfgApps that have passed the peer review process and are made available to purchase by users of SMMEs. Each SMME is able to construct its own manufacturing information system using a PnP Browser with MfgApps selectively downloaded from the MfgAppStore. We are applying the prototype infrastructure to some SMMEs of the mold industry to validate the proposed concept.